Yeah this is true as well, there's few people who will actually have access to the financials, your average employee likely won't know shit about the budget, they may hear whispers of it but who knows how many people that has passed through. I think it's also possible this "employee" saw the investor roundups that ProbablyMonsters received (which yes, were $200m+ in total) but that was spread across 3 studios and HQ...Maybe they thought that was all for Firewalk though.

The only way Skull and Bones cost that much, or even the reported number for Concord, is if their respective companies were run like the US Government. Crap, this sounds political, I didn't mean it to be. Just saying, it would have to be monumental amount of wasteful spending.

Knew it...Anyone who was thinking about it should have bought Ubisoft while they were low, either they would have recovered after such a horrible dip or someone would acquire them at a premium but meh, I don't want to see any more mega-corps acquiring mega-corps, they all fucking suck.

I anticipate if this goes through it will be something like Tencent holding the majority share (60%+) and Guillemot Family holding a minority share, Ubisoft will go private, Tencent will be in control and likely thousands of layoffs will follow as Tencent attempts to bring Ubisoft in line with other publishers, aka heavily rely on cheap outsourcing and kill off a bunch of low-value IP.

Ubisoft is a bit of a unique entity in the current publishing industry in the sense that they have thousands more developers than most other publishers because they do a lot of internal co-development whilst most other publishers just rely on cheap outsourcing via external studios, Ubisoft as a little credit to them has mostly managed to avoid these mass layoffs, won't last though.

I would have preferred for Ubisoft to recover itself and Yves to step-down...Not a fan of Tencent acquiring them or any mega corporation in light of recent events in the wider industry and Tbh it sounds like this will just end up with Yves still remaining as CEO and nothing changing aside from thousands of layoffs and Tencent being the owner.

This is going to be a fucking bloodbath of layoffs...

I've updated the title in light of the new significant development.

Slightly surprising, but might be for the best.
Doesn't seem like upper management is doing a fantastic job of things so....   also if true, seems that people that bought in at the dip, will be making off with decent profits.

Supposedly pre-orders were around 7% of what Valhalla had when it was releasing.
And this was one of the reasons why it was pushed back. They wanted more time to polish it up, before a new showing with trailers ect.
They wanted another success like Valhalla was (probably the most successfull AC game they have made to date).

I think the best case scenario would have been Yves fucking off and Ubisoft naturally recovering, although going private may be better in the long run as they no longer have to answer to shareholders and they can just be happy with whatever profits they make, Ubisoft even profited in the last fiscal year which included Avatar and Skull and Bones release, Lol.

But I'm no fan of mega-corps acquiring mega-corps anymore, I'm not a fan of Tencent either.

And I think we're going to see the single biggest layoffs ever in the industry if Ubisoft ends up being acquired, although that may happen regardless eventually, Ubisoft has 21,000 employees, I'd not be surprised if we see 3000-5000 gone in one swoop. Probably multiple teams and studios shutdown and the focus put on milking Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy and other GaaS.

Two considerations to an acquisition.

1. Microsoft has a say in who the Activision-Blizzard Cloud licenses are divested to but only within reasonable complaints: Under "certain circumstances" Microsoft has to consent the divestment to a third party. But the consent "cannot be unreasonably withheld, delayed, or conditioned". I doubt it will be a problem for Tencent, would maybe be a problem for someone like Amazon though.

2. America investigated Tencent's acquisition of Sumo Group under "security concerns" which ultimately passed but Ubisoft is far bigger than Sumo Group with way bigger American teams than them too, I imagine a similar security investigation will happen. Also, I'd not be surprised to see FTC attempt to block it given how active they are lately.

May be considerations that Tencent has to take, might be easier if Ubisoft just went with a random private equity firm, Lol. Also Macron lately has been banging on about Europe being left behind by America and China and how Europe needs to do more to remain competitive, France just voted in favour of tariffs on Chinese EVs...I think there's a decent chance France may fight a Tencent acquisition of their largest videogame publisher.

Lets see if we see another regulatory battle, Lol.

Keep the company at any cost even though it'll be gutted and hung out to dry and be at the mercy of the CCP. Tut, tut. I'm disappointed. Anyone with blue hair and pride flags in their twitter bio best run and and hide.