A Bloomberg report says struggling publisher Ubisoft is looking for investors for a new business venture that will take control of some of its most valuable gaming properties, including Assassin's Creed. The report says Ubisoft has contacted potential investors including Tencent about acquiring a minority share in the new venture.
Nothing is finalized at this point, according to the report, but sources told the site Ubisoft has asked interested investors to make preliminary bids by the end of the month. Ubisoft may seek a higher valuation for the new entity than that of Ubisoft itself.
This is presumably the next step in a strategy that was first reported in January: Bloomberg said at the time that Ubisoft and Tencent were looking at creating a new venture that would take on some of Ubisoft's assets, which could in turn enable Tencent to have a more direct hand in how they're controlled. Tencent is Ubisoft's second-largest shareholder but has limited influence over the company, which is still more or less entirely under the control of the founding Guillemot family—and the Guillemots want to keep it that way.
How that might take shape is anyone's guess but it seems clear that big moves are required: Just weeks after that announcement, Ubisoft closed its Leamington studio and made layoffs at the Düsseldorf, Stockholm, and Ubisoft Reflections studios; all of that happened little more than a month after the shutdown of Ubisoft's San Francisco and Osaka studios.
"As we mentioned during our Q3 sales, the review of various transformational strategic and capital-raising options is ongoing," a representative said. "The Board has established an ad-hoc independent Committee to oversee this formal and competitive process, so as to extract the best value from Ubisoft’s assets and franchises for all stakeholders. Ubisoft will inform the market in accordance with applicable regulations if and once a transaction materializes."
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