As much as I hate government intervention, I would hope for the French government to step in and prevent a 20 000 employees company from getting sold to a company that is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Chinese companies buying European ones to steal all their IP and know-how and then fire everyone has been happening all over Europe way too often, in other industries.
Tencent is not ruled by the Chinese Communist Party and most of the 20000 Ubisoft workers aren't in France. As an example, they have workers in Chna too.
They made no money from the PC ports. It is literally pennies in the grand scheme of things. Like 30 millions if you add them all together (not Destiny and Helldivers).
The Sony factual numbers say this is bullshit. Every year they grew a lot in PC, the last fiscal year made around $7000M outside PS, they continue growing and in 5 years of PC push they became a top 10 publisher in Steam history.
I could certainly see regulators wanting to step in... But it might work.
Ubisoft represents a tiny portion of the gaming market share, so being acquired by someone -and even if by someone who would make them exclusive to a single console, something Ubisoft would never accept because they want to support all platforms- wouldn't meaningfully impact the market.
Would that cause an issue with regulators because Tencent would also be buying the cloud rights for every ABK game released and those that will release for the next 15 years?
Nah, regulators and the government wouldn't stop the acquisition because Tentent never made stuff exclusive for their platform. The opposite, when they invest or acquire companies they help them reach new markets and storefronts.
What would stop it is the deal that Ubisoft and Tencent signed last time Tencent got Ubi shares: they agreed that Ubisoft wouldn't sell in X amount of years and that Tencent wouldn't buy more Ubi stocks in Y amount of years. I don't remember the amounts, but I think were 5 and 8.
Having such deal it would surprise me to see them selling Ubi, and even more to Tencent. But if they want to sell, Tencent would be the best option. Because Ubi doesn't want to sell to someone who would take them away from other platforms, or to someone who would affect their creative vision mandating them to do this or that game, particularly non-Ubisoft IPs where they don't want to work.
ain’t nobody reading that
