Gameloft, which has been exclusively developing mobile games (and has been doing so for roughly two decades…), has suddenly started to do something else.

Gameloft was mentioned a lot during 2015 and 2016 and for a good reason. Back then, a French media giant called Vivendi was trying to snap them and Ubisoft up. (They were also involved in creating Activision Blizzard, as they owned the Blizzard half during the merger of the two companies!) What does Gameloft have to do with Ubisoft? The answer is simple: ‘Ubi’ is run by Yves Guillemot, while Ubisoft co-founder Michael Guillemot created Gameloft.

Although Vivendi backed out of the Ubisoft takeover (it was close: if it had acquired a 30% stake in the company, French law would have obliged the media giant, founded by Napoleon III, to make a takeover bid…), it managed to pull in its little brother, and since 2016, Vivendi has owned Gameloft, which is now developing a game for consoles and PC. With more than 3,600 developers in eighteen studios and with nearly 200 games and around 2.5 million downloads a day, this is an exciting turn of events.

Gameloft’s job offers show that their studio in Barcelona is developing a multiplatform game with a multiplayer component. Candidates are expected to be well-knowledged in the free-to-play world, so it is almost 100% likely that the yet-to-be-announced game will have microtransactions. It’s too early to speculate on what kind of IP they might make for, say, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch and PC.

Gameloft has successfully developed games for the long-forgotten Blackberry mobile phones in the past. The company is not keen to leave its history (or, one could say, present) behind, as the Vivendi-owned mobile company told Les Echos that their new project would, of course, be released on mobile, so iOS and Android users would not be neglected.

It took 22 years for the company, which started as the little brother of Ubisoft, to do such a thing…

Source: JVL