Back in the day, mobile giant Gameloft could not be defended from the then Vincent Bolloré-led Vivendi, and Ubisoft almost fell to the French media giant…

According to Dealreporter, the Guillemot family wants to buy Ubisoft with the help of an investment firm to protect it from strategic buyers and prevent it from being taken over by others. The family currently owns 15.9% of the company’s shares and 22.9% of the voting rights, and since they founded Ubisoft, they would essentially continue to hold it. (For example, they might be able to bring the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake to the finish line now that Ubisoft Montréal has got development back from the two Indian studios… We wrote about it the other day.)

Ubisoft’s shares, as expected, immediately received a boost after the news popped up, showing about a 10% increase in price. All of it may be happening because Bloomberg recently reported that Blackstone Inc. and KKR & Co., two private investment firms, were sniffing around Ubisoft to buy the French publisher. But as we wrote at the beginning, history could repeat itself: between 2015 and 2018, Vivendi bought more and more shares, and if it had reached 30%, French law would have obliged Bolloré to make a takeover bid for Ubisoft. (It would have been a hostile takeover to use the legal jargon.) But in March 2018, an agreement was reached, so Vivendi, who created Activision Blizzard (yes, they were behind Blizzard’s half back in the day…) backed out, but Chinese tech giant Tencent stepped in.

In addition to the sexual harassment within the company, the lower than expected success of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint and the continued postponement of games such as Skull & Bones and Beyond Good & Evil 2 have not been good for the company’s shares, so it’s no wonder that some would-be buyers are only interested in Ubisoft to make money…

Source: WCCFTech