Ubisoft confident of remaining independent amid industry acquisitions

If you’ve been following the video game industry lately, you probably already know that 2022 has only one word so far: acquisitions.

It started with Take-Two Interactive, the parent company behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, which announced in January that it was buying mobile giant Zynga for nearly $13 billion. A week later, Microsoft announced a $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the company behind Overwatch and Call of Duty, and two weeks later, Sony announced it would buy Destiny 2 developer Bungie for $68.7 billion. $3.6 billion.

Amid all of this, analysts and fans are speculating about other possible acquisitions that could happen, and names like EA and Ubisoft are at the center of those discussions. However, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot, who is dealing with company-wide allegations of workplace misconduct among others, said on yesterday’s quarterly earnings call that the company was confident of remaining independent.

“We are always making decisions in the interest of our stakeholders, who are our players, employees and shareholders,” Guillemot said, according to the report. European players. “So Ubisoft can remain independent. We have talent, industrial and financial scale, and a large and strong intellectual property portfolio.”

However, Guillemot did not rule out the possibility of Ubisoft being acquired by another company.

“Having said that, if there is an offer to buy us, the board will of course review it for the benefit of all stakeholders,” he said.

Similar to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard and its follow-up, any company that theoretically acquires Ubisoft would face a slew of employee departures, workplace misconduct allegations, and more.

For more on this, check out the December report on the ongoing exodus of employees within Ubisoft. The report came during a summer when employees were unhappy with Ubisoft’s management and its handling of the internal scandal. Back in July, a new report revealed that many Ubisoft employees were unhappy with the way leadership handled “me too”, and in October 2020, a report revealed that 25% of Ubisoft employees experienced or witnessed workplace misconduct.

[Source: Eurogamer]

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