Ubisoft execs reportedly eyeing buyout in wake of Assassin’s Creed delay

By Carli Velocci Published October 4, 2024

Yasuke in Assassin's Creed Shadows fighting an enemy. He's dressed in his samurai armor. — Ubisoft

Ubisoft recently announced big changes to how it publishes and release its games, and now a new report reveals more may be coming to the company. According to Bloomberg, those familiar with the situation have said Tencent, the Guillemot family, who founded Ubisoft, and other minority shareholders are looking into a buyout to take the company private.

Recommended Videos

Tencent already has a 9.2% stake in the video game publisher, while the Guillemot family has about 20.5%. The report does note that these talks are in the early stages, and since this is all information through sources, it might not happen at all.

However, it does show potentially more turmoil behind the scenes at Ubisoft. On September 25, executives announced it would be delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows out of November into February of next year. It told players that this was to ensure the highest level of polish, but told investors that it would be pivoting to a more “player-centric approach” and would be making some changes. It would no longer use a season pass model to incentivize players to spend more money on games for perks like early access and exclusive missions, and would once again be releasing games on Steam day one on PC instead of only on its own platform.

“Our second quarter performance fell short of our expectations, prompting us to address this swiftly and firmly, with an even greater focus on a player-centric, gameplay-first approach and an unwavering commitment to the long-term value of our brands,” CEO Yves Guillemot said in a statement to investors.

This news caused Ubisoft shares to rise up to 33%, a huge gain considering it’s been trading at its lowest levels since 2015, according to analysts, with an over 40% drop since January. Recent drops were attributed to the mediocre reception of Star Wars Outlaws, which launched at the end of August to “softer than expected” sales. The Outlaws team is also working to address player feedback with a series of planned updates.

Former Contributor, Games

Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…

Topics

Gaming

How to get Knowledge Points and what they do in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

One of the protagonists in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

By the time we get to Assassin's Creed Shadows, most of us will be familiar with how the games work. Since transitioning more towards RPGs than stealth games, the titles have not only gotten longer but also embraced skill trees. Naoe and Yasuke each have unique progression paths to work through, but right away you will notice that most of the best abilities are gated off. Like Scouts, Knowledge Points are a new feature that you will need to master if you want to be the best assassin possible. We'll share all our knowledge about Knowledge Points with you.
How Knowledge Points work and how to get them

Knowledge Points are a separate system to XP that allows both Naoe and Yasuke to unlock the better and more powerful skills in all their skill trees. Unlike XP, you can't earn them by performing normal tasks or taking out enemies. Instead, Knowledge Points are rewarded for doing specific non-violent activities in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Gaming

How long is Assassin’s Creed Shadows?

Yasuke in Assassin's Creed Shadows fighting an enemy. He's dressed in his samurai armor.

It's no secret that the Assassin's Creed games have gotten longer and longer over the years. This is typical for Ubisoft open-world titles, but many are hoping that Assassin's Creed Shadows has scaled back on the bloat a bit. There's always fast travel and finding the fastest ways to earn XP to cut down on the grind, but there's only so much time that can be saved. If you're worried that this game might be another 100-hour time investment to fully complete, let's use our Eagle Vision to scout out how long Assassin's Creed Shadows is before you start playing.
How long is Assassin's Creed Shadows?

As you would expect, the amount of time you could put into Assassin's Creed Shadows will vary wildly based on how you approach it. You can focus on just the story and nothing else, tackle a handful of side missions and activities, or attempt to complete anything and everything the game has to offer.

Gaming

Assassin’s Creed Shadows fixes my biggest problem with the series

The two protagonists in Assassin's Creed Shadows

The Assassin's Creed games have been on a steady path away from stealth ever since the series' first entry. I don't mean that stealth options were stripped out or haven't evolved, but it lagged behind the pace of a more direct approach. While Origins is seen as the major splintering point for the series into a full-blown action RPG, the series' identity crisis can be traced back much further. By the time we got Black Flag, stealth had become so inefficient and inessential that there was hardly a reason to bother with it at all outside of self-imposed challenges.

When the series did pivot into action RPGs, complete with weapon and armor scores, and made the protagonists more and more powerful, I fell off of the franchise. It not that I don't enjoy that style of game, rather that it wasn't what I came to Assassin's Creed for. With Assassin's Creed Shadows Ubisoft finally fixed that power creep problem without stripping those options out of the game. And that's thanks to its two character setup.
Jack of all trades, master of all
What caused me to fall out of favor with Assassin's Creed isn't that the series wanted to give players more options outside of a stealthy approach. Plenty of games proudly boast how they offer players the freedom to play sneaky or go in guns blazing. However, the issue with Assassin's Creed's for me was that one method invalidated the other.