Ubisoft lands itself a Tencent bail out worth £1,000,000,000

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed, Rainbow Six, and Far Cry franchises are now part of a separate company, jointly owned by Tencent.

Thanks to the rather dismal 2024 that Ubisoft had, the company was deemed to be in enough financial straits to consider selling itself to Chinese conglomerate Tencent.

Those discussions appeared to shift as the months went on though, with Ubisoft considering opening a new subsidiary, albeit one that Tencent would have a modicum of control over.

Talks between the two companies must have gone well since then, as a subsidiary has officially been announced and will serve as the new home for Ubisoft’s three core franchises: Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six.

Ubisoft remains mostly in charge of the subsidiary, which doesn’t appear to have a name, but is said to be valued at around €4 billion (about £3.3 billion).

However, Tencent has invested €1.16 billion (just under £1 billion) to acquire a 25% minority stake.

According to Ubisoft, this investment will ‘drive further increases in quality of narrative solo experiences, expand multiplayer offerings with increased frequency of content release, introduce free-to-play touchpoints, and integrate more social features.’

It will probably be a very long time until we actually see what impact this will have on future games and how much input Tencent will have on their direction going forward.

Aside from all the teams working on new Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six games, the subsidiary includes ‘the back catalogue and any new games currently under development or to be developed.’ So, it doesn’t sound like any projects have been cancelled.

As it stands, Ubisoft reportedly has a lot of Assassin’s Creed games in the works, including but not limited to Assassin’s Creed Hexe, which is centred around 16th century witch trials, and a remake of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag.

Meanwhile, Far Cry is rumoured to be getting a new sequel and multiplayer spin-off, while Rainbow Six Siege will be rebranded to Rainbow Six Siege X later this year, as part of its transition into a free-to-play experience.

Ubisoft has stressed that this won’t mean it’ll be neglecting its other franchises, although it only namedrops two other Tom Clancy titles – The Division and Ghost Recon – as examples.

Beyond that, the company is meant to be working on remakes of Splinter Cell and Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, with only the latter having an official release date of 2026.

A new Rayman project, with input from series creator Michel Ancel, has also been confirmed. And of course there’s the eternally delayed Beyond Good & Evil 2, which was announced in 2017 and hasn’t had any real updates in years.

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