Gabriel Stanford-ReisingerUbisoft wants to be acquired by a similar company, but it seems it’s a hard sell by most. This follows three games getting the axe and Skull & Bones delayed for sometime next year.
News broke by industry insider Jeff Grubb on Twitter (via PSLS) that the French game developer has had a hard time finding a willing candidate. He sees this as having two outcomes, either Ubisoft will tough the hard times out or they will, unfortunately, begin laying people off to save money.
Last year, CEO Yves Guillemot revealed that Ubisoft would consider acquisition offers by companies of a similar type. They also apparently looked at making offers to multiple equity firms to no avail it seems.
Grubb fears that “everything is on the table” to be downscaled. It’s possible that the size of the developer is a big drawback in the minds of prospective new owners. Ubisoft has a lofty 40 studios and subsidiaries worldwide, making it a large investment to keep it all running smoothly.
Reportedly, Ubisoft aims to cut about $200 million, but how they aim to do that, we can’t say for sure, but with three games pulled off of the pipeline, that could help cut some costs right there.
Ubisoft definitely already did the rounds proposing acquisitions and mergers with other similar companies, and it mostly got laughed at. It's just too unwieldy. Its strength was its distributed development structure, and now that is an albatross.
— Grubb (@JeffGrubb) January 11, 2023
Poor Ubi.