Double Jump Gaming News

Ubisoft has been on a Downward Spiral and its Shareholders are concerned

Article by: Kopen Luebke

As we all know, Ubisoft is one of the greatest and most profitable video game companies in history…*Crickets*, yeah not exactly. Ubisoft has been struggling in recent years, with recent games falling flat. Recently Ubisoft’s CEO, and co-founder Yves Guillemot talked with other shareholder company Tencent Games. They are considering taking the company from public to private, due to Ubisoft’s struggles in the past half decade. If you're not aware, Ubisoft has been around since 1986, but did not have their first big hit until the mid nineties with the original Rayman platformer game. Ubisoft really hit their stride in the early 2000’s, founded two of their biggest franchises, Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry. However, both of these franchises have fallen off a cliff in recent years. The last Far Cry game, Far Cry 6, released in 2021 had very mixed and negative reviews. Same for the Assassin's Creed series, with Assassin’s Creed Mirage. This and the most recent big releases from Ubiosoft make the concern understandable. The triple threat of game releases that has rung the alarm bells are Skull and Bones, XDefiant, and Star Wars Outlaws. None of these games have received a score higher than 5.4 as of writing this (Metacritic 10/10/24.) Even the unreleased, and now delayed, Assassin's Creed Shadows has been getting criticized heavily online. With all this being said, the Guillemont family and Tencent Games' concerns are justified and understandable. I'm a huge fan of Ubisoft's work and hate to see them release microcode games because I've seen them release amazing games. I know they are capable of making more amazing games, but something has to change, and if taking the company private is the change they need, so be it.