In a move that feels like something out of its own games, Ubisoft Entertainment SA has officially surrendered a quarter of its independence. The company has spun off a new subsidiary containing its biggest franchises, Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six and sold a 25% stake to Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. for €1.16 billion ($1.25 billion).
With a valuation of €4 billion ($4.3 billion), this newly created entity is already worth more than Ubisoft itself, highlighting just how far the company has fallen. Ironically, today’s deal could be remembered as the moment Ubisoft transitioned from a gaming powerhouse into a company propped up by Tencent’s financial support.
Once one of the most beloved names in gaming, Ubisoft has spent the past decade stumbling through missteps, releasing buggy, uninspired titles that recycle the same tired gameplay mechanics. The publisher’s increasing obsession with live-service games, aggressive DLC strategies, and forced diversity mandates has only alienated its core audience. Ubisoft’s decline was already well underway, but a string of financial failures turned a rough patch into a full-scale crisis, one that this deal might not be enough to fix.
Star Wars Outlaws was supposed to be Ubisoft’s next big thing. Instead, it alongside its ugly masculine protagonist flopped hard in 2024, with sales so weak that by January 2025, the company had to bring in advisers to figure out how to mitigate its financial losses.
Then there was XDefiant, Ubisoft’s free-to-play shooter, which was meant to challenge Call of Duty but after a short-lived launch, it was quietly shut down, leaving both players and investors confused.
Even Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which was a critical success, couldn’t drive enough sales, leading Ubisoft to disband its development team in what looked like a desperate cost-cutting move.
And then there’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the highly anticipated feudal Japan entry that was supposed to mark Ubisoft’s big comeback, with quite literally what could only be described as their “break glass” project. After multiple delays, it finally released on March 20, 2025, a date that, unfortunately, coincided with the anniversary of the Tokyo subway sarin attack.
Unsurprisingly, access media outlets showered the game with glowing praise, hailing it as one of the franchise’s greatest entries.
Ubisoft claimed Assassin’s Creed Shadows had 3 million players in its first week, but this number was heavily inflated by Ubisoft+ subscriptions. On Steam, its peak concurrent player count at launch barely hit 47,616, eventually climbing to 64,825 over the launch weekend.
Since then, daily player numbers now having dropped to around 34,000, with the usual decline expected for a single-player game.
While concurrent player counts don’t necessarily reflect total sales, Ubisoft previously stated that Shadows would need to sell millions of copies to be profitable. However, no official sales figures have been released, just vague claims of “player engagement,” something Ubisoft previously tried (and failed) to use to drum up interest in Skull and Bones and the now-shuttered XDefiant.
The company also revealed that the repeated delays of Shadows alone cost them $20 million, the game also boasts one of the longest credit sequences in gaming history, over two hours long, highlighting just how bloated modern game development has become.
Adding to the problem, half the developers working on the project were first-time game developers, meaning Ubisoft relied heavily on inexperienced staff, likely in an attempt to reduce costs. Ironically, this decision only ballooned the budget and prolonged development.
Despite all the marketing hype around Shadows, Ubisoft still hasn’t released actual sales numbers, and my own estimates suggest less than a million copies have been sold across all platforms to date. Given that the game’s development budget may have exceeded $100 million, Ubisoft could be facing significant financial losses.
For a franchise that once defined Ubisoft’s golden era, Assassin’s Creed Shadows failed to recapture that glory, offering more of a flickering ember laced with racial prejudice rather than a roaring passionate fire.
The game didn’t just underperform in sales, it stumbled into cultural controversy, particularly in Japan, where media outlets and players alike condemned it for bastardizing Japanese history, traditions and committing sacrilegious acts. The backlash, which began at the game’s announcement, never truly died down. Ubisoft’s attempts to control the narrative, including threatening legal action against so-called “harassers” only backfired, drawing more criticism as fans questioned the company’s vague definition of harassment.
At the same time, Ubisoft’s financial health took a serious hit. The company shut down multiple studios, including Ubisoft Leamington, resulting in 185 job losses, and scrapped projects like XDefiant. These cuts painted the picture of a struggling company, and as stock values plummeted, investors began pushing for privatization.
Speculation of a Tencent buyout soon followed, a rumor that has now become a reality.
Tencent, the Chinese tech behemoth with a reputation for snapping up Western companies, has just secured a 25% stake in Ubisoft’s new subsidiary for €1.16 billion. This subsidiary, valued at €4 billion, now holds exclusive rights to Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six, with Ubisoft collecting royalties in return.
The deal underscores just how far Ubisoft has fallen, given that this new entity is now worth more than Ubisoft itself. Staffed by teams from Montréal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Barcelona, and Sofia, the subsidiary controls both the back catalog and future development of these franchises, effectively removing Ubisoft from the driver’s seat of its most beloved IPs.
Ubisoft’s CFO Frederick Duguet framed the deal as part of a “competitive process,” claiming multiple offers were considered before Tencent emerged as the winner. CEO Yves Guillemot attempted to spin the sale as a “foundational step” toward a new, more agile Ubisoft, but the reality is clear: this was a financial lifeline. The cash will be used to pay down Ubisoft’s debt and prop up struggling franchises like The Division and Ghost Recon.
The move is eerily reminiscent of Square Enix’s decision to offload its Western studios, including Tomb Raider and Deus Ex to the Embracer Group in what was widely seen as a desperate cost-cutting measure.
Ironically, Embracer later found itself in financial turmoil, after failing to land a multi-billion-dollar Saudi investment, largely due to the commercial flops of the woke Saints Row reboot and underwhelming Borderlands spin-offs like Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. In the aftermath, Embracer shuttered Volition and sold Gearbox Software to 2K Games at a massive $840 million loss.
As for Ubisoft, it still technically owns 75% of the new subsidiary—but for how long? With Tencent’s growing foothold and the U.S. Department of Defense labeling Tencent as a “military company”, there are more than just business implications at play, there are geopolitical stakes involved, too.
Tencent may have played a major role in Ubisoft’s decline, not just as a longtime investor but as part of a larger network of financial firms that enforce ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) policies. Alongside asset management giants like BlackRock, Blackstone, Vanguard, and Bain Capital, Tencent pushes companies it invests in to comply with ESG and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) standards.
These guidelines shape hiring, marketing, and game design, often focusing on the inclusion of marginalized groups, whether women, gay / trans individuals, or specific ethnic demographics excluding White people through token representation rather than meaningful storytelling and convincing characters.
A Black game developer has already criticized ESG and DEI policies, stating that they restrict creative freedom, particularly when it comes to attractive character designs. Instead of allowing diverse and dynamic portrayals, these mandates reduce representation to a box-ticking exercise.
Many Western studios have embraced this mindset, eliminating traditional feminine aesthetics in favor of androgynous character designs, coincidentally male and female descriptors are being removed in favor of terminologies such as “Body Type 1/2” or “A/B” which act as a landmine that repulse consumers.
Companies like Ubisoft must conform to these expectations to maintain investment, as major stakeholders such as BlackRock and Tencent hold 2-5% ownership stakes in a wide range of companies and use ESG compliance as a prerequisite for continued funding. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has even admitted that the goal is to “force behavioral change” within companies.
Ubisoft’s internal communications reinforce this, with leaked emails revealing that “representation” is considered a core part of the company’s identity, as established by the fact that Ubisoft themselves have a mentorship program dubbed “Develop at Ubisoft” that discriminates against men by only taking applicants who identify as women or non-binary.
The effects of these mandates are evident in Ubisoft’s latest Assassin’s Creed entry, which centers on Yasuke, a largely obscure historical figure. The game not only places him as the protagonist of a major story set in Japan’s Edo period but also injects modern identity politics into the narrative.
The portrayal includes relationships with non-binary characters and a connection to the Japanese imperial family, resulting in a historical retelling that seems more focused on meeting diversity quotas than delivering an authentic experience.
Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows took several offensive creative liberties, including referring to Japanese game files as “JAP” instead of “JP” or “JPN” like it’s 1945. The game also introduces an unhistorical romance between Yasuke and Oichi, the sister of Oda Nobunaga.
Adding to the controversy, the final boss battle features Swahili rap music with the word “Chinja,” meaning to “slaughter,” which could be misinterpreted phonetically as “ching chong.”
The most egregious revision comes with Yasuke assisting Nobunaga in his seppuku, an act never recorded in history. These factors, alongside Ubisoft’s heavy-handed DEI-driven protagonist, led to the game’s commercial failure despite their insistence on cultural authenticity.
Ubisoft swore they worked with “cultural consultants,” but the result? A commercial flop no one wanted outside of ideological activists who call themselves journalists.
Ubisoft’s slow-motion collapse is almost poetic. They spent years making some of gaming’s biggest franchises from Prince of Persia to Assassin’s Creed only to lose them all to Tencent and other investors who backed them into a corner. Instead of doubling down on what made them successful, they pushed out ideologically laced drivel like Assassin’s Creed Shadows with a forced diversity narrative that nobody asked for, and surprise, gamers weren’t buying it.
Now, their new Tencent-backed subsidiary is worth more than Ubisoft itself, making it painfully clear who’s really in charge.
What’s left of Ubisoft? Not much. They’ve pawned off their best assets just to keep the lights on. The Guillemot family might still technically “run” the company, but it’s more of a figurehead situation at this point. Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Rainbow Six—once Ubisoft’s crown jewels, are now part of Tencent’s empire as Ubisoft now more or less acts as a shell company, sitting back and collecting royalties like an aging rock band living off past hits.
Ubisoft has a global workforce of well over 10,000 employees, but with its new Chinese management, major layoffs are inevitable. Many of the people responsible for the company’s downfall will likely be among those shown the door as Tencent looks to streamline Ubisoft’s bloated footprint and focus on producing products based on the franchises it now effectively owns with confidence and quality.
Ubisoft may boast about having 3 million “players,” but Shadows did nothing to save the company, it only laid bare its weaknesses. A rough launch, cultural backlash, and low engagement sealed Ubisoft’s fate after years of decline. With Tencent’s €1.16 billion deal set to close by the end of 2025, Ubisoft is now little more than a shell of its former self.
The name might live on, but the studio as a whole is just a hollow husk at this point.
For old-school Ubisoft fans, this is a rough one to swallow. The independent, innovative studio that once shook up the gaming world decades ago is now just another shiny trophy on Tencent’s shelf. Will this move save Ubisoft’s iconic franchises or run them into the ground even faster? Who knows. But one thing’s for sure: Ubisoft’s days as a major AAA player are done.
