According to IGN, Ubisoft is working on selling IP to outside companies. A minority shareholder in Ubisoft says that the company’s leadership is currently in talks to sell some of its gaming franchises to various publishers, including Microsoft and Electronic Arts. Juraj Krúpa calls the company “horribly mismanaged by current management” and is in the process of organizing a protest outside of Ubisoft’s Paris headquarters. Ubisoft has replied with a statement essentially saying, “When there is news, we will let everyone know.”
It’s no secret that Ubisoft are in a weird transition phase at the moment. For years, their releases have been underperforming in one way or another, and talks of the business being overtaken or sold off have been gaining steam in recent months. CEO Yves Guillemot has been linked with Tencent for potentially buying the public company. Selling off some of that IP to other studios could bring the price down.
What IP is Ubisoft selling?
As of this writing, we do not know what gaming names Ubisoft would be selling to businesses like EA or Microsoft. That said, we could take some guesses. Microsoft has had a close history with Splinter Cell in the past, so we wonder if leadership there would be interested in taking on Tom Clancy ownership. Plus, they are making a dedicated commitment to releasing their games to third-party platforms, so it’s not like people on PC or PlayStation would then miss out on those games.
On the EA side, we wouldn’t be surprised if they were interested in getting in on the more open world games in Ubisoft’s portfolio like Far Cry and Watch Dogs. We know EA love their live service games, so Just Dance could be in the discussions as well.
Of course, all of this is just speculation. It should be noted that there are unnamed parties in play here, so is there a world where Rayman and Beyond Good and Evil get scooped up by others? Time will tell, but there could be a lot on the table to be revealed very soon.
