Tencent reportedly want a bigger piece of the Ubisoft pie

rockpapershotgun.com:

Chinese gaming and social media giants Tencent have approached Ubisoft’s founders, the Guillemot family, in an effort to expand their stake in the AAA publisher, Reuters report. Tencent acquired a 5% stake in Ubisoft in 2018 and now multiple anonymous sources are now saying that Tencent intends to become the single largest shareholder in the publisher, a company valued at almost $6 billion (£4.9 billion).

Representatives of Tencent are reported to have flown to France in May to discuss the investment with members of the Guillemot family. According to sources, Tencent are also seeking to buy up publicly owned shares to help in their efforts to become majority shareholder. Public shareholders currently own 80% of Ubisoft’s shares, with another 15% held by the Guillemots and the remaining 5% at Tencent.

Share prices were up for both Ubisoft and the Guillemots’ holding company after the Reuters report was published earlier today. Tencent are looking to expand outside of their home country after being effectively frozen in the Chinese gaming market, the world’s largest, since the government there stopped granting new monetisation licences last summer. Licences started being issued again this April, but have yet to include Tencent.

Tencent have been investing in studios outside China for a number of years, acquiring League Of Legends developers Riot Games in 2015. I could go into just how many studios they’ve been buying majority and minority stakes in but, crikey, there’s a lot. Here’s just a few beyond Riot: Epic Games, Platinum Games, OtherSide Entertainment, Sumo Digital… Oh wait, Imogen already compiled a round-up last summer. It’s nothing that other large organisations haven’t done – hi, Embracer Group – but