Ubisoft Emphasizes Its Independence Amid a Wave of Gaming Acquisitions

ign.com:

Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard. Take-Two Interactive buying Zynga. Sony buying Bungie. Embracer Group buying, well, everything. Amid a wave of mass games industry consolidation, it's no surprise that shareholders grilled Ubisoft executives today during the publisher's third-quarter earnings call about its own interest in making major acquisitions of its own, or being acquired. But Ubisoft's leadership is, at least publicly, maintaining an air of disinterest for now.

It's clear that the publisher knew the issue would be on the mind of shareholders, as it tried to preempt the discussion in its own earnings report with a page-long manifesto of sorts extolling the virtues of organic growth. You can read the whole thing here on page 3, but in summary, Ubisoft wants shareholders to see it as successful at slow growth over time, as opposed to a company that spends lots of money buying up other companies. As evidence, it points at what it's built over the years doing exactly that: its library of IPs like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy games, and more alongside various proprietary technologies and, rather ironically, its company culture and organizational structure.

Notably, most of this was accomplished without much need for Ubisoft to acquire other huge companies, though it's certainly done that too, if on a much smaller scale than investors are asking about. In recent years Ubisoft has picked up mobile publisher Green Panda Games, Brawlhalla developer Blue Mammoth, anti-cheat developer GameBlocks, mobile developer Kolibri Games, server company i3D.net, and several more.

But that's not really what's being talked about here. As the publisher points out, Ubisoft has become both very valuable and very successful on its