What's ailing Ubisoft? | Opinion

gamesindustry.biz:

Since its IPO almost thirty years ago, the corporate history of Ubisoft has been defined, to some degree, by battles with various attempts to take over or wrest control of the company.

At the time of that IPO it was still primarily a European distributor for other companies' games, and the ambitions that would lead it to become a major publisher and developer of its own titles were still in their infancy. Within just a few years, a series of smart decisions had put Ubisoft firmly on the map as a global publisher with a handful of key IPs under its belt – which, in turn, put it in the crosshairs of larger companies seeking to grow through acquisition.

EA bought almost 20% of the firm in 2004, which Ubisoft executives feared was the prelude to a hostile takeover attempt. EA ultimately sold its shares in 2010, but just a few years later Ubisoft faced a much more serious takeover attempt, with the founding Guillemot family engaging in a three-year corporate battle to try to prevent media giant Vivendi from gaining a controlling share of the company.

You can see the marks those battles have left on the company just by zooming out on its share price graph. If you just look back a few years, Ubisoft's share price performance looks thoroughly miserable, with the company having lost around half its value in the past year, and generally having a wretched time of it every year since 2020.

The pandemic-era spike in valuations for games companies was extremely short-lived for Ubisoft; it peaked in early 2021 and has tumbled precipitously since then. Its latest stumble came in the past couple of weeks with share prices dropping off again in the wake of what appears to be a commercially disappointing launch for Star Wars: Outlaws.

Look back a bit further, though, and you see some much-needed context.

Ubisoft's incredibly high valuations in the years running up to 2020 were largely a hangover from that corporate battle with Vivendi, which saw the Guillemot family pulling out every trick