wikipedia said:

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Although the Guillemots had attempted to block the hostile takeover in court, Michel announced his resignation effective 29 June 2016, and the founders resentfully sold their 21.7% stake in Gameloft to Vivendi, giving the company nearly complete ownership.

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EnergyZ said:

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How so? I think this all is amusing, actually. For years Ubi has turned blind and deaf to their customers. Vivendi pushing Gameloft away by their activity in stock markets is the only language Ubi understands and will reply to it. This is basically justice for all of Ubi's wrongdoings.

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Antalyan said:

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I am worried about Vivendi could see Might & Magic projects do not earn enough money so they might decide to end working on them.

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Elvin said:

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There is no such thing as justice in the corporate world

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Ubi Chris Dring said:

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Ubisoft really doesn’t want Vivendi to buy it.

CEO Yves Guillemot has no desire to give up the business he has spent 30 years building. But more than that, he can’t face losing it to a large media conglomerate that is unlikely to honour what makes the firm so unique.

Because it is unique. Ubisoft has never played by conventional business rules.

Take E3 last month. As its rivals adopt the ‘wait and see’ approach to VR, Ubisoft said it would have four full virtual reality games out by Christmas.

It was the only publisher to pledge support to Nintendo’s NX at E3.

It showcased a new South Park game – an RPG based on an IP that is well past its peak – at a time when the rest of the games business is moving beyond licensed games.

It revealed some of its biggest studios have been making quirky, small-scale indie projects like Grow Up and Trials of the Blood Dragon.

It also ended its E3 conference with an ambitious extreme sports game called Steep, which is a genre that has largely died out.

Ubisoft has legitimate business reasons for these gambles (it has shareholders, after all), but the real reason for its fearless attitude towards new IP and tech is because its studios just like making new stuff.

“We have teams that want variety,” Ubisoft’s EMEA Boss Alain Corre tells MCV.

“So we give them freedom, to a certain extent, to do games that are different. South Park is one, also Grow Up, which proves we can also give incentives to some of our smaller teams to express themselves.

“Also, these small creations can lead to bigger games. [Upcoming action combat game] For Honor started like that. It was a small prototype a few years ago, and when the producer saw it, he thought there was more to it, so he got more money, and we ended up with For Honor - which is a new IP that will please a lot of people.

“That’s the Ubisoft way, to find talent and give them freedom and independence to try things.”

...

The freedom Ubisoft gives its teams and its desire to be first on the ‘next big thing’ makes the company entertaining to write about.

Yet this almost scattergun approach to development does bring about its issues, and the company isn’t above criticism. In recent years, Ubisoft has angered some fans with bugs in Assassin’s Creed, or cheaters in The Division.

One game that received a bit of criticism was 2014’s Watch Dogs. The eagerly anticipated open world game was a success, but fans and critics had issues with the protagonist, the hacking mechanics and they were disappointed that the graphics had been downgraded from its original reveal.

It led to discontent online, and it’s something Corre says the team was acutely aware of when creating Watch Dogs 2.

“We’ve heard what our fans were saying, and we think we have ticked all the boxes to improve everything they wanted, plus we have brought some new innovation,” Corre says.

“The new character Marcus is very charismatic. You can hack anything you want and it is now twice as big as the previous one. It is also super colourful and nice to look at.

“More than 80 per cent of the original Watch Dogs players say they want to explore Watch Dogs 2, plus we will appeal to new fans.”

"We like working with creators you can't control. They're second to none."

Ubisoft is 30 years old this year. In an industry as young as ours, that’s practically old age, although Alain Corre insists: “We are still super young when you consider what we can do in the future.”

That gets to the heart of Ubisoft’s reluctance to entertain any offer from Vivendi. Would Vivendi react to the Watch Dogs criticism in the same way? Would it embrace VR like the current team does? Would it take as many risks and offer its employees as much freedom?

Alain Corre, Yves Guillemot and the rest of Ubisoft’s management team certainly don’t think so.

“We are a gaming company. We are all gamers. We share this passion, but we also try to create value for our shareholders, which is something we have been doing for 30 years,” Corre concludes.

“Our decisions are ones that are good for the games and the fans. When we decided to postpone The Division, for example... twice... it was a very painful decision in terms of financial implications. But we felt it was a necessity for the game to be really polished and for it to make a big strike and put a smile on the faces of fans who bought it day one. Our creative teams know we will do that, they know the games will not be ruined by short-term obligations.

“That is a uniqueness of Ubisoft and its culture.”

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EnergyZ said:

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Pff, they are aiming at virtual reality and they haven't even mastered the actual reality.

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