On January 11, Ubisoft released a report in which it spoke about the difficult financial situation. The French company said that the sales of new products did not meet expectations, because of poor macroeconomic conditions and changes in the gaming industry. Against this background, Ubisoft decided to make several adjustments to its plans.

The French publisher announced that the cumulative downloads of the Hungry Shark series of games have crossed the billion mark.

A representative of Ubisoft in a comment for RBC called the news about the complete departure of the French company from Russia “rumors”.

The departure of Ubisoft from Russia was announced by the group “Collectors of video games”, created by Sergey Epishin, the head of M.Game.

Ubisoft reported yesterday for the first half of its fiscal year (it started in April 2022, and will end in March 2023). Officially, the company reports success, but its reports speak of big problems.

The fact that the company has “low expectations” from the game, writes journalist Stephen Totilo from Axios, citing his sources.

This statement was made by Yves Guillemot in an interview with the French edition of La Presse. He stressed that game development is a complex process and from time to time there is “strong tension” between developers.

Despite the fact that not all of the company’s games are available on Steam.

According to The Gamer, the developers do not want to work together with Jonathan Dumont, the creative director of Assassin’s Creed about feudal Japan. Two years ago, he was accused of harassment.

A group of activists acknowledged that Ubisoft has taken a number of measures to improve the corporate culture, but noted that the changes did not affect all studios and not all departments. In addition, the publisher has not yet fired some top managers who were accused of harassment in 2020.

Last night it became known that Tencent is going to invest €300 million in Guillemot Brothers Limited, a company owned by the founders of Ubisoft. As a result of the deal, the Chinese giant will not only receive 49.9% of the shares of this company, but will also increase its stake directly in Ubisoft to 9.99%.

Chinese giant Tencent wants to become the largest shareholder of Ubisoft. According to Reuters, citing its own sources, the company plans to buy part of the stake from the Guillemot family, which now owns 15% of the shares.

In mid-March, David Polfeldt left Ubisoft after 17 years at the company. Now he announced that he got a job at PlayerUnknown Productions, the studio of PUBG author Brendan Greene.

In August 2020, Ubisoft fired Ashraf Ismail, the creative director of Assassin’s Creed, amid a scandal: allegedly, the developer used his official position and, being married, had numerous affairs. But, as Axio s found out, Ismail soon got a job in the Montreal office of TiMi Studios, the “daughter” of Tencent.

Last summer, the A Better Ubisoft group called on management to make fundamental changes in the company’s corporate culture that will solve the problem of harassment. Then Yves Guillemot agreed that Ubisoft needed to change something. That’s just, according to activists, so far none of their demands have been met.

Last night Ubisoft published a financial report for April-June. Within its framework, it became known that the company is not doing well. She is forced to radically optimize and cut her expenses.

At the beginning of the month, Ubisoft announced that on September 1 it would shut down the servers of 15 more titles. The company indicated that users will still be able to play them, but will lose online features and, in some cases, the ability to download DLC. But the other day, gamers noticed that some games from the list had a warning on Steam — from September they will no longer be available.

Another action franchise will get a separate mobile game. It will be The Division Resurgence from Ubisoft, which will be released on iOS and Android.

The head of Electronic Arts is not the only head of a large gaming company whose annual bonuses have recently been reduced. Axios has noticed that Yves Guillemot from Ubisoft has also reduced the size of his bonus payments. Next year he will receive €310,607 less than before.