A leaked internal memo has revealed Ubisoft’s first plans in relation to the subsidiary they will be starting with TenCent.
They made the announcement last week, just to make the end of March. What we know from that announcement is that TenCent agreed to acquire 25 % of the subsidiary’s shares, and that there are a lot of added conditions and riders to the deal that will last a few years after the subsidiary is formally founded.
They also announced at the time that the subsidiary will make Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry games. Ubisoft will still own the intellectual property rights to these franchises, but the subsidiary will be given a license to make these games.
As reported by Insider Gaming, the memo said this:
“For now, what we can say is that once the agreement is finalized and confirmed by legal authorities, our Quebec, Saguenay and Sherbrooke studios will move entirely to the new entity, while our Montreal project teams will be spread between the new entity and the current Ubisoft organization. Our studios in Toronto, Winnipeg, as well as Red Storm and Blue Mammoth, will continue evolving in the current organization.”
The rest of the memo essentially says that they are still hammering out the details, but just for comparison, the original announcement from last week announced that Ubisoft’s teams in Montréal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Barcelona, and Sofia were all moving to the subsidiary. This memo came from Christopher Derenne, who is listed in it as managing director for Zone 1. The last time we reported on Derenne in 2023, he was publicly credited as general manager of Ubisoft Montréal. It may simply be the case that he is in charge of the studios in Canada, so he only discussed the Canada studios, which include Red Storm and Blue Mammoth.
While Insider Gaming raises a lot of questions about how much Ubisoft has planned out, it’s possible that even at this point, Ubisoft’s management is still keeping that information confidential, even to their own developers. We ourselves aren’t comfortable in speculating on how much has already been decided, as plans can still change from what they have now. It’s possible that there already is a completely laid out plan for everything, and Ubisoft’s slow rollout of information, even internally, is a deliberate move to keep the industry and the markets calm.
If previous rumors about the Guillemots’ negotiations with TenCent are true, this was the deal that the two sides finally agreed to, after TenCent rejected several prior proposals. We may never know the full details of this deal, but it’s possible that, if TenCent doesn’t get to directly control the subsidiary, they will have at least wrested control from the Guillemots over Ubisoft’s biggest moneymakers.
