Ubisoft’s Shareholder Revolt
Hoo-Boy, these investors are steamed at Ubisoft. Rightfully so. Ubisoft’s stock price has cratered from a high of $23 to $2.61 today. If you had sunk $1,000,000 into Ubisoft when the stock was at its height, you would have a market value of $113,000 today.
Ubisoft has been a notable DEI trainwreck of a gaming company this year. Ubisoft has over-monetized and underdelivered on its AAA (Sorry I mean AAAA) games. The company owned a monster with Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. Sure it was a mediocre Assassin game but it was an amazing pirate game. It’s customers begged for more of just that. Make us a pirate game pretty please.
All they needed Skull and Bones to be was the game its customers wanted. Originally that was what Ubisoft Singapore was going to deliver. But as they were getting close to completion was noticed that graphics had moved ahead thanks to Red Dead Redemption II. So it was decided to update the graphics and to make a long and complicated story short Duke Nukem Forever Syndrome set in.
Star Wars Outlaws has more bugs than Helldivers 2, except Helldivers is from a small AA studio and is charging much less for more fun. While the game isn’t terribly Woke it isn’t terribly good either and the heroine character is another woman beaten with a mid-stick. If you put a woman on the cover of your box then she absolutely positively has to be hot. Ugly. Women. Are. Not. Marketable.
Assassin’s Creed: Shadows hasn’t launched but it’s already another disaster from the Hivemind echo chamber. If they wanted to have a black samurai, well okay but he obviously needed to be a side character. Its failure probably won’t be in Concord territory but it’s absolutely not going to be the monster that Ubisoft desperately needs it to be.
Hedge fund AJ Investments, which holds 1% of Ubisoft’s stock, issued an open (and furious) letter to the company’s board of directors, including CEO Yves Guillemot and major shareholder Tencent Holdings ADR TCEHY, criticizing Ubisoft’s recent performance and share value.
They made several demands.
First, they want the company taken private. At this point, everyone would be better if the stock was delisted.
Second, they want the Guillemot family out. The Guillemot brothers founded it but they can’t manage what it’s become. Their left-wing social experiments have devastated shareholder value.
Third, in particular, they want Yves Guillemot shitcanned as CEO. He’s the one who led it to disaster there is no point further pursuing failure.
Fourth, they are going to use something called the French Minority Shareholder Law to start selling off assets. Ubisoft has studios all over the world so those would be going on the block. There are also some IPs that other companies would be interested in. Both Rayman and Rabbids would be an easy sell to Nintendo.
Although, I’m not sure who would want the rest. Embracer fell flat on its and Microsoft appears to be regretting its buying spree. Sadly, I can think of one company that would leap at the chance to buy up a Woke company if the price was right… (shudder)… Disney.
