By Nelson Schneider - 08/17/25 at 04:46 PM CT
After the last few years of rampant buyouts, mergers, and corporate acquisitions, it seems that Ubisoft – surprisingly – is the one Evil Publisher to buck the trend. The French mega-corporation announced this Summer that they would be splitting into two companies, with the new, currently-unnamed subsidiary – receiving an infusion of cash from none other than Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Arm, Tencent. The new subsidiary will be taking with it the IP ownership rights for some of Ubisoft’s biggest modern franchises: Specifically, ‘Assassin’s Creed,’ ‘Far Cry,’ and ‘Tom Clancy.’
It seems that Ubisoft’s hand may have been forced, after years of failed Live Service flops like “Skull & Bones” and Woke flops like “Assassin’s Creed Shadows,” the French megapublisher was on the brink, and strolling the metaphorical Corporate Red Light District wearing its birthday suit. Unfortunately for them, neither Microsoft’s Xbox Division – that paragon of poor decision making – nor Sony’s PlayStation Division expressed any interest in making Ubisoft games into first-party products, leaving the desperate baguette-snarfers to fall into the hands of China and Tencent.
With the departure of its biggest IPs to a Chinese slave labor camp, the original Ubisoft is left with its older IPs, like ‘Anno,’ ‘Call of Juarez,’ ‘Might & Magic,’ ‘Prince of Persia,’ and ‘Rayman.’ While, personally, I would love to see high-quality revivals of most of those IPs, some of which have been dormant and abused for far longer than others, Ubisoft could have done that already, but chose to focus on Live Service, online-only shenanigans. Thus there is little hope of the Original Ubisoft turning over a new leaf regarding its design paradigms. Moreover, the new Subsidiary Ubisoft has made it painfully clear that it wants to maintain its purity, even as it hands itself over to Chinese overlords, with the nepotistic installation of blood relatives of the Original Ubisoft CEO in key executive leadership positions.
So what can we really expect, here? Say, ‘hello,’ to the New Ubisoft, same as the Old Ubisoft, only now with 25% more Chinese Communist Propaganda. China loves its grotesque monetization schemes, since that’s the only way to really nail down any money in an economy built primarily on piracy and trade-secret theft. Furthermore, the CCP isn’t blind, and it knows that Woke Culture War issues are a great way to drive a wedge straight into the heart of the West. Maaaybe, at best, we can expect to get one Historical Sandbox-style ‘Assassin’s Creed’ game based in Warring States Era China, that will be insanely accurate and aim to project Chinese Superiority into impressionable hearts and minds across the globe, but that’s about the only good interesting thing I can imagine making it past Tencent’s intense oversight.
