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Ubisoft is in a tough position right now, with Vivendi buying up shares in the build-up to what seems like a forceful takeover of the games publisher. This has caused a lot of concern amongst Ubisoft executives but it will all come to a head at the company's annual board meeting this week, at which Vivendi is expected to make a bid for a seat on the board of directors, something that CEO Yves Guillemot is taking a hard stance against.
Ubisoft's annual general meeting takes place today, at which Vivendi is expected to formally seek representation on the board of directors, in the lead-up to a full-blown takeover. However, speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Yves Guillemot made it pretty clear that Vivendi's investments are completely unwelcome and the publisher “won't relax” until they sell their entire stake.
“We won't relax until they sell their shares,” Guillemot said. “The creeping control strategy implemented by Vivendi is dangerous. We think that there's a great risk of shareholders losing value.”
Ubisoft has been making efforts to win over shareholders and keep control ever since Vivendi started increasing its ownership stake. Earlier this week, the company bought back £106 million worth of shares to try and strengthen its position.
KitGuru Says: It took Activision years to buy back control of itself from Vivendi and it looks like Ubisoft's CEO is worried about his company being in the same position. It looks like we can expect to hear something after the meeting today.
A take over might not be a bad thing considering how bad Ubisoft currently are with their false gameplay videos.
Destroyed the quality of Blizzard titles till they bought themselves back…
That’s just not true and impossible to claim. Under Vivendi they made most of their current titles. They only produced a handful of expansions and one game since the buy back, all of which probably started development whislt under Vivendi.
You might be able to claim that in a few more years, but such a claim is out right bollocks at this moment in time.
Vivendi is mostly business mans, they buy a lot of services/company (small, medium, big sizes, doesn’t matter), gets profit and sell it when it’s no longer profitable. One good example is an ISP from my country which Vivendi owned used to be rated one of the best available before Vivendi, now the prices went up, quality is bad and even added data cap.
If you aren’t currently happy with Ubisoft don’t expect to be better if Vivendi owns it.
Vivendi owned Blizzard from 1998 until 2008. In this period it launched StarCraft, Diablo II, Warcraft III, and World of Warcraft including a few expansions. Clearly they did horrible under Vivendi.
What you seem to be referring to though is the merger of Vivendi Games and Activision in 2008, resulting in Activision Blizzard. But that only led to Vivendi owning Activision; they already owned Blizzard. The merger ended only last year, so everything Blizzard has launched since then was still largely or mostly designed under Vivendi. StarCraft II, most expansions to WoW, Diablo III and expansions, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm… Basically, Blizzard has not developed anything not at least partly supervised by Vivendi since 1998! There is thus absolutely no way to say that the quality has improved since Activision bought the shares and took control of Blizzard.
So even if we only focus on the merger, Blizzard was still doing pretty well.
I see your point as some corps are just vampires, but can Ubisoft sink lower?
They are farming their franchises, releasing fraudulent trailers and “gameplay footage”, release games in a half finished state or a buggy mess etc.
TBH I would like to see someone try to make Ubisoft worse! :p At least it would be hilarious to watch.
I see your point as some corps are just vampires, but can Ubisoft sink lower?
They are farming their franchises, releasing fraudulent trailers and “gameplay footage”, release games in a half finished state or a buggy mess etc.
TBH I would like to see someone try to make Ubisoft worse! :p At least it would be hilarious to watch.
Wrong.
Theyu killed Star Craft (franchise is dead now)
Wow hasn’t stopped bleeding players since.
Blizzard is dead.
What proof do you have that the direction they went with Star Craft was due to Vivendi?!
It could be the last nail in the coffin, they could demand more profits and force practices like more aggressive micro-transactions to meet their expectations or shorter deadlines to release as many games possible per year .
It’s not like they are interested in them to “change for the better” or “we care about our costumers”, they want more profit and that’s what scare me the most.
To be honest i’m not a fan of Ubisoft but i certainly wouldn’t want them to shut down or die like most play seems to want. I like their games but like most people i don’t like their publishing/marketing practices.
Because they were the company who owned them and oversaw them. Accountability lies with them.
Wow, you have no idea how a company is ran. Vivendi could have let Blizz run autonomously. You sound like you just don’t want to say Blizzard made some terrible games and cheaped out on trying to use the same engine for every game they made.
I played all their titles extensively. The change was VERY noticable.
Yes, and that change could have come from within Blizzard. Seeing that they have not dropped their bright colour style I suspect it was all internal solutions.
And do remember that under Vivendi they made the highest grossing game in history….
I suspect you have no fkn idea what you are talking about lol.
In an ideal world Ubisoft would collapse rapidly under Vivendi and their IPs and studios would be sold off to other companies.
I say this because any company willing to commit advertising fraud on the level they do is broken and needs to be removed. They also seem to have no idea how much they are disliked.
And, to put this all in perspective, EA are doing waaay better in the PR department than Ubisoft. That fact alone is terrifying :p
LOL – so WoW isn’t the biggest grossing game ever made?
Stop being a fanboy and face the reality that Blizz could have made mistakes all on their own.
I played wow from vanilla to start of cata. I was a multi time gladiator and played with a cpl of friends who rocked around with the rank 1 guys. Playing from Aus the game was a nightmare with 200 ping yet i still overcame and rose to the top. I understood how the game worked on a very very fundamental level from patch to patch and season to season. I’d dare say i’d say i’ve forgetten more about that game than you ever knew in the first place.
They lacked a very fundamental understanding of their game. Blizzards development team lost their ground to the MOBA genre due to pure incompetence.
Wow was the 1st MAJOR streamed PC title featured at MLG. It’s arena pvp ‘mini game’ Was actually a much more complicated and far more skillfull game than mobas when played by skilled players. However due to totally abysmnal balanced and just pure incompetence they failed.
LoL wouldn’t be 1/2 the size it is now if Blizzard had a fkn clue and Blizzards MMO wouldn’t be still bleeding players due tot he same BS problems. A total game design philosophy switch from exclusivity and elitism to casual friendly and kiddie fun fest.
TLDR: Fanboy Jimbo self projecting his way all across the universe.
Nice try though 8=====D head
Haha, now your raging for being called out on what you are; an infantile fanboy with a single digit IQ.
You even admit all of this in that random wall of text explaining how much you’ve played the game (thanks for the proof).
But somehow I’m a fanboy…but of whom? Vivendi?!
What part of “Vivendi owned Blizzard from 1998…” do you not follow?
Blizzard made ALL of WoW under Vivendi….
…but somehow Vivendi made WoW worse?!
Can you even follow basic dates?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision_Blizzard#Merger_into_Activision_Blizzard_.282007.E2.80.9308.29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision_Blizzard#Merger_into_Activision_Blizzard_.282007.E2.80.9308.29
hurp
In December 2007, Activision announced that the company and its assets would merge with fellow games developer and publisher Vivendi Games
Awkward
“The company sold its consumer software operations, Sierra On-line which included Blizzard, to French publisher Havas in 1998, the same year Havas was purchased by Vivendi. Blizzard was part of the Vivendi Games group of Vivendi. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment
Yes, you have no idea what you’re on about.
Vivendi owned Blizz in 1998….
Vivendi owned Blizz in 1998….
Yes, and you’re utterly wrong and have the comprehensive skills of a 5 year old.
As I said, VIVENDI OWNED BLIZZARD in 1998.
You’re, for some reason, focusing on the Activision Vivendi merger….
Vivendi killed it with the Activison merger. Why can’t you comprehend this?
So what you’re saying is ACTIVISION killed Blizzard, not Vivendi?!
And again, what proof do you have that Activision made these decisions?! They’re still merged and according to you, doing fine…
Just admit it, you have no idea what you’re on about.
Yes, but Blizzard was part of Vivendi, not of Activision. Since you’re looking at wiki anyway, you might want to check out the blizzard page. That could save you further embarrassment.
I’m actually kind of impressed that a game well over a decade old still has millions of players and still gets millions of pre-orders; say what you will but even today WoW is setting records that will not be broken for a very long time. Can’t imagine that’s because it’s casual: casual gamers would have moved on years ago (to MOBAs).
MOBA is far from casual when you play competitive…..
I was pointing out the exact moment blizzard died for all the numb skulls. Instead he became focused on financial ownership. It oesn’t matter if santa claus owned them up till 2007. 07 was the RIP spot. Which was caused by Vivendi.
Ergo Vivendi killed them.
Keep trying to move the goal posts though…
Embaressing for you tbh.
In a game of the chess the pieces are killed by the players movements. The pieces don’t move on their own…
Get your head around that one????
2007 RIP Blizzard
“Vivendi claims another soul”
Stay salty share holder scum
You’re actually an idiot.
Just answer this fanboy; what year did Vivendi buy Blizzard?
Because……you…have…no…proof
You’re just claiming that every mistake Blizzard made was by Activision or Vivendi (even though they made billions under Vivendi loooooool) becuaese god forbid your deity, the one and only Blizzard, is apparently infallible and perfect in your fanboy eyes. Pahahaha, wtf.
Now I know you’re just trolling 😀 Ah well, it’s been fun. Time to get back to the real world.
Dismiss my point however you like. Doesn’t change the fact since that date wow has bled people constantly and they killed it.
enjoy!!!
You’re wrong even on that point. WoW reached its peak number of players (almost 12.5 million) late 2010! In 2007 WoW only had 9 million players. There facts are easy to find, so look them up.
Now ironically, that you got that wrong is not bad for the point you’re trying to make. If the merger between Vivendi and Activision was indeed somehow what initiated the supposed decline of Blizzard, then it would be weird if 2007 was a cut-off point. Blizzard would need time under new management to make changes. It’s only a few months after Cataclysm was launched in 2010 and particularly after patch 4.0.1. that the number of players started to decline. But again, Blizzard made WoW including all its expansions under Vivendi management. So this is a perfect example of treating correlation as if it were causation.
The merger could of course be a sign that Vivendi wanted to be more aggressive on the games market, and that that’s also why Blizzard supposedly ruined WoW. But I leave such speculations to investigative journalists and internet trolls.
http://i.imgur.com/eZl0KyY.png
The game was killed by poor developers that were managed by vivendi. Responsibility always goes up chain. Statutory positions exist as an example of this in all industries.
Nobody is denying that, but that just proves that WoW owed its success to Vivendi. As you say, responsibility goes up the chain and Vivendi was the top of the chain long before WoW was even conceived.
Very good, now you see that it was not 2007 but late 2010 that WoW reached its peak. But as I said, that proves absolutely nothing since correlation and causation are not the same thing.
I was a avid pvper who played with rank 1 players. I knew the game to a detail greater than their staff…. thnx for your input though.
And thank you for that lovely non sequitur
fair but honestly this is half the issue witht h eindustry. Even when they throw money at video games they fail so often in the balance / engineering phase. I honestly think ex “pro gamers” are a great untapped resource for these AAA companies.
Not enough competition to keep these scumbag companies honest though, so the actual product and in the end; the consumer suffers.
I do appreciate the sentiment however i feel in this rare of circumstances that my point is rather valid.
However there is no way to anecdotally verify that other than a game like DOTA 2 and CS:GO. Valve has a clue 😉 that’s how they swim in money with 10 year old engines constantly.