As of today, Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard has completed and as a result, Ubisoft now owns the cloud streaming rights to all Activision Blizzard games, including all previously released games and all new games released over the next 15 years. As a result, Ubisoft announced today that it plans to bring Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft+.
While Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft were once competitors as standalone publishers, now under Microsoft, Activision Blizzard will operate a bit differently as part of Xbox. While Ubisoft+ does not currently support cloud streaming directly, Ubisoft is currently working on ensuring that “the back end fully supports” a good experience.
Ubisoft+ won't be the only service getting access to Activision Blizzard games. Ubisoft owns the rights to current ActiBlizz games and each game released over the next 15 years in perpetuity, meaning the company will be able to continue licensing them out for as long as Ubisoft exists.
There are already a number of suitors that would gladly snap up a license. Obviously, Microsoft will want its own license for Xbox Cloud Gaming, something that may have already been worked out and baked into the initial deal. From there, services like GeForce Now and Amazon Luna are also expected to gain access to these games at some point in the future.
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KitGuru Says: It is certainly weird to see Ubisoft bringing Activision Blizzard games to its own service but that just goes to show how wild this deal ended up being. It was the biggest deal in gaming history and will likely remain that way for quite some time.