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Ubisoft has once again insisted that a takeover by Vivendi would be harmful to the company.
When asked by PCGamesNabout Vivendi’s play for Ubisoft, the French publisher’s VP of live operations Anne Blondel said that Ubisoft’s success ha been derived from being ‘super independent’ and ‘very autonomous’.
The exec also said that experimental titles like Child of Light and Valiant Hearts would not have happened under another company’s leadership.
The thought I have is that I have been [here], with Ubisoft, for 20 years, and I know what made us so successful for 30 years, is being super independent, being very autonomous,” Blondel said.
[On] sales, well sometimes we take a lot of risk, you think about The Crew, that was a risk. People would look at that like, ‘maybe it’s not going to work, another racing game, what are you thinking?’ Child of Light, Valiant Hearts, all those kinds of titles.”Vivendi’s interest in Ubisoft has been going on for over a year now. In October 2015, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot described Vivendi’s advances as "unsoliciated and unwelcome". By June this year, the firm had upped its stake in Ubisoft to 20 per cent. That was before Ubisoft displayed a united front against the conglomorate at E3 2016.
Ahead of Ubisoft’s AGM, Guillemot warned Vivendi to back off. Earlier this month, Vivendi upped its stake in Ubisoft once more to 24.06 per cent, giving it voting rights of 21.3 per cent on its board.
Blondel also spoke to MCV about whether Week One sales are important when titles are supported for a long time post-launch.
