Vivendi reportedly planning to launch a Hostile Takeover Bid of Ubisoft this year

[goodtofufriday]

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

aren't you funny ...

 

their games, like what?

• The Division - got a year 2 announcement that left all the player base severely disappointed with many of them abandoning the game
• For Honor - it's a fucking mess; did they even addressed the p2p MP and cheating? I don't recall
• Ghost Recon Wildlands - a fucking joke of a Ghost Recon game; the 1st DLC also a joke - people who payed for the season pass are regretting it

Didnt say they were perfect. I also dont care for online features, like at all, including MP. So I can't comment on how they are with that.

[zMeul]

4 minutes ago, laminutederire said:

Watch _ dogs 2 isn't actually that bad, r6 siege isn't either.

They're not doing everything wrong. 

two games, that I'm not actually sure of, in sea of shit

 

R6 had a seriously bad launch

[PlayStation 2]

Again, I really don't want to see this for many reasons.

[zMeul]

5 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

Didnt say they were perfect. I also dont care for online features, like at all, including MP. So I can't comment on how they are with that.

every game listed there is built as an MP experience from the start, I'm not even sure Wildlands can even start in offline mode 

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, zMeul said:

R6 had a seriously bad launch

People still had a lot of faith in it, and it has a damn dedicated player base that probably matches or succeeds Team Fortress 2's player base.

[zMeul]

Just now, Dan Castellaneta said:

probably matches or succeeds Team Fortress 2's player base.

source?

and TF2 ?!?!? seriously .. I would not play TF2, I'd rather play MineSweeper

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, zMeul said:

source?

and TF2 ?!?!? seriously .. I would not play TF2, I'd rather play MineSweeper

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

Probably a number more on Uplay only but here we go.

It has a dedicated player base, certainly moreso than TF2 does nowadays. Mainly because a lot sold out to Overwatch.

[zMeul]

2 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

Probably a number more on Uplay only but here we go.

It has a dedicated player base, certainly moreso than TF2 does nowadays. Mainly because a lot sold out to Overwatch.

those two are "similar" to you? 

you can fit F4 in that gap

[Delicieuxz]

31 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

I don't believe you.  Even the link you posted didn't say they were making it, only said that consumers wouldn't want a BG&E2 that was poorly made. That carrot has been dangled for 15 years, there comes a point where you simply have to call bullshitting what it is.

 

Perhaps you'll like this one a bit more, then: http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/11/24/michel-ancel-on-beyond-good-evil-2-and-the-future-of-ubisoft

 

Quote

Then in September, Ancel posted this image to Instagram:

 

 

At last week’s Indiecade Europe I spoke with Ancel after he delivered his keynote. About the game’s development, why it was never cancelled, and Ubisoft’s current position among the big publishers.

 

“That was not a gimmick but a way to say 'Look. The game exists and we can do it.'”, Ancel says, explaining the timing behind the image’s release. Ancel says his team at Ubisoft has been working on the sequel properly since the release of Rayman Legends - it’s still a long way from release, and needs to be “more concrete” before he spills all the beans, but represents “a very serious development for Ubisoft.”

 

Ancel explains that one of the reasons it’s taken this long for the game to go into full development is that the technology simply wasn’t mainstream until two years ago.

 

For Beyond Good and Evil 2, Ancel and his team wanted a focus on interplanetary travel. “Even on Beyond Good and Evil 1 it was supposed to have space travel and all these things but we were limited,” Ancel says. “The big thing that is really cool is that the consoles are now so powerful [...] The amount of memory the CPU has, you can do those things now. It's not 'Oh, we will never do it.' It's working.”

 

“I've been working on [Beyond Good and Evil 2] for a long time, on the technologies that allow you to create those kinds of games - tools to draw the big planets and things like that,” Ancel says. “We're confident on the quality and that we can achieve that kind of game.”

 

 

[Bouzoo]

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

oh right because Vivendi destroyed Activision!? oh wait! they are doing way shittier things than when under Vivendi - go figure 

 

Vivendi acquiring UBi's shares hasn't started yesterday and UBi had very long time preparing and strengthening their business - it didn't happen, it got worse!

I'm not talking about Acti/Blizz zMeul. There were other companies that were shut down or used by Vivendi, and by Activision for that matter (not Blizzard)). And if we wanna talk almost destroying, they almost put Acti/Blizz in a tight spot, but luckily they managed to buy themselves out. You know, when a devil tries to feed on another devil, and that devil wants to get out asap, you know what time it is.  

The worst part is that they also haven't been a part of gaming industry since they sold Acti/Blizz, apart from Gameloft they bought last year, and afaik they still have no idea what to do with them, nor do they have a strategy regarding the gaming industry, which leads me, and many others, to believe they are just going for a cash grab considering their revenue/profits in last 2 years. 

I'm not gonna argue against you regarding Guillemot, but afaik they tried to do a lot with shareholders and investors (they even tried to get Canadian government into play). I don't know enough about leading multi billion dollar companies and what they could and if there was more they could do in the last year and half. I only know money doesn't grow on trees and huge projects and expansions need years.

[Prysin]

3 hours ago, Dutch-stoner said:

I might miss the point here, but why is this bad?

Because Vivendi has a history of using their purchases as piggybanks to buy more stuff. But in order to use any company as a piggybank, it means they need to hard-ball the budgets, reducing spending and maximizing profits.

 

What happens when you reduce spending and potentially staff, in a game development company? They make shittier games.

 

So if you think Ubisoft is bad now, just wait till they get their budgets reduced, start spewing out more DLC/microtransaction spam then EA and Candy Crush combined, and have their QA department outsourced to some random company nobody has heard about.

[typographie]

3 hours ago, zMeul said:

those two are "similar" to you? 

It's hard to say. Those TF2 numbers are reliable because Steam is the only way to play that game. But R6S can be launched from Uplay. I think that's even possible if you buy a Steam code, to say nothing of the fact that anyone buying a code on a third-party website or from a video card bundle is likely getting a Uplay-only code. I still doubt it eclipses TF2 (it's free!), but that ~25,000 playing the game through Steam definitely isn't the whole story.

 

Even so, 25,000 concurrent is a very healthy PC shooter. That's comparable to Battlefield 1, to the extent that third party information can be trusted.

[UnknownEngineer]

4 hours ago, zMeul said:

bad games - bad management; no excuse

and this is why UBi will be swallowed whole by Vivendi

 

last Anno game was released like 2y ago

 

what is Yves Guillemot doing since Viendi started gaining % of UBi? he started crying and he pledged he won't allow a takeover - big fucking fail

if Vivendi takes 30% stake in UBi, by french law, they have to attempt a takeover 

 

for 2016: http://www.metacritic.com/feature/game-publisher-rankings-for-2016-releases

UBi is last, dropped from no9 for 2015

How much of the bad sales comes from people just hopping on a bandwagon to crap on Ubis games? Ghost recon Wild-lands, didn't make headlines after release, propably because people weren't able fit it into the "ubi is satan" meme. R6S had a really rough start, however, support for the game has continued, and it has proven fruitful.  

 

Anno 2205 launched November 2015, not quite 2 years ago. I own Anno 2070, I liked that game, the new game added some things I wanted to see in the previous one for a long time. While that game has fans, it might not have as many as every FPS game.

 

There is also the Farcry series, FC3 and Blood dragon were great games. The FC's that followed were incremental upgrades, just because they didn't take leaps from the perspective of a FC3 and Blood dragon player, doesn't mean they took six steps back from the perspective of general consumers.

 

Watchdogs 2, did you hear much after release? I didn't. And yet, when I go to it's page on steam, I see overall reviews being "Very Positive". 

 

Ubi hasn't been able to milk you dry because of people jumping at every chance to take a shovel at them. There are people who will argue for Ubi making good games still, and that's the point, they make good games. Why don't you want to even SHOW support for a studio doing games well. Are you in favor of further encouraging games to be considered as tools to make money, or as an art and form of entertainment.

 

Which is more important to you, as a consumer, the products that you can buy, or corporations making a killing of them.

 

EDIT: Also forgot to reply to other parts.

"what is Yves Guillemot doing since Viendi started gaining % of UBi? he started crying and he pledged he won't allow a takeover" I am sure he is doing his job. Making statements is a part of that, what is he supposed to say? "Please stop buying our stuff so we can get bough out and get mostly fired"

 

It seems some people have taken a voluntary job to make a proper effort to ruin their reputation regardless of what they release. Social media is a massive influence in a games success, it isn't exactly a thing every studio can manipulate to their whim. While that is a good thing, it allows for damage to be dealt to a corporate entity at the whim or random people. Pretty sure some of those random people in this case don't care if they kill a few good games, as long as they can play an internet vigilante against a company.

 

What am I to make of the metacritic data? I can't interpret anything else from it other than the stuff we know, and possibly what I have said.

 

[Misanthrope]

You mean Ubi could potentially get worst? I think that would create a videogame market black hole and implode the whole fucking thing ala 80s videogame crash.

[dalekphalm]

Just remember folks, Vivendi is the reason we never got a Homeworld 3!

 

For that alone, I would take Ubisoft over them any day of the week.

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

3 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

You know, when a devil tries to feed on another devil, and that devil wants to get out asap, you know what time it is. 

Is it high noon?

 

On topic: Vivendi has become a problematic corporation, not only due to the size and scale of control, but due to it's draconian measures with the companies it swallows up. A lot could not take many punches, and either dropped out or dropped dead. The actions from Ubisoft, Activision and Konami all combined pales in comparison to this. Those who are shrugging in indifference in context to Ubisoft, remember this: no company does the same thing forever, as it always has it's up and downs. The "Ubisoft keeps on digging" meme that Linus unwittingly perpetuated has now been take out of context and grossly generalized (given how people have reacted to certain nontroversies over the past five years, this is nothing new). Ubisoft has been making some good games recently which continues to pick up steam (Rainbow Six Siege being the poster-boy example), and they have not made nearly as much loud noise as they did a while back.

 

I do not believe in the concept of "precedence". Hell, even Vivendi may turn around and do something decent on the perspective of the gamers with Ubisoft, as short-term as it may be. The corporate world is not nearly as predictable as many think it is.

[tlink]

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Vivendi makes upwards of 7 Billion Euros dollars every year.

 

This acquisition benefits nobody but Vivendi. It is anti consumer and almost constitutes anti-trust.

 

This company is so damn huge. They own the rights to a huge portion of the music that over 40 Million people listen to every day. They own France's leading Networks and a huge film studio.

They're basically just too big. A single company shouldn't have too much power. That is the big problem with this.

yea i completely agree that that is dangerous. anything that large is a threat to democracy.

[Belgarathian]

7 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

-snip-

There wouldn't be any anti-trust lawsuits. They don't have a monopoly in any of those industries. 

 

And none of those revenue/profit figures are significantly high for global corps. 

[Hunter259]

Good lord. So many people, including OP, don't understand that a monopoly does not automatically trigger Anti-Trust laws. Only when that monopoly uses it's power to crush/buy up any competing entity in this space. Buying Ubisoft doesn't get them anyone where close to this kind of power. Just because you are big and people don't like you doesn't mean you need to be broken up. Come on OP. This was a pointless shot. 

[Princess Luna]

Ubishit gonna be even worse? hard to believe... I miss when VALVe was a gaming developer

[SansVarnic]

8 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Vivendi makes upwards of 7 Billion Euros dollars every year.

 

This acquisition benefits nobody but Vivendi. It is anti consumer and almost constitutes anti-trust.

 

This company is so damn huge. They own the rights to a huge portion of the music that over 40 Million people listen to every day. They own France's leading Networks and a huge film studio.

They're basically just too big. A single company shouldn't have too much power. That is the big problem with this.

Google or should I say Alpabet? Yeah I see them this way as well.

[Jito463]

Guillemot.  Wow, the last time I heard that name was when I bought my GeForce 256 (the original GeForce card).  It was the Guillemot brand, which was formerly Hercules.  I didn't even know they were still around.

[laminutederire]

7 hours ago, zMeul said:

two games, that I'm not actually sure of, in sea of shit

 

R6 had a seriously bad launch

And yet it is now a solid competitive shooter. Runs well, mechanics are a bit fresh and they keep it alive.

As other don't release bad games? Can we talk about the money machine that EA is and the overwhelmingly low content battlefield 1 and star wars battlefront suffer from?

That happens, and they adapt to the audience.

In the case of ubisoft, you can make the case that they at least provide variety in their game catalog.

I think you're just hating on them and overlooking some part of the informations because of it.

I don't like everything they do, but they certainly aren't the bad developers you suggest.

[Notional]

This is indeed frightful news, but it was very foreseeable. It's been underway for years now as the Guillemot family frantically has been trying to buy up and secure as many shares and shareholder support as possible. I know Ubisoft games often has something left to desire, but compared to EA, Ubisoft is miles ahead in good games. If Vivendi gets their ways, Ubisoft should become more EA than EA is.

9 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

So yeah. I'm hoping anti trust lawsuits happen and that the french government and EA asks Vivendi to be split up if they purchase Ubisoft.

Not gonna happen. Ubisoft isn't really comparable to any of the other services/companies they own, and because there are so many other gaming companies out there, antitrust simply doesn't exist.

 

Sadly I Vivendi will succeed. The hostile takeover isn't large enough to secure the shares needed to force shareholders out, but then again, who knows what loopholes french legislation contain.

[rashdanml]

9 hours ago, zMeul said:

UBi hasn't put good games on the market for quite few years

at this point they could do a Konami and go for pinball machines  

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're tunnel-visioned by their failed attempts and aren't seeing the bigger picture. Ubisoft made many good, even great, games which led to their popularity, which promptly led to shorter release cycles, which then led to reduced quality (though farm from "trash-tier") in some of their games. 

 

Realizing that, they ended their yearly release cycle on the Assassin's Creed series (which is arguably their longest and best selling series, with only Unity and Syndicate being subpar than the rest of the series). A company concerned only with money will not make a move like that.