Ubisoft

Ubisoft Entertainment S.A.

The 2003-present logo.
Type	Société anonyme
Traded as	Euronext: UBI
Industry	Video games Interactive entertainment
Founded	1986
Headquarters	Montreuil-sous-Bois[1], France
Key people	Yves Guillemot (Chairman and CEO)
Revenue	€1.256 billion (2012)
Operating income	€87.9 million (2012)[2]
Net income	€3.9 million (2012)[2]
Employees	9,200 (2013)[1]
Website	www.ubi.com www.ubisoftgroup.com

Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. (/ˈjuːbiːsɒft/ YOO-bee-soft;^[3] Euronext: UBI) is a French multinational video-game developer and publisher, headquartered in Montreuil-sous-Bois, France.^[1]

The company’s worldwide presence includes 29 studios in 19 countries;^[1] the company has subsidiaries in 26 countries.^[4] Ubisoft is currently the third-largest independent game publisher in the world, as well as in Europe and the United States.^[1] The company’s largest development studio is Ubisoft Montreal in Canada, currently employing about 2,100 people.^[5]

In Ubisoft’s 2008–2009 fiscal year, the company’s revenue was €1.256 billion, reaching the 1 billion euro milestone for the first time in the company’s history. Ubisoft has created its own film division, called, “Ubisoft Motion Pictures”, which creates shows and films based on the company’s games.^[6]

History

The head office in Montreuil near Paris

In March 1986, the five brothers of the Guillemot family founded Ubisoft as a computer game publisher in Carentoir, a small village located in the Morbihan department of the Brittany region, in France.^[7] Yves Guillemot soon made deals with Electronic Arts, Sierra On-Line, and MicroProse to distribute their games in France. By the end of the decade, Ubisoft began expanding to other markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.^[8] In the early 90s, Ubisoft initiated its in-house game development program which led to the 1994 opening of a studio in Montreuil, France, which later became their administrative and commercial head office, even if the company continues to register their headquarters in Rennes. Ubisoft became a publicly traded company in 1996 and continued to expand to offices around the globe, opening locations in Annecy, Shanghai, Montreal and Milan.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ubisoft committed itself to online games by getting behind Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, The Matrix Online, and the European and Chinese operation of EverQuest. The publisher established ubi.com as its online division. However, in February 2004, Ubisoft cancelled the online portion of Uru and backed out of the publishing deal on The Matrix Online.

In March 2001, Gores Technology Group sold The Learning Company’s entertainment division (which includes games originally published by Brøderbund, Mattel, Mindscape and Strategic Simulations, Inc.) to them. The sale included the rights to IPs such as the Myst and Prince of Persia series.^[9] In July 2006, Ubisoft also bought the Driver franchise from Atari for a sum of €19 million (US$24 million) in cash for the franchise, technology rights, and most assets. In July 2008, Ubisoft made the acquisition of Hybride Technologies, a Montreal-based studio renowned for its expertise in the creation of visual effects for cinema, television and advertising. In November 2008, Ubisoft acquired Massive Entertainment from Activision.^[10] In January 2013, Ubisoft acquired South Park: The Stick of Truth from THQ for $3.265 million.

In December 2004, rival gaming corporation Electronic Arts purchased a 19.9% stake in the firm, an action Ubisoft referred to as "hostile" on EA’s part.^[11]

Ubisoft announced plans in 2013 to invest $373 million into its Quebec operations over seven years, a move that will generate 500 additional jobs in the province.

The publisher is investing in the expansion of its motion capture technologies, and consolidating its online games operations and infrastructure in Montreal.

The significant investment is expected to generate 500 jobs in Quebec over a seven year period. By 2020, the company will employ more than 3,500 staff at its studios in Montreal and Quebec City.^[12]

Studios

As the world’s fourth largest video game company as of 2009, Ubisoft studios employs the second largest amount of in-house development staff in the world and has several divisions and offices across the globe.^[1] While some were founded by Ubisoft, others have been acquired over time:

Current

• Future Games of London in London, United Kingdom, founded in 2009, acquired on 1 October 2013.^[13]
• Hybride Technologies, acquired 8 July 2008.^[14]
• Nadeo in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Paris, France, founded in 2000. Acquired in 5 October 2009.
• RedLynx, acquired in November 2011.
• Related Designs in Mainz, founded in January 1995,^[15] acquired a 30% stake in the company on 11 April 2007, fully acquired in April 2013.
• Sunflowers Interactive Entertainment Software GmbH in Heusenstamm, Germany, founded in 1993, acquired on 11 April 2007.^[16][17]
• THQ Montreal, acquired 22 January 2013.
• Ubisoft Abu Dhabi, located at media city twofour54 in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This studio opened its doors in December 2011,^[18] and it is the first ever gaming development studio in the Middle East that was launched by a multi-millionaire video games publishing company. The studio is also responsible for launching twofour54’s gaming academy.^[18]
• Ubisoft Annecy – best known for developing the multiplayer for Assassin’s Creed series.
• Ubisoft Barcelona, started 1998.
• Ubisoft Blue Byte (former Blue Byte Software) in Düsseldorf, Germany, founded in 1988, acquired February 2001.^[14][19]
• Ubisoft Bulgaria in Sofia, started 2006.
• Ubisoft Casablanca
• Ubisoft Chengdu, started on 17 September 2007.^[14]
• Ubisoft Germany in Düsseldorf, started in 1995, acquired Gamebusters in October 2001 and merged employees.^[14]
• Ubisoft Japan, started in 1994.
• Ubisoft Massive in Malmö, Sweden, founded as Massive Entertainment in 1997, acquired from Vivendi Games on 10 November 2008.
• Ubisoft Milan, started in early 1998.
• Ubisoft Montpellier, acquired Tiwak in 2004 and merged employees. Developer of Rayman Origins, From Dust, and Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn. Michel Ancel is a developer for this division.
• Ubisoft Montreal, started in 1997 as Ubisoft Divertissements Inc.,^[20] acquired the Canadian division of MC2-Microïds (Microïds Canada) and integrated it into eventually merged into this division in March 2005.^[21]
• Ubisoft Nagoya, started in September 1996 as "Digital Kids". Acquired by Ubisoft in 2008.^[22]
• Ubisoft Paris, made games such as Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, Red Steel, Red Steel 2, and XIII.
• Ubisoft Poland, opened in 2008.^[14]
• Ubisoft Pune, started on 1 May 2008 after acquiring the Pune Gameloft studio in India.
• Ubisoft Quebec, started 1 June 2005, based in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada^[23]
• Ubisoft Red Storm (formerly Red Storm Entertainment) based in Morrisville, North Carolina, United States, founded in 1996 and acquired in August 2000.^[14][24]
• Ubisoft Reflections in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, founded in 1984 as Reflections Interactive and acquired in 26 August 2006, from Atari.
• Ubisoft Romania in Bucharest, Romania, started in October 1992 and in Craiova from September 2008.
• Ubisoft San Francisco, Ubisoft’s North American headquarters.
• Ubisoft Shanghai, announced in early 2009 that their new, Shanghai studio would develop the upcoming Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 title, I Am Alive, instead of the originally expected Darkworks.
• Ubisoft Singapore, started on August 2008. Ubisoft cited the Singapore government’s demonstrated interest and support for the video game industry, together with other factors such as the quality of Singapore’s universities and training institutions, as reasons for opening a studio there. Ubisoft Singapore is focused on developing their own game titles.^[25]
• Ubisoft Taiwan
• Ubisoft Toronto, announced on 6 July 2009,^[26] is led by Jade Raymond.^[27] Their first productions will include a new installment of the Splinter Cell series made by staff coming from the series' core team at Ubisoft Montreal.^[28]
• Ubisoft Ukraine, started 29 April 2008.^[14]
• Quazal, acquired in 4 November 2010.^[29]

Defunct

• Sinister Games, acquired in April 2000, closed in June 2003.^[14]
• Ubisoft São Paulo, started on 24 June 2008 and on 20 January 2009 they acquired Southlogic Studios and integrated it into this studio.^[30] The studios were closed in late 2010 to focus on games distribution.^[31]
• Ubisoft Vancouver, started on 3 February 2009 after acquiring Action Pants Inc.^[32] Closed in January 2012.^[33]
• Wolfpack Studios in Austin, Texas, United States, founded in 1999 and acquired on 1 March 2004. Closed in 2006.^[34]
• Ubisoft Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland, founded in Summer 2011^[35] to develop a Free to Play MMO. Closed in October 2013.^[36]

Games

Besides publishing their own games, Ubisoft is also publishing famous franchises produced by other important studios for some specific platforms, such as Resident Evil 4 for PC and Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon for the PlayStation 2.

Uplay

Uplay is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications service created by Ubisoft.

Controversies

Ubisoft had, for a time, used the controversial StarForce copy protection technology that installs drivers on a system and is known to cause some hardware problems and compatibility issues with certain operating systems,^{[citation needed]} starting with the game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which was not compatible with Windows XP Professional x64 Edition for quite some time, until a patch was released by the makers of StarForce.^{[citation needed]} On 14 April 2006, Ubisoft confirmed that they would stop using StarForce on their games, citing complaints from customers.^[37] In January 2010, Ubisoft has announced the Online Services Platform, which forces customers to not only authenticate on the first game launch, but to remain online continually while playing, with the game even pausing if network connection is lost. This makes it impossible to play the game offline, to resell it, and means that should Ubisoft’s servers go down, the game will be unplayable.^[38] In 2010, review versions of Assassin’s Creed II and Settlers 7 for the PC contained this new DRM scheme, confirming that it is already in use, and that instead of pausing the game, it would discard all progress since the last checkpoint or save game.^[39] However, subsequent patches for Assassin’s Creed II allow the player to continue playing once their connection has been restored without lost progress.^[40] In March 2010, outages to the Ubisoft DRM servers were reported, causing about 5% of legitimate buyers to be unable to play Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 games.^[41][42] Ubisoft initially announced this was the result of the number of users attempting to access their servers to play, but later claimed that the real cause of the outages were denial-of-service attacks.^[41][42][43] In August 2011, Ubisoft released From Dust with DRM protection, contrary to previous statements that the game would not have any DRM related restrictions. Though a promise was made to remove it, after several months the DRM had still not been removed from many if not all copies of the game.^[44]

In the February 2008 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, Editor-in-Chief Dan "Shoe" Hsu asserted that Ubisoft had ceased to provide all Ubisoft titles to the EGM for any coverage purposes as a result of prior critical previews and negative reviews.^[45][46] Yves Guillemot, the CEO of Ubisoft, was quoted in the company’s third-quarter 2008–09 sales report as saying "as some of our games did not meet the required quality levels to achieve their full potential, they need more sales promotions than anticipated."^[47] The company’s use of Aaron Priceman, also known as Mr. Caffeine, as a spokesman at E3 2011 was criticized for his reliance on popular internet references, inability to pronounce Tom Clancy (he pronounced it Tom Culancy), sexual innuendos and imitations of video game sound effects with little to no response from the audience.^[48]

On 2 July 2013, Ubisoft announced a major breach in its network resulting in the potential exposure of up to 58 million accounts including usernames, email address and encrypted passwords. Although the firm denied any credit/debit card information could have been compromised, it issued directives to all registered users to change their account passwords and also recommended updating passwords on any other website or service where a same or similar password had been used.^[49][50] All the users who registered were emailed by the Ubisoft company about the breach and a password change request. Ubisoft promised to keep the information safe.^[51]

Lawsuits

• In 2008, Ubisoft sued Optical Experts Manufacturing (OEM), a DVD duplication company for $25 million plus damages for the leak and distribution of the PC version of Assassin’s Creed. The lawsuit claims that OEM did not take proper measures to protect its product as stated in its contract with Ubisoft. The complaint also alleges that OEM admitted to all the problems in the complaint.^[52]

• In April 2012, Ubisoft was sued by the author of the book Link, John L. Beiswenger, who alleged a copyright infringement for using his ideas in the Assassin’s Creed franchise and demanding $5.25 million in damages and wanted to stop the release of Assassin’s Creed III that was set to be released in October 2012 along with any future games that allegedly contain his ideas.^[53] On 30 May 2012, Beiswenger dropped the lawsuit. Beiswenger was later quoted as saying he believes "authors should vigorously defend their rights in their creative works," and suggested that Ubisoft’s motion to block future lawsuits from Beiswenger hints at their guilt.^[54]

See also

• Frag Dolls
• UbiWorkshop
• Ubisoft Motion Tracking Camera
  

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ubisoft.

• Ubisoft’s public site
• Ubisoft’s corporate site

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