Ubisoft

Ubisoft Entertainment S.A.

Logo used since 2003
Ubisoft head office in Montreuil
Type	Société anonyme
Traded as	Euronext: UBI
Industry	Video game industry Interactive entertainment
Founded	March 1986 (March 1986)
Founders	Guillemot family (Claude Guillemot Christian Guillemot Gérard Guillemot Michel Guillemot Yves Guillemot)
Headquarters	Montreuil, Paris, France
Key people	Yves Guillemot (Chairman and CEO)
Products	Assassin's Creed series Beyond Good & Evil series Brothers in Arms series Call of Juarez series Driver series Far Cry series Just Dance series Prince of Persia series Raving Rabbids series Rayman series The Settlers series Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon series Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six series Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series Trials series Watch Dogs ZombiU
Revenue	€1.464 billion (2014)[1]
Net income	€171 million (2014)[2]
Number of employees	9,200 (2014)
Divisions	Ubisoft Motion Pictures
Subsidiaries	List of Ubisoft's subsidiaries Ubisoft Milan Ubisoft Montreal Ubisoft Montpellier Ubisoft Red Storm Ubisoft Reflections Ubisoft Massive RedLynx Ubisoft Paris Ubisoft Annecy Ubisoft Blue Byte Ubisoft Toronto Ubisoft Shanghai
Website	www.ubisoft.com

Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. (Euronext: UBI) (originally Ubi Soft Entertainment, S.A. until 2003) is a French multinational video game developer and publisher, headquartered in Montreuil, France.^[3] It is known for developing games for several acclaimed video game franchises including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Ghost Recon, Just Dance, Rainbow Six, Prince of Persia, Rayman, Splinter Cell, and Raving Rabbids.

Company details

Ubisoft claims to be the third largest independent publisher of video games worldwide. (after Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts)^[3] Ubisoft worldwide presence includes 29 studios in 19 countries.^[3] The company has subsidiaries in 26 countries.^[4] Ubisoft's largest development studio is Ubisoft Montreal in Canada, which employs 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 created its own film division, called Ubisoft Motion Pictures, which creates shows and films based on the company's games.^[6]

History

In March 1986, five brothers of the Guillemot family founded the video game publisher, Ubisoft, 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] They entered the video game distribution and wholesale markets, and by 1993 they had become the largest distributor of video games in France.^[9] In the early 1990s, Ubisoft initiated its in-house game development program, which led to the 1994 opening of a studio in Montreuil, France. It later became their administrative and commercial head office, even as the company continues to register its headquarters in Rennes. Ubisoft became a publicly traded company in 1996 and continued its expansion around the globe, opening locations in Annecy, Shanghai, Milan and Montreal.

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

The company is noted for its teams of female game developers/testers, known as the Frag Dolls.

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 intellectual properties such as the Myst and Prince of Persia series.^[10] In July 2006, Ubisoft 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.^[11] 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.^[12]

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.^[13]

In March 2015 the company set up a Consumer Relationship Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne. The centre is intended to integrate consumer support teams and community managers. Consumer Support and Community Management teams at the CRC are operational seven days a week.^[14]

In October 2015, Vivendi bought a 6% stake in Ubisoft^[15]

Studios

As the world’s third largest independent video game company, Ubisoft studios employs the second largest amount of in-house development staff in the world and has several divisions and offices across the globe.^[3] 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.^[16]
• Hybride Technologies, acquired 8 July 2008.^[17]
• Ivory Tower in Lyon, France, founded in 2007, acquired in October 2015^[18]
• Nadeo in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Paris, France, founded in 2000. Acquired on 5 October 2009.
• Owlient, acquired in July 2011^[19] which develops the Online-Game Howrse
• Quazal, acquired on 4 November 2010.^[20]
• Red Storm Entertainment based in Cary, North Carolina, United States, founded in 1996 and acquired in August 2000.^[17][21]
• RedLynx, acquired in November 2011.
• Sunflowers Interactive Entertainment Software GmbH in Heusenstamm, Germany, founded in 1993, acquired on 11 April 2007. Responsible for the entire Anno Series.^[22][23]
• 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,^[24] 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.^[24]
• 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.^[17][25]
• Ubisoft Blue Byte Mainz (former Related Designs), Germany, founded in January 1995^[26] acquired a 30% stake in the company on 11 April 2007, fully acquired and integrated into Ubisoft Blue Byte in April 2013.
• Ubisoft Casablanca
• Ubisoft Chengdu is the Chinese arm headquartered in the Chengdu Tianfu Software Park, Chengdu, since 17 September 2007. It was Ubisoft's second development studio in China.^[17][27][28]
• Ubisoft Germany in Düsseldorf, started in 1995, acquired Gamebusters in October 2001 and merged employees.^[17]
• Ubisoft Japan, started in 1994.
• Ubisoft Halifax in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, founded as Longtail Studios, acquired on October 14, 2015.^[29]
• 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. Developer, among others, of games in the Rayman, Just Dance, Beyond Good & Evil, Rabbids, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Assassin's Creed series.
• 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.,^[30] acquired the Canadian division of MC2-Microïds (Microïds Canada) and integrated it into eventually merged into this division in March 2005.^[31]
• Ubisoft Nagoya, started in September 1996 as "Digital Kids". Acquired by Ubisoft in 2008.^[32]
• Ubisoft Paris, made games such as Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, Red Steel, Red Steel 2, and XIII.
• Ubisoft Poland, opened in 2008.^[17]
• 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^[33]
• Ubisoft Reflections in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, founded in 1984 as Reflections Interactive^[34] and acquired on 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 in 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.^[35]
• Ubisoft Sofia in Bulgaria, started 2006.
• Ubisoft Toronto, announced on 6 July 2009,^[36] was led by Jade Raymond until she decided to part ways with the company in October 2014. Alexandre Parizeau has since replaced her as studio head.^[37] 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.^[38]
• Ubisoft Ukraine, started 29 April 2008.^[17]

Defunct

• Sinister Games, acquired in April 2000, closed in June 2003.^[17]
• Ubisoft São Paulo, started on 24 June 2008 and on 20 January 2009 they acquired Southlogic Studios and integrated it into this studio.^[39] The studios were closed in late 2010 to focus on games distribution.^[40]
• Ubisoft Vancouver, started on 3 February 2009 after acquiring Action Pants Inc.^[41] Closed in January 2012.^[42]
• Wolfpack Studios in Austin, Texas, United States, founded in 1999 and acquired on 1 March 2004. Closed in 2006.^[43]
• Ubisoft Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland, founded in Summer 2011^[44] to develop a Free to Play MMO. Closed in October 2013.^[45]

Games

Ukrainian Ubidays 2008 – Characters from Ubisoft "Rayman Raving Rabbids" series of games. Three of them dressed as characters from other Ubisoft games – Prince of Persia: Prodigy, Splinter Cell and Assassins Creed.

Besides publishing their own games, Ubisoft is also publishing famous franchises produced by other important studios for some specific platforms.

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 hardware and compatibility issues with certain operating systems. On 14 April 2006, Ubisoft confirmed that they would stop using StarForce on their games, citing complaints from customers.^[46]

In January 2010, Ubisoft announced the online services platform Uplay, 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 meaning that, should Ubisoft's servers go down, the game will be unplayable.^[47] 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.^[48] However, subsequent patches for Assassin's Creed II allow the player to continue playing once their connection has been restored without lost progress.^[49]

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.^[50][51] 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.^[50][51][52] In August 2011, Ubisoft released From Dust with DRM protection, contrary to previous statements that the game would not have any DRM related restrictions. After several months, the DRM had still not been removed from copies of the game.^[53]

In the February 2008 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, editor-in-chief Dan "Shoe" Hsu asserted that Ubisoft had ceased to provide Ubisoft titles to EGM for coverage purposes as a result of prior critical previews and negative reviews.^[54][55] 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."^[56] 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.^[57]

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.^[58][59] 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.^[60]

After revealing Assassin's Creed Unity at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014, Ubisoft came in for criticism from the gaming community shortly after revealing that the game would not support female characters in co-op gameplay. The criticism was inflamed after they explained the absence of a female co-op or playable character in Far Cry 4: according to Ubisoft Montreal, they were close to making it possible when the decision was taken that they didn't have the right animations for a female character.^[61] Among the responses were comments from developers that the explanations given were not valid. Among them were the fact that the protagonists of Assassin's Creed III and its spin-off game Liberation shared a large amount of movement animations. There were also statements that characters in video games tended to move in a similar fashion regardless of gender.^[62] An animation director for Assassin's Creed III also said that the stated reasons of workload and animation replacement didn't hold up, saying that it would be "a day or two's work" to create a female character model.^[61]

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.^[63]
• 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.^[64] 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.^[65]
• In December 2014, Ubisoft offered a free game from their catalog of recently released titles to compensate the season pass owners of Assassin's Creed Unity due to its buggy launch. The terms offered with the free game revoked the user's right to sue Ubisoft for releasing an unfinished product.^[66]

See also

• 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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