Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include Anno, Assassin's Creed, Driver, Far Cry, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Rabbids, Rayman, Tom Clancy's, and Watch Dogs.
The company was initially founded in 1984 by Yves Guillemot, who continues to serve as its chairman and CEO, and his four brothers to provide computing software for the French agricultural sector, but moved into the more lucrative sector of video games by 1987. Its first achieved commercial and critical success was the 1995 platform game Rayman, allowing the company to expand worldwide, particularly in Shanghai, Canada, and other European countries. In the early 2000s, Ubisoft acquired the Tom Clancy's and Prince of Persia series, the later which ultimately led to creation of the Assassin's Creed series and other open world game series like Far Cry. The company successfully fended off a hostile takeover by French media conglomerate Vivendi by 2018, part of which came from Chinese media company Tencent acquiring a portion of company shares. Tencent continued to invest in Ubisoft through the 2020s, and further increased their investment to give the Guillimots and Tencent majority control of the company as to prevent a shareholder takeover. With the larger investment from Tencent, Ubisoft underwent a major reorganisation in January 2026, dividing the company amount five creative houses, including Vantage Studios and Massive Entertainment, each overseeing specific series and organised to act self-sufficiently from the larger company.
History Origins and first decade (1986–1996) By the 1980s, the Guillemot family had established themselves as a support business for farmers in the Brittany province of France and other regions, including the United Kingdom. The five sons of the family – Christian, Claude, Gérard, Michel, and Yves – helped with the company's sales, distribution, accounting, and management with their parents before university.
All five gained business experience while at university, which they brought back to the family business after graduating. The brothers came up with the idea of diversification to sell other agricultural products; Claude began by selling CD audio media. Later, the brothers expanded to computers and additional software that included video games.
In the 1980s, they noticed that the costs of buying computers and software from a French supplier were higher than buying the same materials in the United Kingdom and shipping them to France. They developed the idea of a mail-order business for computers and software. Their mother agreed they could start their own business as long as they managed it themselves and split its shares equally among the five of them.
Their first business was Guillemot Informatique, founded in 1984. They originally sold only through mail order, but soon began receiving orders from French retailers, as it was able to undercut other suppliers by up to 50%. By 1986, this company was earning about 40 million French francs (roughly million at that time). In 1985, the brothers established Guillemot Corporation for similar distribution of computer hardware. As demand continued, the brothers recognised that video game software was becoming a lucrative property and decided to enter the development side of the industry, already having insight into publication and distribution.
Ubi Soft Entertainment S.A. was founded by the brothers on 28 March 1986. The name "Ubi Soft" was selected to represent "ubiquitous" software.
Ubi Soft initially operated out of offices in Paris, moving to Créteil by June 1986. The brothers used the chateau in Brittany as the primary space for development, hoping the setting would lure developers, as well as to have a better way to manage expectations of its developers. The company hired Nathalie Saloud as manager, Sylvie Hugonnier as director of marketing and public relations, and programmers, though Hugonnier had left the company by May 1986 to join Elite Software. Games published by Ubi Soft in 1986 include Zombi, Ciné Clap, Fer et Flamme, Masque, and Graphic City, a sprite editing program. As its first game, Zombi had sold 5,000 copies by January 1987. Ubi Soft also entered into distribution partnerships for the game to be released in Spain and West Germany. Ubi Soft started importing products from abroad for distribution in France, with 1987 releases including Elite Software's Commando and Ikari Warriors, the former of which sold 15,000 copies by January 1987. In 1988, Yves Guillemot was appointed Ubi Soft's chief executive officer.
By 1988, the company had about 6 developers working from the chateau. These included Michel Ancel, a teenager at the time noted for his animation skills, and Serge Hascoët, who applied to be a video game tester for the company. The costs of maintaining the chateau became more expensive, and the developers were given the option to relocate to Paris. Ancel's family which had moved to Brittany for his job could not afford the cost of living in Paris and returned to Montpellier in southern France. The Guillemot brothers told Ancel to keep them abreast of anything he might come up with there. Ancel returned with Frédéric Houde with a prototype of a game with animated features that caught the brothers' interest. Michel Guillemot decided to make the project a key one for the company, establishing a studio in Montreuil to house over 100 developers in 1994, and targeting a line of 5th generation consoles such as the Atari Jaguar and PlayStation. Their game, Rayman, was released in 1995. Yves managed Guillemot Informatique, making deals with Electronic Arts, Sierra On-Line and MicroProse to distribute their games in France. Guillemot Informatique began expanding to other markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. They entered the video game distribution and wholesale markets and by 1993 had become the largest distributor of video games in France.
Worldwide growth (1996–2003) In 1996, Ubi Soft listed its initial public offering and raised over in funds to help it to expand the company. Within 2 years, the company established worldwide studios in Annecy (1996), Shanghai (1996), Montreal (1997), and Milan (1998).
A difficulty that the brothers found was the lack of an intellectual property that would have a foothold in the United States market. When "widespread growth" of the Internet arrived around 1999, the brothers decided to take advantage of this by founding game studios aimed at online free-to-play titles, this allowed them to license the rights to Ubi Soft properties to these companies, increasing the share value of Ubi Soft five-fold. With the extra infusion of , they were able to then purchase Red Storm Entertainment in 2000, giving them access to the Tom Clancy's series of stealth and spy games. Ubi Soft helped with Red Storm to continue to expand the series, bringing titles like Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six series. The company got a foothold in the United States when it worked with Microsoft to develop Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, an Xbox-exclusive title released in 2002 to challenge the PlayStation-exclusive Metal Gear Solid series, by combining elements of Tom Clancy's series with elements of an in-house developed game called The Drift.
In March 2001, Gores Technology Group sold The Learning Company's entertainment division (which included games originally published by Broderbund, Mattel Interactive, Mindscape and Strategic Simulations) to them. The sale included the rights to intellectual properties such as the Myst and Prince of Persia series. Ubisoft Montreal developed the Prince of Persia title into Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time released in 2003. At the same time, Ubi Soft released Beyond Good & Evil, Ancel's project after Rayman; it was one of Ubi Soft's first commercial "flops" on its release but which since has gained a cult following.
Around 2001, Ubi Soft established its editorial department headed by Hascoët, initially named as editor in chief and later known as the company's Chief Content Officer. Hascoët had worked alongside Ancel on Rayman in 1995 to help refine the game, and saw the opportunity to apply that across all of Ubi Soft's games. Until 2019, most games published by Ubisoft were reviewed through the editorial department overseen by Hascoët.
Continued expansion (2003–2015)
On 9 September 2003, Ubi Soft announced that it would change its name to Ubisoft, and introduced a new logo known as "the swirl". In December 2004, gaming corporation Electronic Arts purchased a 19.9% stake in the firm. Ubisoft referred to the purchase as "hostile" on EA's part. Ubisoft's brothers recognised they had not considered themselves within a competitive market, and employees had feared that an EA takeover would drastically alter the environment within Ubisoft. EA's CEO at the time, John Riccitiello, assured Ubisoft the purchase was not meant as a hostile manoeuvre, and EA ended up selling the shares in 2010.
In February 2005, Ubisoft acquired the NHL Rivals, NFL Fever, NBA Inside Drive and MLB Inside Pitch franchises from Microsoft Game Studios. On 8 January 2009, Square Enix signed an agreement with Ubisoft where the former would work to assist the latter in distributing its video games in Japan.
Ubisoft established another IP, Assassin's Creed, first launched in 2007; Assassin's Creed was originally developed by Ubisoft Montreal as a sequel to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and instead transitioned to a story about Assassins and the Templar Knights. In July 2006, Ubisoft bought the Driver franchise from Atari for a sum of €19 million in cash for the franchise, technology rights, and most assets. Within 2008, Ubisoft made a deal with Tom Clancy for perpetual use of his name and intellectual property for video games and other auxiliary media.
Gameloft, founded in 1999 by Michel Guillemot as a separate venture from Ubisoft to explore games for mobile phones, was closely tied to Ubisoft and had a right of first refusal to port any Ubisoft game to mobile. Gameloft began releasing ports of Ubisoft games 2006 and 2007, including several Assassin's Creed games. In 2007, Ubisoft sold their stake in Gameloft to Credit Agricole, though maintained the development partnerships for its games. Gameloft continued to be one of the leading mobile developers, particularly after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Over time, Ubisoft shifted from licensing to publishers like GameLoft to creating their own development studios for mobile games around 2010, and by 2015, mobile game sales had made up 26% of Ubisoft's revenues, in part due to heavy usage within China.
In July 2008, Ubisoft made the acquisition of Hybride Technologies, a Piedmont-based studio. In November 2008, Ubisoft acquired Massive Entertainment from Activision. In January 2013, Ubisoft acquired South Park: The Stick of Truth from THQ for $3.265 million.
Ubisoft announced plans in 2013 to invest $373 million into its Quebec operations over 7 years. The publisher is investing in the expansion of its motion capture technologies and consolidating its online games operations and infrastructure in Montreal. By 2020, the company would employ more than 3,500 staff at its studios in Montreal and Quebec City. In February 2013, it began offering games from third-party publishers including Electronic Arts and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment on Uplay and its own games to EA's Origin.