Ubisoft CEO and Co-Founder Yves Guillemot speaks at the Ubisoft Forward livestream event June 12, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA.
Robin Beck | AFP | Getty Images
Shares of French game makers ubisoft Stocks surged 9% in European trading on Tuesday microsoft submitted a new contract to acquire activision blizzard In an attempt to appease cautious UK regulators.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority has confirmed that Microsoft blocked an original $69 billion deal originally proposed in January 2022. The acquisition also faces regulatory challenges in the United States and Europe, but the CMA has been the toughest critic of the deal, citing concerns. He argued that the deal would stifle competition in the nascent cloud gaming market.
The CMA said that Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have agreed to a new, restructured contract, and that the CMA will now look into the matter with October 18 as the deadline to make a decision. As part of the new deal, Microsoft will not acquire the existing Activision Blizzard PC and Activision Blizzard cloud rights. According to the CMA, this could be a console game or a new game released by Activision Blizzard over the next 15 years. Instead, these rights will be sold to Ubisoft prior to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
“This deal provides Ubisoft with a unique opportunity to commercialize game distribution via cloud streaming,” said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft. blog post. “This agreement will allow Ubisoft to innovate and encourage different business models in licensing and pricing these games on cloud streaming services around the world.”
Ubisoft publishes popular games from the Assassin’s Creed, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six and Far Cry franchises.
The restructured agreement is intended to provide independent third parties with the ability to offer Activision Blizzard game content to all cloud gaming service providers, including Microsoft itself. Ubisoft offers cloud gaming with services such as Amazon Luna and NvidiaGeForce Now competes with Microsoft’s Xbox streaming service.
Smith said Ubisoft will compensate Microsoft through a “one-time payment” and a “market-based wholesale pricing mechanism” that includes usage-based pricing options.
— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.
Correction: Ubisoft publishes Assassin’s Creed game franchise.The franchise name was misspelled in previous versions.
