Tencent is reportedly seeking a larger stake in Ubisoft

Tencent is reportedly interested in acquiring a larger stake in French publisher Ubisoft.

According to Reuters, China’s largest gaming company, which currently already owns 5% of the Assassin’s Creed publisher, is seeking a larger share of the company and has “reached out to the French firm’s founding Guillemot family and expressed interest in increasing its stake in the firm”.

However, Reuters notes that it’s unclear how much more of the company Tencent wishes to purchase. Ubisoft is currently valued at $5.3 billion.

The Guillemot family, including CEO Yves, owns 15% of the company. Three of the sources speaking to Reuters claimed that this is part of the company that Tencent seeks to acquire.

Neither Tencent nor Ubisoft provided comments to Reuters.

During a financial call listened to by VGC last month, Ubisoft announced that it had ceased the development of Ghost Recon Frontline, Splinter Cell VR and two unannounced games.

Ubisoft has also reportedly delayed its next Assassin’s Creed game to the spring of 2023.

While not officially announced, Bloomberg reported in February that Ubisoft was planning to release a smaller-scale, stealth-focused Assassin’s Creed game this year or in 2023.

During its financial call, Ubisoft said it had delayed Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and “a smaller unannounced premium game” to its next fiscal year beginning in April 2023.

The smaller game is Rift, according to Bloomberg, which reported on Friday that Ubisoft has pushed its release window from February 2023 to May-June next year.