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Businesses Entertainment Games

EA Looking to Increase Stake in UbiSoft 42

Posted by Zonk from the who-knew? dept.
Despite recent claims from EA that their intentions were benign, Reuters has the story today that EA may expand their investment in Ubisoft and could seek a seat on the board. From the article: "EA is now Ubisoft's largest shareholder and has 20.88 percent of its voting rights. But the Guillemot brothers, the French company's founders who together own 17.5 percent, still control 22.8 percent of the voting rights."
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EA Looking to Increase Stake in UbiSoft More

EA Looking to Increase Stake in UbiSoft

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  • Activist vs. Consumer (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ZephyrXero ( 750822 ) <zephyrxero AT yahoo DOT com> on Thursday February 10, 2005 @02:21PM (#11633553) Homepage Journal
    How far is EA going to go to piss people off? The just can't get enough bad press can they? However, the real problem is "how long are people going to act like consumers instead of activists?" Now going to one extreme or the other is always bad, you have to find a balance...but I am tired of seeing people act like mindless cattle. If EA treats it workers, customers, and compitition poorly, people need to boycott. We may not own any stocks in the company, but we can control a little bit of their cash flow. If people would take a stand and make it unprofitable to act like this then they wouldn't. Do you really want to only have the choice of Sony, EA, Microsoft, or Nintendo for your games? Competition drives innovation, and the less companies there are the less competition there is. Please people, I beg you to take a stand for once against these monolithic corporations! [thecorporation.com]
    </rant>

    • Re:Activist vs. Consumer (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mitaphane ( 96828 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @02:46PM (#11633860) Homepage
      B, b, but where are the people going to get their next NFL football game?

      Not to rain on your parade, but the vast majority of people don't care. Joe consumer is too busy with the trivial details of his own life to care about business practices of a corporation that doesn't effect him, especially a video game publisher. On top of that, the casual gamer that play sports games doesn't care where their new football game comes from. As long as it has new stats, plays as well as the last iteration, and maybe has some fancier graphics he'll be happy. I think the only hope to see the death of EA is that their own arrogance will get the best of them.

      But aside from my hopeless skeptism, I'm with ya. Fight the power!
      • That's the whole point! Whether or not "Joe Consumer" realizes it, this does affect them...maybe not directly, but eventually it will. People need to be informed that all this apathy is going to catch up with them before it's too late...and I'm not just talking about EA here.
      • 1.) EA owned Porsche, games like Gran Turismo can't have a porsche 911 turbo.

        2.) They own Nascar the franchise practically.

        3.) In 2003 I warned people that EA will own the NFL players association soon. No one believe me then.

        4.) After they own UBisoft, they are only a couple steps away from blocking off everyone from having swat-team based tactical war games. Yes, this may sound crazy now. But so did the NFL thing back then.

        • 4.) After they own UBisoft, they are only a couple steps away from blocking off everyone from having swat-team based tactical war games.

          Wouldn't that just make Valve's day... It's not like Vivendi/Sierra are capable of putting up a fight these days
          • One I am also boycotting EA cause with no competition we will see the NFL frachise not get any better, just like the Nascar franchise hasn't really improved in the last few years. EA can't possibly get an exclusive license on war games, there isn't any one single organization that licenses these things. It would be like EA getting an exclusive license for Football (Not NFL, but the actual sport) it just can't be done.

    • Consumers just do not care. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LordZardoz ( 155141 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:07PM (#11634119)
      This may amount to bad press, but for bad press to matter, the consumers that drive the sales would need to actually give a damn.

      Now, in order to give much of a damn about EA's competition practices, labour relations, or other general bad behaviour, you have to be one of the following.

      1) a follower of the goings on in the videogame industry
      2) an employee within the game industry.
      3) a direct relative or friend of someone who qualifies on item 2
      4) a Labour activist.
      5) a member of the gaming Media.

      Now, the number of people who fall under those categories is quite small. Granted, members of those categories are screaming their heads off to anyone who will listen.

      But the bulk of EA's sales come from the following.
      1) Casual gamers.
      2) Parents of casual gamers.

      EA being a miserable company does not show up as even a blip on the radar of someone who cannot tell you the difference between EA and Blizzard. It does not affect their ability to do their jobs, raise their children, or search for their Pornography, or address their day to day moral concerns.

      So if you want consumers to give a damn about EA being run by assholes, you need to give the disintrested consumers a much better reason then the disapperance in choice between companies they have never heard of.

      END COMMUNICATION

      • You forgot one important group that could care: union members. In the US this is about 15% of the population, and most are rabid about working conditions. Let the average union worker know what is going on at EA and it will make a difference. Many of these people refuse to buy anything that doesn't have the union involved.

        • Let the average union worker know what is going on at EA and it will make a difference.

          There is nothing a union worker enjoys more than seeing a self-proclaimed "professional" who has been shouting "I don't need no fsucking union!" since the day he was born being treated like roadkill by his boss.

      • I'm willing to bet that the average game player, who reads the ocassional magazine, and plays his console a few times a week, thinks this is a good idea.
    • People will act like consumers as long as they are consumers. If EA is doing something illegally, then I would fully expect the US gov't (and any other gov't involved) to enforce the law. If the EA environment is really as bad as many people claim (and I believe that it is), this will come back to bite EA. You can't treat employess terribly and expect them to stay as long as there are other options. EA might not lose any market share right now over their practices, but they will lose market share when t
    • Honestly I'm not a software Pirate, I'm an activist!

      LK

  • Publicly traded company means loss of control. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LordZardoz ( 155141 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @02:50PM (#11633908)
    By becoming a publicly traded company, the founders of Ubisoft created the possibility of having control of their company taken away from them.

    They may now be rich from running a successful videogame publisher and selling stock in it. But now they get to experience the joy of watching someone they hate come along and systematically dismantle something they put a great deal of time and effort into making a success.

    If they can sleep comfortably on their large piles of money with that notion, then more power to them.

    But if they dont like what is happening, then they should kick them selves for permitting this to come about.

    END COMMUNICATION

  • Does this mean I should expect (Score:3, Funny)

    by centauri ( 217890 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @02:59PM (#11634015) Homepage
    Splinter Cell: Post Season?
    • I'm hoping for a sequel to UbiSoft's best game EVER: VIP(Valerie Irons Protection). Yeah, put a sequence of buttons to hit on the screen to make valerie fight the bad guys, a crude shooting gallery and a slide-puzzle!

      That'll reel in the profits from the uber-hit TV series.

  • Not impressed with EA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:14PM (#11634194) Journal
    I have not been impressed with EA at all recently, as a games company. Despite thier nfsu series, they are always in the news as a bad company to work for.

    I say they are looking at the games industry as a games sweatshop, which is not good for consumers.

  • Mind-tricks (Score:5, Funny)

    by shoptroll ( 544006 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:49PM (#11634634)
    Just like the White House is insisting that Iran isn't a major concern...yet.

    Anyone else feeling like the victim of a jedi-mindtrick?

    "This is not the hostile takeover you're looking."
  • They're going to keep at it, it's just what corporations do, you know. Try and make money. A sad world.

  • Clarification (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:53PM (#11638654)
    EA Looking to Increase Stake in UbiSoft

    Is this the money kind of stake, or the wooden kind?

  • I don't buy EA games, good thing, but I don't want good games like splinter cell and far cry to end up in bad places like EA.
  • ...they do it after the release of Silent Hunter III, that way I don't have to extend my boycott to this great looking sub sim...

    EA sucks. Ask anyone who used to play on Gamestorm...

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