Speculation around Ubisoft earnings delay proves unfounded
It was an accounting issue involving new auditors and the reporting of revenue from two unspecified partnerships, the company said.
Ubisoft has not been sold, nor it hasn’t broken up with its biggest investor, Tencent.
Those were some of the most dramatic reasons pondered in the past week by gamers, media, analysts and pundits to explain an unusual and seemingly last-minute six-day delay of the company’s latest earnings.
Instead, Ubisoft said on Friday morning that the delay was due to the appointment of new company auditors in July and the need to restate its 2025 fiscal accounts due to accounting issues around some of the company’s partnerships.
“I would like to start with the reason for the delay in publishing our results,” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said to begin an earnings call set at the start of the business day in Paris, where Ubisoft is headquartered.
Soon, Ubisoft’s CFO Frederick Duguet provided the unglamorous details: The new auditors determined that revenues from a “meaningful partnership” from the company’s prior fiscal year (ended March 31, 2025) needed to be recognized differently in its fiscal 2025 results. Such a revision would also impact the reporting of a second partnership booked this past summer, requiring a restatement of Ubisoft’s results.
The restatement resulted in Ubisoft breaching its leverage covenant ratio under certain financing agreements as of September 30. It said this was being addressed through the early repayment of the concerned debt instruments using proceeds from the Tencent deal.
Overall, Ubisoft said it generated €491 million ($567 million) in net bookings (player spending) for the July-September quarter, above its guidance for shareholders and up 39% year on year.
Ubisoft said its Assassin’s Creed franchise, including March’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows was “over-performing,” and “generated 211 million session days, ~35% higher than the last two years’ average.” The company did not provide specific sales figures for Shadows. It said this week’s update to 2023’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage had increased that title’s lifetime player count past 10 million. Game File previously reported employees believe the mini-expansion was created with backing from Saudi Arabia (Guillemot had announced the expansion in Riyadh in August, at a Saudi government-backed conference. Ubisoft has repeatedly avoided clarifying the extent to which the kingdom funded the expansion, and the topic did not come up directly in today’s results and call with stock analysts).
Rainbow Six Siege, consistently one of Ubisoft’s biggest games, had gained players and increased session days and playtime during Ubisoft’s summer quarter, but “a temporary surge in cheating has impacted activity and player spending versus expectations.” The company said it had “identified the main issues and is actively addressing them with a robust plan.”
Ubisoft said its partnership with Tencent was proceeding apace and that the latter would deliver its expected investment in new Ubisoft subsidiary Vantage. That deal was “on track to close in the coming days,” per Ubisoft today. Ubisoft previously said that Tencent would invest €1.16b ($1.25 billion) into the subsidiary. Vantage is overseeing development of projects related to Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six.
Ubisoft said its “cost savings” plan has continued to shrink headcount, which is down to 17,097 as of the end of September, down from 17,782 at the end of March and way down from nearly 21,000 workers in 2022.
Generative AI plans teased
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot spent a minute near the start of an earnings call with investors to promote Ubisoft’s adoption of generative AI in game development.
He said:
“We are making great strides in applying Gen AI to high-value use cases that bring tangible benefits to our players and teams…It’s as big as a revolution for our industry as the shift to 3D. And we have everything to lead on this front.
“On the player experience side, we are continuing to make progress on groundbreaking player-facing generative AI applications, building on our neo NPC announcements in 2024. We have already advanced from prototyping to player reality, and we are looking forward to sharing more before the end of the year.
“On the production side, we now have teams in all our studios and offices embracing this new technology and constantly exploring new use cases in programming, art and overall game quality.”
(Ubisoft’s “neo NPCS” are computer-controlled characters who respond to player’s spoken questions with AI-generated replies. The characters are shaped by personalities whose parameters are set by human developers. Game File checked them out in spring 2024.)
One mystery game
Ubisoft said that it will release four games in the first three months of 2026: the two mobile games Rainbow Six Siege Mobile and The Division Resurgence, as well as a long-awaited remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. A fourth game for early 2026 is unannounced.
That game may well be a remake of 2013’s acclaimed pirate adventure Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. The remake project has been the subject of multiple leaks and rumors (and its existence has been corroborated by Game File sources, though I have not heard when it’s set to come out).
Item 2: In brief…
📈 The Nintendo Switch 2 sold 328,000 units in the U.S. in October, according to sales-tracking firm Circana.
It is ahead of the Switch and PlayStation 4’s record pace in the region, Circana noted.
Switch 2 sales offset double-digit year-on-year October declines in Switch 1, PS5 and Xbox Series, per Circana.
Sales of ASUS portable PC gaming hardware (including the October-launching ROG Xbox Ally) nearly quintupled compared to the prior October.
The top premium game of the month by dollars: EA’s Battlefield 6, followed by Nintendo-published Pokémon Legends: Z-A—though Nintendo doesn’t share download sales with Circana. (Performing less well for EA was 2008’s Spore, which sold just one physical copy this past October.)
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which splurged on gaming stocks in recent years, spent billions on esports companies and Scopely, and recently partnered with other investors to buy Electronic Arts for $55 billion ($20 billion financed by debt) is now… short on cash, The New York Times reports.
The fund has $1 trillion in assets, according to the Times report, but quotes an official as saying it has $60 billion in cash.
While the figures are eye-watering, the Times report indicates that the PIF is struggling with challenging, pricy infrastructure projects and is telling would-be investment partners that it’s seeking better returns.
About the EA deal, the Times reports: “PIF’s representatives say it’s a long-term investment that will eventually double in value.”
🗓️ We have a date. EA’s shareholders will vote on December 22 whether to approve the sale of the company to PIF and other investors, EA said Thursday.
🕊️ Rival game engine companies Unity and Epic have struck a deal that will allow Unity-developed games to be published inside Epic’s Fortnite, the companies announced.
🏆 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the role-playing game from first-time French studio Sandfall Interactive, received a record 12 nominations for the 2025 The Game Awards, including for Game of the Year.
Other GOTY noms: Death Stranding 2, Donkey Kong Bananza, Hades II, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.
Organizers have removed a Best Debut Indie Game nomination from Megabonk, after developer Vedinad noted that they’d made and released other games under other names (as had been assumed but not quite confirmed)
🧛 Vampire Survivors is getting a turn-based deck-builder/dungeon-crawler spin-off called Vampire Crawlers in 2026, for PC, console and mobile.
🧱 Zork is now officially open-source, Ars Technica reports.