Ubisoft and Other Bidders Line Up Offering to Acquire Arkane Lyon

If you have been following the situation, you know Arkane Lyon's future looks more hopeful than it did a few weeks ago. When its situation first came to light, the studio had until about mid-November to find a buyer, with shutdown as the alternative.

Shortly afterward, word came out that the deadline had moved to mid-December. When Microsoft hands out extra time, it usually signals talks are moving forward, making the worst outcome less likely. Nothing is signed yet, though, and the real issue now is who ends up owning the team and what they plan to do with it.

An insider has put some names to the interest.

According to people familiar with the negotiations, multiple companies have made offers to Microsoft for the developer behind Dishonored and the upcoming Blade series. Ubisoft made a bid, as did at least two other gaming companies.

The sources asked not to be identified because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. On top of that, XBOX has weighed selling the studio to its own management. That last option connects to something that surfaced earlier, when Raphaël Colantonio of WolfEye Studios was seen circling the situation.

He could be one of the interested parties, although nothing confirms it. A management buyout would let Arkane Lyon go independent and step away from big-publisher ownership, which matters for a genre like immersive sims, since the biggest publishers have not fully embraced it. With an outside buyer, there is no guarantee the team would keep working the way it does now.

The French publisher is the name drawing the most attention, and reactions to it are split. Its track record is mixed. It has released games players love, such as Far Cry 3, along with Watch Dogs and a long run of Assassin's Creed titles.

Newer entries like Valhalla have drawn mixed reactions, and its sheer size is a common complaint. The company has also pulled off surprises, including free updates for the Ghost Recon games, the announcement of a tactical Rainbow Six game, and the Mario + Rabbids crossover.

On the other side, its main series have declined, Splinter Cell has gone without updates, and there is plenty of talk about its growing use of AI.

Judging by early comments online, much of the public response so far is people joking at its expense; the publisher's organization matters here too. It has restructured its business into several creative houses, each centered on specific franchises.

Under that setup, Arkane Lyon would most likely be absorbed into one of those groups once Blade ships, and the expectation would be that it joins the larger machine rather than operating on its own. One scenario has Arkane Lyon picking up a stealth project.

Splinter Cell is an established franchise that gets little attention, remakes are already on the way, and a developer with a stealth background would be a natural fit for a new entry. What stays unclear is how much Ubisoft would be willing to spend to bring in the staff, help them finish the Marvel game, and then move them onto something like that.

Another route points toward Assassin's Creed. If you have played Dishonored, you know the character's hands sit on screen, one holding a blade and the other holding a power or gadget. Put a hidden blade in one hand and something else in the other, and you have the outline of a first-person entry in that series.

That series has its own history.

It became oversaturated and wore down even longtime fans, and Assassin's Creed then swung the other way into open-world RPG territory. That left a divided audience: fans who are tired of it, fans who enjoy the RPG approach, fans who dislike it completely, and fans who miss the storytelling and focus of the early games.

It is also Ubisoft's biggest and most successful series, which leaves room for subseries, including a first-person game built by the Lyon team. Even with those ideas on the table, there is no sign the publisher would take the obvious route. The team could just as easily end up as a support studio, helping on the next Splinter Cell game or another project instead of leading it.

If Arkane Lyon were given the lead, it would mark a chapter few saw coming. Take-Two is another name that comes to mind as a possible bidder, though the report does not say which two other companies. Its 2K label has been linked to Perfect Dark, another immersive sim, so this studio could be a good fit.

The company is likely to have a surplus of cash in the coming years thanks to Grand Theft Auto, some of which will go back into Rockstar and some of which could go toward filling gaps in its lineup. It already leads in sports through the NBA games and holds a strong position in third-person open-world games, with Mafia on the smaller, boutique side and Grand Theft Auto as the blockbuster.

Take-Two's lineup has a first-person gap that Arkane Lyon could fill.

Borderlands covers the first-person looter shooter. A studio like Arkane Lyon could round out that mix. Earlier reports said Take-Two was shopping for acquisitions even before GTA 6 neared release, which lines up with that idea. The identity of the third company has not come out.

Tencent holds a large investment in the French publisher, and some people see Tencent's involvement as a drawback. Besides Take-Two, other companies could be circling with big-money offers that Microsoft may accept to close a deal, and Arkane Lyon, which mostly wants to keep going, could accept too.

The terms of the offers weren't available, and Microsoft has not agreed to a deal with any buyer, according to the sources. A deal would likely let the studio finish Marvel's Blade, announced in 2023 and expected within the next year or two.

That matches what a union representative at Arkane Lyon said earlier: shutting down would waste a huge amount of work, given how close the team is to finishing. An XBOX spokesperson said the company is exploring options ahead of a December deadline and declined to comment further. A spokesperson for the French publisher did not comment immediately when the story ran.

With the studio seemingly headed for a rescue, attention shifts to what a buyer intends.

If the goal is for the team to ship the Marvel game first, the new owner has to be willing to hold off on bigger plans for a year or two. Using the French publisher as the example, that means waiting on any Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell, or Ghost Recon work until that game is out.

There is also the case where the Marvel game becomes a hit, even only as a critical favorite, and what that could do to a buyer's plans for the team. Arkane Lyon has no confirmed deal yet, so none of this is settled. The studio's history adds context.

Its stealth series launched in 2012 under Bethesda, a publisher known for first-person games such as Doom, The Evil Within, Wolfenstein, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls. Microsoft later acquired the publisher, bringing Xbox money into the picture. Instead, the studio came close to being shut down and could now land at a French company.

The publisher being French may also help, since the team is based in Lyon, and it would sit alongside the Tencent stake as a factor in the deal. How the transition works for a studio changing owners across companies is not clear. Whatever happens, Arkane Lyon looks set to continue, and an official announcement will have to come before anything counts as final.