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Vivendi’s stake in game publisher Ubisoft now exceeds 25%, triggering a possible takeover battle (updated)

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Vivendi said today that its stake in French game publisher Ubisoft now exceeds 25 percent, pushing the company over a legal threshold and possibly triggering a takeover battle.

Paris-based Vivendi took over Gameloft, a mobile game publisher started by the same Guillemot family that leads Ubisoft, last year using the same sort of creeping share acquisition strategy. Now, Vivendi holds 25.15 percent of Ubisoft’s shares and 22.92 percent of its voting rights based on the most recent data available on October 31. If Vivendi acquires more than 30 percent of the stock, it is required under French law to make an offer to buy the entire company.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.