Vivendi has now announced that the company has sold all of its remaining shares in Ubisoft, which makes for a grand finalisation of the whole ordeal. That's not to say that Vivendi is at a loss here, mind.
For the uninitiated, Vivendi is a massive media conglomerate which, at one point, threatened to swallow Ubisoft whole - much as they did with Gameloft back in the day. This prompted Ubisoft to start reinventing themselves, which eventually proved to be too much trouble for Vivendi to stay interested in.
The popular take was that Vivendi, no matter how formulaic Ubisoft had become at one point, would make the company far, far worse by forcing them to include even more predatory monetisation techniques than usual. Worth noting is that Gameloft's mobile games did become more aggressive in this regard, post-takeover. In any case, the deal didn't go through, and Vivendi has now sold off all of their remaining shares for a capital gain of $249 million.
"Vivendi is no longer a Ubisoft shareholder and maintains its commitment to refrain from purchasing Ubisoft shares for a period of five years," said Vivendi in an official statement. "Vivendi, which already owns Gameloft, a global leader in mobile video games, confirms its intention to continue to strengthen its position in the video games sector," they said.
Vivendi's total gain in this entire episode now amounts to a capital gain of about $1.4 billion, which is not exactly pocket change, either.
