Gameloft is in a really interesting position right now as it looks like they’re due to be taken over in a hostile bid by French media conglomerate Vivendi. The name Vivendi should be familiar to gamers as they were once the majority shareholder in Activision Blizzard before selling most of its stake in the company back to them in 2013. Now seemingly on the lookout for new holdings in the gaming industry, they’ve been targeting Gameloft with a hostile takeover bid in the last few months. And recently, Bloomberg has reported that Vivendi’s takeover bid is nearing a successful acquisition after enough stakeholders agreed to Vivendi’s 8-euro-per-share offer to give Vivendi a controlling interest.
Now, the controlling interests of Gameloft, the Guillemot family and Ubisoft, have resisted this acquisition. They hope a court ruling rejecting the takeover will come down in September on complicance issues. Though, if it goes through, this may be the first step in a bigger power play for Vivendi, as they want representation on the board of Ubisoft. In short, this Gameloft acquisition could be a potential major move in the gaming world as a whole, as Vivendi moves to acquire both a mobile gaming company (albeit one with an unsure place in the world) and one of the biggest traditional gaming publishers.
