A recent report has confirmed that Ubisoft signed a deal with a rather controversial business partner in Saudi Arabia. Apparently, the deal was for a DLC for Assassin’s Creed: Mirage. However, due to the nature of the partnership, many have been asking Ubisoft about the matter, and the studio has since neither denied nor commented on the matter.
The information came from the French news outlet Les Echos, which pointed out that several of its sources stated that Ubisoft now has a business deal with Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group. As it happens, Savvy Games Group gets its funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the chairman of which is Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The deal would supposedly fund Assassin’s Creed: Mirage‘s DLC or new content. For those who are unaware, the CIA blames Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the assassination of a journalist named Jamal Khashoggi who unearthed Saudi Arabia’s widespread human rights violations back in 2018.
Thanks to Eurogamer’s translations and efforts to reach out to Ubisoft, the studio somewhat had a statement on the matter despite refusing to comment:
“We’ll decline to comment. We are focused on finishing Assassin’s Creed Shadows and excited for players to get to play it on 20th March,” according to a Ubisoft spokesperson.
The spokesperson, of course, is referring to Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and not Assassin’s Creed: Mirage. Still, Ubisoft didn’t exactly deny the partnership with Savvy Games Group and its involvement with the Saudi Prince and the Public Investment Fund initiative.
It’s not just Ubisoft
It’s worth noting, however, that it’s not just Ubisoft that has sought out and signed agreements with Savvy Games Group and Saudi Arabia. Even other big game companies like Take-Two Interactive, Nintendo, EA, Nexon, and Capcom are all involved with Savvy Games Group and Saudi Arabia in one way or another.
Among those video game companies, however, Ubisoft is the one that’s notably having financial issues thanks to a string of controversies and failed video game ventures. It also appears that Ubisoft’s troubles are not over yet despite the prospective deal with Tencent since it has recently laid off over 185 employees.
