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Ubisoft Entertainment (formerly Ubi Soft) is a computer and video game publisher and
developer headquarted in Paris with operations in more than 20 countries. It is one of the largest game publishers in the
United States and Europe.
The five brothers of the Guillemot family founded Ubisoft as a computer game publisher in 1986 in France. Yves Guillemot soon made a deal with Electronic Arts, Sierra
On-Line, and Microprose to distribute their games in France. By the end of
the decade, Ubisoft began expanding to other markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
In the early 1990s, Ubisoft initiated its in-house game development program which led
to the 1994 opening of a studio in Montreuil, France. That year Michel Ancel created the Rayman character. Ubisoft became a publicly traded
company in 1996 and continued to expand to offices around the globe, opening locations in
Shanghai and Montreal.
In 2000, Ubisoft acquired Red Storm
Entertainment, a game development studio that had already been famous from its Tom Clancy games. That same year, the company also purchased Blue Byte Software. By 2003, Ubisoft reported operations in 22
countries, nine of those having production or design offices. Ubisoft had a number of successful and award-winning games that
year, including Tom Clancy's Splinter
Cell, Prince of
Persia: The Sands of Time, XIII, Rayman 3, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3:
Raven Shield. Ubisoft's revenue for 2002-2003 was 453 million euros and the
company employed 1900 people (1300 in production). As of 2004, Yves Guillemot,
a founding brother, is the chairman and CEO of
Ubisoft.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ubisoft
committed itself to online games by getting behind Uru:
Ages Beyond Myst, The Matrix Online,
Shadowbane, and the European
and Chinese operation of EverQuest. The publisher established ubi.com as its online division. But in February 2004, Ubisoft cancelled
the online portion of Uru and backed out of the publishing deal on The Matrix Online. Regardless, only a week
later the company announced its acquisition of Wolfpack Studios, developers of Shadowbane.
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