In case anyone has forgotten, the company that was once merged with Activision – Vivendi – has been trying to force a hostile takeover of Ubisoft since 2016. The technicalities and financials of this move don’t really affect gamers, but if Vivendi succeeds, gamers could see it start to affect Ubisoft franchises.

Most gamers generally don’t care about the financial side of gaming or which companies are choosing to merge or buy one another out. In general, it’s pretty boring. However, some things merit paying attention to, specifically when they could start affecting the quality of games produced, and Ubisoft has a lot of properties to be affected.

For anyone who is a fan of Far Cry, Assassins Creed, Rayman, or the upcoming Southpark game, Fractured but Whole – this is something to pay attention to. Generally when a company performs a hostile takeover, it isn’t great for the company that is taken over. Morale is low, many people are often fired or quit, and generally there is a huge transition period. For an industry that already struggles with time frames (many AAA titles take upwards of five years to complete), this could make a slow process even slower. Yves Guillemot, owner of Ubisoft, has stated much the same in his continued arguments against allowing Vivendi to acquire his company.

Fears of a hostile takeover are pretty well founded, too. Vivendi first bought shares in Ubisoft in 2015 while buying shares in another Ubisoft property, Gameloft. Shortly after buying a small number of shares, Vivendi bought the majority of shares in Gameloft and acquired the company while Ubisoft could only look on. Vivendi then upped their amount of Ubisoft shares and requested to be placed on the board.

At Ubisoft’s annual shareholder meeting, COO Stephane Roussel repeated the need for Ubisoft to remain unchallenged by Vivendi for success, which is the only thing stopping Vivendi from moving to the board and making their next move. Fortunately for Ubisoft, they have been doing very well to the tune of stocks up 70%. However, if those numbers start to slip, we may bid goodbye to Ubisoft, and then we’ll be staring down long, dark tunnels of development hell.