Since 2015, Ubisoft has been in the uncomfortable position of fending off the possibility of a hostile takeover from Vivendi. The company owned 27% of Ubisoft through shares – a number that comes out to around 30 million shares of the company. With a controlling stake in the company, Vivendi was in a position to perform a hostile takeover of Ubisoft, perhaps dramatically realigning its goals and games. However, today Vivendi has finally sold its shares back to the original owners – the Guillemot brothers and founders of Ubisoft – which means fans can breathe a sigh of relief.

Vivendi is a monstrous figure in gaming, one which has mostly kept its presence in gaming somewhat hidden. They previously owned Blizzard, including all Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo properties. However, in 2008 Vivendi merged their games division with Activision, transferring all their games to this new creation. Under Activision Blizzard – in a deal worth approximately $18.9 billion – The Call of Duty series would see its greatest success and Bungie would sign a ten year publishing deal with the company. The popular Skylanders trend was also created under this entity.

It wasn’t until 2013 that Actvision Blizzard was able to split from Vivendi in a deal that earned Vivendi $5.83 billion more. During this time, Vivendi has continued to look for new gaming prospects to buy into. They have also never shied away from buying companies out to dismantle or absorb them. For these reasons, Ubisoft had legitimate concerns that the company would look to acquire them following their sale of Blizzard.

The only thing that stopped Vivendi from taking control of Ubisoft in the past was the board of directors, who Ubisoft convinced not to give Vivendi a spot. If they had, Vivendi would have been able to use their majority stake to steer the company in whatever direction they chose.

With Far Cry 5 only a week away from its release date of March 27, Ubisoft is almost certainly looking positively on the rest of 2018. The CEO of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, was particularly excited.

While fans of Ubisoft are certainly happy with these changes, the selling off of Vivendi’s stake lured one other company into sniffing at Ubisoft’s shores. The mega-company Tencent – who owns Riot games as well as dozens of other gaming companies and platforms – now controls 5% of Ubisoft’s total stock. While this isn’t close to a controlling share, it does mean that Ubisoft can’t be too careful. They may have fended off one shark only to attract the attention of another.