As part of the agreement to get the Activision Blizzard King deal to go through with the CMA, Microsoft has signed a deal with Ubisoft to distribute their games in select regions. Now that the deal is finally closed, we know what this agreement entails.

Taking to a news posting on the official Ubisoft website, Chris Early, Ubisoft’s SVP, Strategic Partnerships & Business Development, explained in detail what the deal meant for the future of the company, and how it would expand both their subscription service in not only new games but also its cloud reach. 

“Why did Ubisoft decide to take on the streaming rights of Activision Blizzard’s games? What does the deal mean for Ubisoft and the Ubisoft+ subscription?

Chris Early: Taking on these rights allows Ubisoft to bring Activision Blizzard games like Call of Duty to Ubisoft+, as well as license the streaming access of these games to cloud gaming companies, service providers and console makers – meaning we’re helping expand access for more players across streaming services.

We’ve always been a technologically forward-looking company and we believe that we can create differentiation and competitive advantage for our products through technology in addition to the games themselves. We’ve been active in the streaming space for a long time and that’s one of the reasons Microsoft came to us; we were the first studio that Google worked with for Stadia; the first company that Amazon worked with for Luna; and we’ve been partners with NVIDIA GeForce Now for years. To Microsoft, it made sense that if somebody was going to be familiar with the space and know what the value would be for streaming, it would be us. And we saw the value as well.

There was a bit of a discussion of what rights would be available, and once that was clear it was easy to see how that would allow us to add Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft+ and bring even more value to our offering. It’s also content that might be new or different for our player base, so it allows a broader range of choice. We’re already working with partners around the world to distribute Ubisoft+ and our slate of games, so adding Activision Blizzard games to that is easier than starting from scratch somewhere and building a completely new service.”

So just how long is this agreement planned for, what exact titles are coming to Ubisoft +? Well according to Chris, this deal will include all current Activision Blizzard games being distributed today, will all future games coming to the service for the next 15 years. This also includes all DLC, expansions, in-game content, and add-ons. 

Chris notes in the posting that he believes Cloud Streaming is going to play an important role in the future and that it will be closer to what gaming is today in the next 10-15 years for Cloud Streaming due to technology improving to make it more accessible. 

The biggest take here is that this deal will last the next 15 years, and include all of Activision Blizzard titles releasing during that time. However what isn’t clear is how this deal will work outside of the selected region, as Ubisoft+ is available in many locations outside the EU, such as North America and other neighboring countries. Will these games only be available exclusively in certain regions for the service, or will Ubisoft be allowed to expand it out to other countries? Only time will tell.