Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s successful completion of its Activision acquisition, Ubisoft has released a Q&A covering how the company plans to use its streaming rights for Activision Blizzard games moving forward. Ubisoft gained the game streaming rights to the Activision Blizzard catalog as part of agreements made by Microsoft to gain the European Commission’s approval for the high-profile acquisition.
Ubisoft isn’t abandoning physical media even as it prepares to ramp up its game streaming efforts
As initially reported by Eurogamer, Ubisoft has released a Q&A with Ubisoft’s SVP of Strategic Partnerships & Business Development, Chris Early, that gives gamers an overview of how the publisher will use the game streaming rights it acquired as part of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision.
Under the terms of an agreement brokered by Microsoft with the European Commission, the company is required to allow anyone who owns Activision Blizzard games in the European Economic Area to stream them for free. Rather than handling the streaming itself, Microsoft granted Ubisoft the streaming rights to Activision Blizzard titles in that region.
Gamers in the European Economic Area will now be able to stream any games they own from the Activision Blizzard backlog as part of this deal. Early notes that the deal for streaming rights also covers the next 15 years of Activision Blizzard releases and is retained in perpetuity, meaning that Ubisoft “will still be able to provide those games to people and companies throughout the world” even after the deal ends. Gaining the streaming rights to Activision Blizzard titles is a big win for Ubisoft, letting it expand its streaming catalog far beyond first-party titles like the upcoming Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
Early also discussed how the increased adoption of game streaming could impact the sales of physical media for games. Brushing aside concerns that the rise of streaming poses a significant threat to physical game disks, he points to the thriving market for collector edition games and the ability for players to quickly purchase a game at the store or easily gift one to friends.
While Ubisoft is clearly eager to add Activision Blizzard titles to its own Ubisoft+ streaming service, gamers will have to before loading up Call of Duty on the cloud. Just as Activision games won’t be on Xbox Game Pass until 2024, Early states that Ubisoft needs time to ensure that its “back end fully supports the experience we want players to have” before Activision Blizzard titles begin appearing on Ubisoft+.
