Ubisoft pulls on its Action Pants, acquiring studio in Vancouver
French game publishing giant Ubisoft announced today that it has acquired Vancouver, Canada-based Action Pants, a game studio with more than 110 employees.
Vancouver has been one of the great regions for producing video game talent. Electronic Arts has a big operation there amid a bunch of startup game studios, which is why Ubisoft is moving in on the turf.
Action Pants was established in 2006 by game veterans Simon Andrews, Nik Palmer and Omar Al-Khafaji. It will release its first title, a sports game developed for the Nintendo Wii, later this year. That’s a market that Ubisoft has expanded into recently with last year’s title, Shaun White Snowboarding.
Christine Burgess-Quemard, executive director of worldwide production studios at Ubisoft, said that the Vancouver region has one of the biggest talent pools in the industry. Clearly, this is a good poaching opportunity for Ubisoft. One of the company’s big rivals, EA (which owns 20 percent of Ubisoft) recently closed its Black Box studio in Vancouver and relocated the team to Burnaby, Canada. EA has been trimming staff (about 10 percent of its 10,000 employees). Ubisoft reported sales in its most recent fiscal year of $1.2 billion. The purchase price of Action Pants was not disclosed.
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About the Author, Dean Takahashi
Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.