Google Reportedly Also Paid Upwards Of $20 Million For Ubisoft Titles

Google’s Stadia service was launched with a lot of hype from the company, with promises of a step into the future with a pure streaming-based gaming service. But it was obvious that the service was struggling from the beginning with little mindshare as well as multiplayer titles seeing low numbers. With the abrupt closing of first party titles, it’s clear that Stadia didn’t quite get off the ground like Google hoped, but they certainly were spending a lot of money to try.

It was recently reported via Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier that the company spent tens of million for a port of Red Dead Redemption 2 on the service. In a tweet to flesh out details later, he also stated that Ubisoft was also raking it in, as Google was paying tens of millions for their games, too. He used the figure of $20 million as an example for Ubisoft porting The Division and Assassin’s Creed.

It’s unclear if Schreier is just using that number as an example or not, but either way, Ubisoft was getting paid a very hefty amount for ports of their major titles. They were one of the first major publishers to release titles on Stadia and still release most of their major titles there.

Just to reiterate the absurdity of this thing: Sources say Google spent tens of millions of dollars — the budgets of some major games — PER Stadia port.

Publishers like Ubisoft and Take-Two were raking it in

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 26, 2021

Pay $20 million to Ubisoft to port Assassin's Creed and The Division

or

Pay $1 million to 20 small developers to each build something cool, betting that at least one of them will be a hit like Stardew Valley or Valheim

¯_(ツ)_/¯

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 26, 2021