Ubisoft

Ubisoft was founded in 1986 in Carentoir, a village in Brittany, by the five Guillemot brothers - Yves, Claude, Michel, Gerard and Christian - whose family already ran an agricultural-supply business. Spotting that home computing was about to explode, they pivoted into distributing software across France, then moved quickly into publishing and in-house development, opening a studio and courting talent as the industry professionalized.

Their first homegrown breakout was Rayman in 1995, a limbless mascot whose lush 2D art made the studio a name in platformers. But Ubisoft's defining era began in the 2000s. A remake, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, revived a classic and seeded the ideas that flowered into Assassin's Creed in 2007 - a historical open-world franchise that became one of gaming's biggest sellers. Alongside it came Far Cry, the Tom Clancy military brands (Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon), the dance juggernaut Just Dance, and Watch Dogs.

Ubisoft expanded aggressively into a global network of studios stretching from Montreal - one of the largest development houses in the world - to Shanghai, Kyiv and beyond, becoming the standard-bearer for the sprawling, systems-driven open world. Yves Guillemot, long the public face as CEO, steered the company through a dramatic 2016-2018 stretch when it fought off a hostile takeover attempt by media conglomerate Vivendi, which had quietly amassed shares before finally selling out.

The studio's later years grew turbulent: workplace-culture scandals, a string of delayed or underperforming titles, and a sliding share price. In response the family restructured, spinning key franchises including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry and Rainbow Six into a dedicated subsidiary backed by Chinese investment giant Tencent. Still headquartered in France and still led by the Guillemots, Ubisoft remains one of Europe's largest and most influential game makers - a company whose scale and ambition helped define the modern triple-A open world, even as it works to steady itself.