Spaces - Guildford Units A-J, Austen House, Station View, Guildford GU1
14, Rue Erlanger, 75016, Paris [1]
Fine. It turns out I can't not cover the early years of Ubisoft. Thanks AMSTRAD ACTION. So, imagine a journey into history represented by the hands on a calendar spinning backwards. It's 28 March 1986. Five Guillemot brothers Christian, Claude, Gérard, Michel, and Yves found Ubisoft, actually Ubi Soft Entertainment S.A. However, they are not in Paris for long. They very quickly move some time around April or May 1986.
1, Voie Felix Eboue 94000 Creteil - France
Ubi Soft did well. Their first game was Zombi, an unofficial tribute to Dawn of the Dead released on the Amstrad. A computer which had done very well in France. AMSTRAD ACTION start writing about this new wave of French software houses as early as issue 12, September 1986 and mention Ubi Soft, Zombi, and another game called Fer et Flamme (Iron and Flame). Then in December 1986 Ubi Soft run a double-page advert in AMSTRAD ACTION promoting four games; Khaâl, Manhattan 95, Asphalt, and Zombi. This advert gives Ubisoft's address in Creteil, in the south west suburbs of Paris. The same advert is repeated in the January 1987 issue along with a review of Zombi. Could you just walk down to your local computer games shop and buy a copy of Zombi? The AA review isn't exactly clear, in fact it suggests the English language version of the game is still very much a work in progress; no price is given and the review specifically mentions the game came with no instructions. Six months later a review for Asphalt turns up in June 1987, the game earns an AMSTRAD ACTION RAVE.
Anchor House, Anchor Road, Aldridge, Walsall, WS9
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| December 2021 |
July 1987, Ubi Soft run an advert in AMSTRAD ACTION to promote Asphalt and Manhattan 95. This advert still gives Ubi Soft's address in Creteil but also includes the banner "Now distributed in the U.K. by Elite Systems." This is why there's a picture of groovy, downtown Walsall up above. See the Elite article to discover why Anchor House is the spiritual home of this blog. Over in France, Ubi Soft picked up the distribution rights for Domark, Electronic Arts, and Elite (Commando would go on to sell 15,000 copies[2]); clearly the deal with Elite was a quid-pro-quo affair. Then it all goes quiet. AMSTRAD ACTION don't seem to review Manhattan 95, and Khaâl disappears without a trace.
Langley Business Centre, 11-49 Station Road, Langley, Berkshire, SL3
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| March 2023 |
Now it's November 1988. AMSTRAD ACTION report that Electronic Arts have clinched a deal to distribute Ubi Soft games in the UK. Skateball seems to have been the first title released under this deal and it gets a double-page advert in ACE (November 1988). The same issue also carries another two page spread for Iron Lord (Fer et Flamme) and a single page advert for Puffy's Saga. All these adverts carry EA's address in Langley, just to the north west of Heathrow airport. The Langley Business centre was clearly on the way out when I passed by in March 2023. (Read the Electronic Arts article for the exciting story of how I asked a security guard if I could take a photo and they said "no", so I crossed the road and took a photo from the other side). If you go to Streetview now, the site has been cleared, although the Security Guard hut is still there. Skateball gets a release but Iron Lord and Puffy's Saga both seem to disappear.
The Ubi Soft hesitation waltz continues. They've tried dancing by themselves, that didn't work, and they've twice tried dancing with partners, which also didn't work. What to do next?
27 The Avenue, Brondesbury, London NW6
It was time to go it alone again. But this time, go it alone properly. No more trying to run the company from France. Ubi Soft Ltd was incorporated on 19 July 1989 with Yves Guillemot as the director and Christian Guillemot as the company secretary. The registered address was a semi-detached house in north London. That's clearly just a trading address. They're not going to run the company from there.
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| THE GAMES MACHINE October 1989 page 88 |
Oh. They are going to try and run the company from there. Okay. Ubi Soft operated from a semi-detached house in north London for at least a year, as far as I can tell.
Saddlers House, 100 Reading Road, Yately, Camberley, GU17
It's not like Ubi Soft are going to move and then operate from a house again, are they? No they didn't. Although I did wonder while I was standing looking at Saddlers House because it is someone's home, now. It was an office in 1990; planning permission for conversion was granted in January 2020. Tracking down Saddlers House was more difficult than you might expect. A straightforward search on Google Maps resulted in the pointer floating unhelpfully above a rural stretch of road by Yately Green which clearly wasn't right. A little judicious clicking found 101 Reading Road, a place called Cafe 46, with a house right next door to it. Could the house be number 100? The only way to find out was to go to Yately. So I did and it wasn't. I finally found Saddler's House on the far side of the road, more or less opposite Greggs and about 300m from where Google Maps confidently floated the red pointer. I couldn't spot it on Streetview because behind a tree and, as I've said, it's someone's home now which is why there's no photo.
Veteran French software publisher Ubi Soft has set up its own office in the UK, and is planning a wholesale onslaught on the British market. Ex-Grandslam man Duncan Lowthian has been drafted in and thinks that the company can serve UK games players much better with a proper UK base: “It gives customers a point of contact in the country, and we want to set up helplines where we can be contacted for hints and tips and also to evaluate games from budding programmers, since we want to publish our own UK-sourced product eventually,” he said.
PC LEISURE, issue 4 page 12
1990 was a grand reset for the company after two years of trying to run the UK division at arms length. Iron Lord and Puffy's Saga both finally get a release and Skate Wars and Zombi seem to pick up rereleases.
(Slight diversion) Holbrook Court, Cumberland Business Centre, Northumberland Road, Portsmouth, PO5
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| June 2025 |
If you go by the addresses listed on Companies House then Ubi Soft upped sticks on 01 September 1992 and moved all the way down the M3 to Portsmouth. This is quite on brand for a company who have Activision-level problems finding an office they like. Ubi Soft did move from Yately but not to Portsmouth, although this would be have been convenient for ferries to Normandy. This is just a change of registered address. Cumberland Business Centre was the home of a chartered accounts firm called Haines Watts. They handled Ubi Soft's business affairs until around 1996. So, where did Ubi Soft go?
Finchley House, 707 High Road, North Finchley, London. N12
Okay. This is the point where I got bored. Sorry. I thought it would be interesting to write a UK focused history of such a big international company. It was an approach that worked when I wrote about Atari and Commodore but Ubi Soft Ltd are just not that interesting (if you know differently then please email whereweretheynow@gmail.com and tell me where the bodies are buried. Unless there are actual bodies buried in which case tell the Police).
I struggled to find a hook for this article. Infogrames went through the UK software industry like a cat through a flightless bird sanctuary. Activision Ltd always had to cede to the will of their American parent who spent chunks of the eighties and early nineties on the brink of catastrophic financial collapse. EA were the clumsy corporate giant who kept acquiring software companies and then accidentally crushing them underfoot; like Bullfrog, or Westwood, or Origin. Or Dreamworks or Pandemic. Or Maxis. Ubi Soft? Well, the stuff about their hesitant UK launch might turn out to be the exciting high point.
I've found it difficult to engage with Ubisoft. There are very few sources. Several times I've started writing stuff and released I'm just transcribing the Wikipedia page. There's a lovely oral history at gameinformer.com which includes a lot of detail I didn't use because it's about the French parent company; the background to their growth and expansion; and the Château de la Grée de Callac, in Brittany, used for game development. I also find it difficult to get excited about Ubisoft because they hold little nostalgia for me. I really liked Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (completed it) and that's about it. Where do I go from here? This article is going to get pretty perfunctory once we get past the UK launch of the PlayStation. Maybe we should all just look at the pictures and move on.
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| June 2025 |
This is where Ubi Soft really were based, from 1992 to around 1994. Why they moved from Yately to North London is anyone's guess. The building itself looks pretty new. Is it the same one Ubi Soft moved in to? Probably. It had a refurbishment some time between 2017 and 2021 which smartened up the exterior. Pre-2017 it looks like a fairly bog standard sixties or seventies office block.
Bridge House, 11 Creek Road, Hampton Court, Surrey KT8
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| June 2025 |
Another move followed, around 1994, to Hampton Court which is considerably nicer than North Finchley. It's opposite the train station, and right by Hampton Court Bridge with the palace on the other side.
This was where Ubi Soft was based when Rayman was launched. Rayman was a game in the right place at the right time. The PlayStation suffered from a drought of games when it arrived in in Europe in September 1995. WipEout and Battle Arena Toshinden were the two games I got with my day one purchase of the console [3]. None of the other launch titles really grabbed me; Ridge Racer, Jumping Flash, Lemmings, Kileak: The Blood, Novastorm, and Rapid Reload [4]. The internet also tells me the PlayStation version of Rayman was available for sale with the PlayStation, on 29th September. Maybe it was. I don't really remember because Rayman was also not a game that grabbed me. I didn't want a cutesy Nintendo-esque platformer. Fortunately for Ubi Soft that wasn't the majority opinion.
The accounts held at Companies House tell the story. Ubi Soft's turnover to December 1995 was £1,487,036 by the next full set of accounts, to 31 March 1997, this has increased to £2,651,715. And by March 1998 it has increased to £8,145,932.
However, that's getting ahead of the story. Ubi Soft only spent a couple of years at Bridge House and in 1996 they moved on.
(Slight diversion two) Plumtree Court, London
Ubi Soft updated their registered address on 30 June 1996 along with a changed of accountants from Haines Watts to Coopers & Lybrand. The Plumtree Court building is long gone because this part of London behind Fleet Street is on a 20-30 year redevelopment cycle. If you set Streetview to 2009 you can see the old Plumtree Court building on the right, and watch as it is demolished in 2015 to be replaced by the glass monster that is the Goldman-Sachs building.
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| June 2025 |
The narrow road and the now demolished building were both called Plumtree Court. The site of the building was to the right in my photo but I tilted the camera towards the brick wall because I also wanted to get the road sign in frame. While taking this photo I had a conversation with a very bored security guard. I think my brief explanation of the recent history of the Goldman Sachs building might have been the most exciting thing that had happened to him all day. The poor bloke.
Vantage House, 1 Weir Road, Wimbledon, SW19
My sole research challenge was to locate one missing address. I'd got Bridge House from the Ubi Soft Ltd Mobygames page. The next address, Chantry Court, came from the Companies House listing because the move there marked the point when Ubi Soft began using its own address as the registered business address. What I had was a gap spanning 1996 to 2004 which I couldn't fill.
I found Vantage House by accident while clicking around at random on Mobygames. I landed on the entry for a 1996 game called Maths and English with Rayman: Volume 3 (because Ubi Soft were smart and knew they were on to a good thing with Rayman and exploited him for all he was worth). The entry for Maths and English with Rayman: Volume 3 included a picture of the box, and on the back of the box was an address I didn't know.
Vantage House is not really in Wimbledon. It's not really anywhere. It sits awkwardly on an industrial estate wedged between Wimbledon and Wandsworth, half a mile from the nearest train station called Haydons Road; on one of those weird south London train lines that doesn't seem to go near anywhere useful. Even Google Maps didn't want to take me there, it kept trying to send me to Weir Road in Balham; 4 miles away. That's twice now that Google Maps rejected Ubi Soft, even they seem bored with the company.
It turns out Vantage House is now used as temporary accommodation so it didn't seem appropriate to take a photo.
Earlier I mentioned the company accounts. Starting from 1996 they list the number of employees and what's surprising is how small Ubi Soft Ltd was; in 1996 the accounts list 6 employees, 4 sales and distribution and 2 administration; 1997 is 6 sales and distribution and 2 administration. 1998, 8 sales and distribution and 4 administration. The accounts also list the total salary spend so, being really nosy, it's possible to work out that a 1997 salary spend of £188,957 gives an average salary of £23,619. Increasing to £26,289 in 1998 when the total payroll was £315,469.
Turnover nearly tripled between 2000 and 2001; from £7,615,578 to £20,781,967. This follows the French parent company's launch of Gameloft, a development company for free-to-play online games, and a subsequent deal to licence Ubi Soft titles to Gameloft. A nifty piece of financial manoeuvring which raised the company's share price and gave them the money to buy Red Storm Entertainment and the rights to valuable Tom Clancy games like Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, and Rainbow Six. Ubisoft next acquired the rights to assets of The Learning Company. This 2001 deal gave them back catalogue rights to games developed by Mattel Interactive, Mindscape, Strategic Simulations (SSI), and Brøderbund [5].
You can read about all these financial manoeuvres on the Wikipedia page, if you want.
On 02 December 2003 Ubi Soft Entertainment Ltd formally changed their name to Ubisoft Ltd..
Chantry Court, Minorca Road, Weybridge, Surrey
This is where I dropped a clanger. Essentially, I got confused and thought Chantry Court is a house in Minorca Road. It isn't. My excuse is, if you search for Chantry Court on Google Maps the pin is dropped in the middle of Minorca Road and Google tries to claim Chantry Court is a pair of semi-detached houses. This is now the third time Google has struggled to tell me where Ubisoft's offices were located. It's trying to tell me something.
I wasn't paying attention and I was looking for an excuse to cut down on the number of trips I needed to make. I leapt to the conclusion that Ubisoft had reverted to operating from yet another house, for some reason, and ignored the address. This is frustrating because I'd been in the area. The next address, which I did visit, is frustratingly close to Weybridge; barely three miles.
I did all the other Ubisoft offices in June and kept putting off a return to south-west London. I finally did it yesterday and I'm sure you'll agree the picture below was worth the effort. Chanty Court is a generic red brick office block, presumably constructed in the wake of the destruction caused during the Martian invasion of 1898.
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| July 2025 |
Companies House records the change of address to Chantry Court as taking place on 11 January 2004. The same year Ubisoft Ltd reported a turnover of £50 million. It was also the year EA tried to take over the company by buying 20% of Ubisoft's stock. In the end, they didn't proceed.
1st Floor, Chertsey Gate East, London Road, Chertsey, Surrey, KT13
Ubisoft were only at Chantry Court for two years. Chertsey Gate East clearly better suited the company because they stayed from 2006 to 2013; which covers the time Julian Gollop worked for Ubisoft Sofia; 2006 to 2012. The Companies House listing reads Cherstey Gate East but I'm going to correct it to what I assume is right.
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| June 2025 |
We've now entered the Streetview years. There's nothing on the outside of the building to indicate Ubisoft's residency unless you set the year to 2012 and look up. Surprise Rabbid attack.
3rd Floor, Ranger House, Walnut Tree House, Guildford, Surrey, GU1
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| June 2025 |
And so to Guildford. Ubisoft moved there in 2013, following EA who arrived in 2008. It's an indicator of how little Ubisoft reflected my radar that I've managed to previously visit Guildford and write articles about Bullfrog and EA, and mention a whole of Guildford based developers like Criterion Games and Media Molecule, and never once realised that Ubisoft were also in the town.
Ubisoft Ltd was threatened with being stuck off the Companies House register in March 2022. This happens when a company fails to comply with its legal obligations; in this case it was probably Ubisoft's failure to provide full accounts. These should be filed no more than nine months after the financial year ends but the 2020 accounts didn't arrive until December 2021, amended results then followed in January 2022. If Ubisoft Ltd had been struck off the register the company would have been dissolved and wound up. As you can imagine the annual reports for 2021 and 2022 are filed very promptly.
It's probably not connected but following the threat of being struck off, Ubisoft Ltd reported a loss of £106,000 for 2022, compared to profits of £45,153,000 in 2021. This was the beginning of a long and continuing period of financial trouble for Ubisoft which sometimes makes it look like the company doesn't have much of a future. The 2020s have been a generally difficult period for the company. I'm writing this paragraph the day after three former Ubisoft senior executives were given suspended prison sentences and fines from a French court. They were found guilty of serious harassment charges in a trial which heard employees describe the company's Paris offices as run "with a toxic culture of bullying and sexism".
Spaces - Guildford Units A-J, Austen House, Station View, Guildford GU1
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| June 2025 |
This is where Ubisoft Ltd are right now. You can have a nose round their offices by visiting the company who did the interior design.
And that's it. The 2024 accounts also list three Ubisoft Ltd subsidiaries. Two are in Newscastle, which means I have scant chance of getting a photograph any time soon.
Ubisoft CRC Ltd, The Hub, Haymarket, Newcastle, NE1
CRC stands for Customer Relationship Centre. For whatever reason, Ubisoft has established their customer service branch as a separate company which, weirdly, was also threatened with being stuck off the Companies House register in March 2022.
Ubisoft Reflections, Partnership House, Regent Farm Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE3 3AF
Ubisoft Reflections are actually older than their parent company. They have a long history going back to 1986 when founders Martin Edmondson and Nicholas Chamberlain had Ravenskull published by Superior Software. Their first game as Reflections was 1989's Shadow of the Beast for Psygnosis. Reflections also wrote Destruction Derby which was the game that made me want to buy a PlayStation, in 1993. Reflections were taken over by GT Interactive in 1999 who were then themselves taken over by Infogrames. Infogrames, as Atari (they changed their name) sold Reflections to Ubisoft in 2006. I hope you got that.
Victoria House, Hampshire Court, Newcastle Business Park, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4
Central Square South, Orchard Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1
These are the other addresses I have for Ubisoft Reflections. Central Square south dates from 2006 to 2008 and Victoria House from 2008 to 2015. I've added them here because if I fail to correctly list every address for every UK based software company then the sun will surely go out. I wouldn't want that on my conscience.
Future Games of London Ltd, 5th Floor, Sutton Yard, 65 Goswell Road, London, EC1V
Future Games of London were founded in 2009 and released a series of mobile phone games in a series called Hungry Shark. Ubisoft brought them in 2013, changed the name to Ubisoft London, and then closed them down in 2023. This is Sutton Yard, behind the gate between the two buildings.
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| August 2025 |
The cover for Zombi came from CPC Power. The covers for Rayman and Assassin's Creed: Shadows both come from Mobygames.
[1] AMSTRAD MAGAZINE, March 1986 page 50
[2] TILT, January 1987 page 96
[3] From the Special Reserve shop in Chelmsford.
[4] Obviously I was wrong about Ridge Racer.
[5] Brøderbund were the original publisher of Prince of Persia so this deal resulted in the 2003 game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
[5] Brøderbund were the original publisher of Prince of Persia so this deal resulted in the 2003 game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
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Photos or invitations to stay in French châteaux can be sent to whereweretheynow@gmail.com
Photos or invitations to stay in French châteaux can be sent to whereweretheynow@gmail.com
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