Canada to Give Ubisoft Grants

The Canadian and Quebecois governments have announced millions of dollars in grants and tax subsidies for the Montreal studio of French developer Ubisoft. Bloomberg has the news that these monies will be given to the studio over the course of several years. From the article: "Paris-based Ubisoft plans to hire programmers, game designers and computer animation specialists in the city over the next five years.."

Comments

Not that I'm bitter...

[Txiasaeia]

Ubisoft, in the past, has turned out some pretty good stuff. I'm not arguing this. What I am concerned about is the current government's tendency to spend wads of cash without asking us, the taxpayers, what we think. There was a "sponsorship scandal" here recently in which the federal government supplied the Quebecois government with millions of dollars of cash in order to make the Canada "brand" more visible in the francophone province. As it turns out, most of that money disappeared into the wallets of bureaucrats and CEOs of advertising moguls, with hardly any money at all going towards this dubious end.

I love computer games, but I like health care more, which is what our MINORITY government *should* be spending more money on. $57 million dollars would go a long way in hiring new doctors and nurses, equipment, and other hospital staff. I'm also really appalled that the first I've heard of this is on Slashdot and not on CTV, CBC or Global (three major news outlets in Canada).

Re:Not that I'm bitter...

[hsoft]

That's kind of what I think too. Hey, that's 34M$ they're giving to a huge, foreign company so they can create 1000 jobs (if I remember yesterday's news right)

I think that they should give this 34M to fund *independant developers* instead. They would help our economy better IMO.

Re:Not that I'm bitter...

[Pig Hogger]

Ubisoft, in the past, has turned out some pretty good stuff. I'm not arguing this. What I am concerned about is the current government's tendency to spend wads of cash without asking us, the taxpayers, what we think.

Are we a tad jealous that only in Montréal, you can congregate the talents needed to have a big videogame (and pharmaceutical and aeronautical) industry? As the french don't have a culture where becoming an entrepreneur* is de rigueur, high-tech employers are very glad to setup shop there and hire extremely competent people who will almost never risk jumping ship to become the competition; after all, the worst thing for any business is it's competition, so you want to miminize the change of breeding competition within your own ranks...

* The problem with the french is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur - Ronald Reagan.

There was a "sponsorship scandal" here recently in which the federal government supplied the Quebecois government with millions of dollars of cash in order to make the Canada "brand" more visible in the francophone province.

Er, no. The sponsorship scandal (scandal it's *AINT*) was federal money pumped into federal liberal party friends' pockets where outrageous fees were charged to display the word CANADA at various venues. Like, paying $15 million to a racecar driver to wear the word Canada on the back of his suit.

This scandal, to the tune of less than $150 million, is mere window-dressing to divert the attention from the **REAL** scandal: $45 BILLION (yes $4.5 e10) stolen from the pockets of the salaried workers who paid into the unemployment insurance fund in order to finance the tax cuts of the rich.

I love computer games, but I like health care more, which is what our MINORITY government *should* be spending more money on. $57 million dollars would go a long way in hiring new doctors and nurses, equipment, and other hospital staff. I'm also really appalled that the first I've heard of this is on Slashdot and not on CTV, CBC or Global (three major news outlets in Canada).

If you listened to Radio-Canada (french CBC), you would have heard of this above all else (we only first heard from the Singh expulsion yesterday)...

Public Health Care is a big thorn in the feet of outfits such as Great West Life Insurance who would dearly want it to be totally scrapped, in order to milk the canadian public, just like the US health insurance industry is hammering the people with higher and higher health-care premiums, so it can pad it's 15% overhead (in comparison to the mere 3% overhead of canadian government insurance monopolies).

Government grants?!?

[ChibiLZ]

I respect Ubisoft and the Montreal studio, they make excellent titles that are well developed.

But why does the government have to give money to them? I was under the idea that they were doing quite well for themselves. Could this possibly be a move to try to force out EA, or allow Ubisoft to get a majority of their own shares? I think that as long as they continue to pump out great games, us gamers will be more than willing to fill their coffers.

OTOH, this will be a good bolster to their equipment, and allow them to more fully exploit the next generation systems coming out. Next-gen titles will certainly be more expensive and/or take longer to develop. Maybe we can now get a Splinter Cell 4 soon for the PS3, XB2, or Revolution.

Finally, a little OT, but I am always glad to see game innovation coming out of somewhere other than Japan. And maybe we should all get out there and buy some stock now, before it shoots up.