Marvel's Blade developer Arkane Lyon reportedly has at least three potential buyers, including Ubisoft, as it approaches a December deadline to secure a sale and avoid closure. No deal has been agreed.
Ubisoft has submitted a bid to Microsoft alongside at least two other gaming companies, according to Shacknews' account of a Bloomberg report. The other bidders have not been named and financial terms have not been disclosed. Microsoft has also considered selling the studio to its own management.
A successful sale could preserve the team developing Blade. Arkane Lyon's reported deadline was extended from November 13 to December 13, with 217 jobs at stake, Shacknews reports. The bids give Microsoft options, but they do not yet secure the studio's future.
The Blade game behind the sale talks
Arkane Lyon is the French team behind Deathloop and the Dishonored series. Its Blade project is a single-player, third-person game, a change of perspective from those first-person games.
Marvel's original announcement, published on December 7, 2023, places the game in a quarantined section of Paris during a supernatural emergency. Vampires have forced residents to shelter indoors at night, with players taking the role of the half-human, half-vampire Daywalker.
Bloomberg's reported expectation is that Blade will release within the next year or two. That is a reporting estimate, not an announced release date. Neither a completed acquisition nor a confirmed launch schedule follows from the bids, and the report does not establish what a change of owner would mean for the game's platform availability.