Almost everything about these rumors is strange. Releasing add-ons to a game two years after its release is clearly not about money, which in this case is almost impossible to earn. Moreover, Assassin's Creed Mirage is a compact story-driven game, the ending of which simply does not require DLC, and Ubisoft itself has repeatedly emphasized that it has no plans to release add-ons for Mirage. Moreover, Ubi is now worried about another game in the series, Assassin's Creed Shadows, which is already on the way. But everything falls into place if you understand what this Savvy Games Group is.
Savvy Games Group is a Saudi state-owned company established in 2021 that aims to turn Saudi Arabia into a new gaming hub by 2030, for which it is actively investing in Western publishers and buying up independent studios. That is, it repeats the tactics of China's Tencent, which fully owns or has shares in dozens of leading Western gaming companies. The only exception is that Savvy Games Group uses public funds for this purpose, not private ones, but oil money from the Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Fund (which has assets worth $930 billion). In 2022, Savvy Games declared a desire to invest $37.8 billion in games and has already managed to make good purchases and even create its own studios.
In the same year, 2022, Savvy Games Group acquired the German ESL FACEIT Group, which has been organizing major esports tournaments of the Electronic Sports League (ESL) series since the early 2000s. In 2023, the publisher and developer of mobile games Scopely, Inc. became the property of Savvy Games, which is, for a second, the developer of the extremely profitable Monopoly Go! and a bunch of other popular mobile games like Scrabble Go, Kingdom Maker, Marvel Strike Force, Yahtzee With Buddies, etc.
In the same year, 2022, Savvy Games started buying up shares of leading Western publishers. As of now, the Saudi company owns 10.2% of Korean Nexon (The Finals, Dave the Diver, The First Descendant, MapleStory); 9% of Electronic Arts (F1, FC, Madden NFL, The Sims); 8.3% of Embracer Group (which still includes Ukrainian-Maltese 4A Games); 7.5% of Nintendo (one of the largest stakes in Nintendo); 5% of Capcom (Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry) and an unknown share of Take-Two Interactive (BioShock, Civilization, GTA, Mafia).
That is, this list clearly hints that Savvy Games Group is interested not only in DLC, but maybe not in DLC at all, which information does look very strange, even if Assassin's Creed Mirage is the first game in the series dedicated to an Islamic country. It seems that Savvy Games is counting on closer cooperation with Ubisoft, which is in dire need of help now. But how will the aforementioned Chinese Tencent, which owns 9.99% of Ubisoft shares and seems to be willing to take over the French company, react to this?
Well, the confrontation between two large investment companies for one not-so-large publisher is even interesting. Place your bets.