Five Ubisoft executives has been officially fined a total of €1.2 million by the French stock market for insider trading.
The Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) accused the executives of insider trading in November 2015. It claimed that they had deliberately sold stocks just before Ubisoft delayed two major releases to avoid the 25% drop in stock value that occurred.
Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft Montreal, is the highest-ranking exec and the person facing the highest charges at €700,000.
No way of knowing
Ubisoft is appealing against the charges on the basis that the employees could not have known about the decision to delay the games.
"Given the processes and timetables involved in the production of major games at our company and within our industry in general, we believe that at the time they carried out their transactions these employees could not have been aware of or anticipate the subsequent decision to postpone the game that would be taken by Yves Guillemot on October 11, 2013," said Ubisoft in a statement to Kotaku.
Ubisoft already has numerous other problems to deal with alongside these charges. It is currently fending off a potential takeover from Vivendi, which recently increased its stake in the company to 25%.