Ubisoft Cuts 45 Jobs in Its U.S. Offices

ign.com:

Ubisoft is the latest video game company to be hit with another wave of layoffs.

As first reported by Bloomberg and later independently confirmed by IGN, 45 staff across the Assassin’s Creed publisher’s San Francisco and Cary, North Carolina locations were impacted by layoffs yesterday. Those affected will receive severance and career assistance, though further details about what those offerings include have not been revealed.

“Yesterday Ubisoft San Francisco and Red Storm Entertainment informed their teams of a restructuring that resulted in 45 employees leaving Ubisoft,” a Ubisoft spokesperson said in a statement. “This difficult yet necessary decision was made to align these studios’ organizations with their future business and development objectives. We are committed to providing comprehensive support to those affected, including severance and career assistance, and we thank them for their many contributions to Ubisoft.”

This is the second shift for the Red Storm team this summer, with the first arriving in May when Ubisoft announced that further development on its free-to-play spinoff, Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland, was canceled. At the time, the publisher called the move a “tough call” but would transition those members of the development team to other projects like XDefiant and Rainbow Six. It’s unclear how many members of the Red Storm team were affected by yesterday's layoffs.

Red Storm’s portfolio includes a number of noteworthy Ubisoft titles from the last few decades, including a number of entries in the Tom Clancy and Far Cry franchises. The studio also recently developed a VR-only title, Assassin’s Creed Nexus, which released last year. Ubisoft’s San Francisco branch developed titles in the Rocksmith series as well as South Park: The Fractured but Whole. It’s currently working on XDefiant and Rocksmith+.

Ubisoft laid off a number of employees across a few separate instances last year, too, with 60 affected in May and another 124 in November. It’s part