Summary
- Layoffs continue to plague the gaming industry in 2023, with Ubisoft Montreal being the latest studio to announce cuts to its staff, including 98 jobs.
- Other major gaming companies like Microsoft, Team17, BioWare, CD Projekt Red, Epic Games, and Bungie have also been affected by layoffs this year.
- Ubisoft Montreal's layoffs will affect its general and administrative teams, as well as other Canadian divisions, in an effort to optimize resources for long-term sustainability. Production teams, responsible for hits like Far Cry and Rainbow Six Siege, are reportedly unaffected.
In a regretfully continuing trend across the gaming industry, Assassin’s Creed developer Ubisoft Montreal is the latest studio to issue layoffs to its staff. 2023 has seen a considerable amount of corporate downsizing among video game companies, with Microsoft cutting over 10,000 jobs across its many gaming subsidiaries way back in January following a rough fiscal quarter. These layoffs included cuts to 343 Industries and Bethesda, and Microsoft would announce even more firings in July.
This unfortunate trend of video game layoffs is affecting more than just Microsoft, as many other gaming companies and developers have been announcing cuts to their workforces throughout 2023. These include indie studio Team17, which is known for its work on games like Worms and Golf With Your Friends, as well as major triple-A names like BioWare, CD Projekt Red, Epic Games, and even former Halo developer Bungie. October was especially rough, with no less than four Sony-owned developers letting workers go as the result of economic troubles or corporate restructuring .
Now Ubisoft Montreal, the publisher behind several of the most recent Assassin’s Creed games, is announcing layoffs to its staff. According to Kotaku, the Canadian-based studio is cutting 98 jobs as part of a “reorganization” of its general and administrative teams. This round of layoffs will also affect other Canadian Ubisoft divisions like Ubisoft IT and Ubisoft’s SFX studio Hybride, which helped produce the hit Disney+ TV series The Mandalorian. In a notice to the government of Quebec, Ubisoft stated that a total of 124 positions will be cut from the company as part of efforts to “optimize its resources to be more sustainable in the long term.”
In another statement shared with Kotaku, a Ubisoft spokesperson wrote that these recent layoffs are not being taken lightly by the studio and that this restructuring will not affect Ubisoft Montreal's production teams. Said production teams have been the largest and most prominent among Ubisoft, having crafted the company’s biggest hits like Far Cry and Rainbow Six Siege. However, there were reports of trouble within Ubisoft Montreal’s offices back in September due to delays, cancelations, and the closing of in-house studios like Ubisoft Benelux.
Layoffs at Ubisoft Montreal are almost unheard of due to its successful work on properties like Assassin's Creed, but it and many other parts of the publisher’s Canadian branch are being downsized as part of an unfortunate trend in 2023. Only time will tell if Ubisoft will lay off even more workers, and what effect these cuts will have on upcoming Ubisoft Montreal titles like the planned Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake and Assassin’s Creed: Project Hexe.
- Video Game(s)
- Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed 2, Assassin's Creed 3, Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (2013), Assassin's Creed Unity, Assassin's Creed Rogue, Assassin's Creed Origins, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Assassin's Creed Mirage
- Creation Year
- 2007
- Developer(s)
- Ubisoft
- Publisher(s)
- Ubisoft