Ubisoft cuts 45 jobs amid cost-cutting effort

Ubisoft has reportedly let go of around 45 employees at two of its US studios. While Ubisoft has managed to hold out for a while, it has been forced to follow in the footsteps of most other major publishers across the industry with increased cost-cutting efforts in 2024.

According to Jason Schreier of Bloomberg and IGN, 45 employees across Ubisoft's studios in San Francisco and North Carolina were let go yesterday. However, Ubisoft will be offering severance pay and “career assistance” to help those affected land somewhere else. With that said, the exact details of the career assistance program are not known publicly yet.

These two studios were better known as Ubisoft San Francisco and Red Storm. The Red Storm layoffs hit just months after the cancellation of long in-development Free to play title, The Division Heartland.

Previously, both of these studios had worked on projects like XDefiant, The Division Heartland, Rocksmith, South Park: The Fractured But Whole and various games in the Tom Clancy and Far Cry franchises.

KitGuru Says: Ubisoft had some layoffs in late 2023 too, as did many other publishers. Ubisoft in particular has had an issue with falling sales as well. For now, the strategy seems to be slim teams down and adopt AI tools to aid in the development process. This wouldn't be new for Ubisoft, as the company has been known to quickly embrace new technologies, occasionally to a fault, as we saw with the failed Quartz platform.

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