The trend of the games industry not being able to last more than a week without layoffs continues, and this time it’s Ubisoft who are reportedly laying off 45 developers between the
Coming from Jason Schreier at Bloomberg, the Assassin’s Creed publisher called the layoff a “difficult yet necessary decision” that “was made to align these studios organizations with their future business and development objectives.”
Red Storm Entertainment is the North Carolina studio that has suffered part of the cuts, which is the same team that was behind Tom Clancy’s The Division: Heartland, before that game was cancelled earlier this year.
Following the game’s cancellation, Ubisoft indicated that members of the Red Storm team would be put on Rainbow Six Siege and the latest shooter from Ubisoft, XDefiant, two games that were identified as “bigger opportunities” for Ubisoft.
It could be that on Red Storm’s side of things, this layoff is just the fallout from Heartland’s cancellation. Whatever the case it’s always disappointing to see even more developers out of a job and tossed into a job market that was already overcrowded.
Bloomberg’s report does at least clarify that the impacted developers will be given severance and career assistance, so hopefully they are able to land on their feet.
This is however at least the second instance of layoffs at Ubisoft, after it cut 33 developers from its Ubisoft Toronto studio.
Source – [Bloomberg]