Three months after the very successful launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, a game that sold two million copies in a single day (three million copies in a week!) and surpassed "annual expectations" in just two weeks, Ubisoft has laid off 70 people from developer Ubisoft Singapore.
"At Ubisoft Singapore, 70 positions have been impacted to align the studio with upcoming production needs. The studio remains an important part of Ubisoft’s global production organization."
This would be reason number two on our list of 25 foolproof ways to get laid off in the videogame industry: Make a game that sells so well, it blows away all expectations and makes even more money than anyone dared hope.
Of course, we've already seen this in play with Black Flag Resynced—Ubisoft Barcelona, a support studio on the game, had nearly a third of its number cut shortly after it launched.
The Ubisoft Barcelona layoffs might seem particularly egregious, coming so soon after it produced a much-needed win for a publisher that's spent the past few years taking big Ls, but it's not the only bad news.
A year after announcing a "restructuring proposal" for Ubisoft Redlynx aimed at reducing costs and ensuring "a stronger prioritization and efficiency across the company’s worldwide studio network," Ubisoft has now decided to close the studio outright.
"Today, we informed our teams of a proposal to close RedLynx in Finland, subject to the local change negotiation process, which would affect up to 52 positions."
Founded in 2000 and acquired by Ubisoft in 2011, Redlynx is best known for the Trials motorcycle racing games, the last of which—Trials Rising—came out in 2019. Since then, the studio supported the development of Star Wars Outlaws and released the mobile game Gwen's Getaway; a VGC report says Ubisoft decided to close Redlynx because it's not currently working on anything else, and downsizing wouldn't make it sustainable anyway.
Ubisoft acknowledged "the contributions" of the employees being put out of work in its statement, and said it will conduct the process "with care and respect."
