Years into a restructuring that's seen it shed thousands of jobs and multiple high-profile creative veterans, Ubisoft leadership considers losing key staff and failing to attract new talent to be significant risks for the company.
Ubisoft's latest annual report contains an updated assessment of "risk factors that could affect its performance, its reputation, the achievement of its strategic and financial goals, and its share price."
One subsection singles out "risks related to talent," with "loss of key talent and skills" listed as high risk and "lack of attractiveness to key talent" as moderate risk.
These points are explored in more depth later in the report, and the verbiage is fascinating not just in the context of Ubisoft's own overhaul, but amid the broader brain drain afflicting the games industry after devastating layoffs and studio closures which have forced many people out of games altogether, temporarily or permanently.
Xbox just added 1,600 people – soon to be 3,200 – to the growing list of games layoffs. Ubisoft itself is down to a much leaner 16,590 staff according to the report – a dramatic cut from 18,666 in late 2024, and that was after more than 2,000 layoffs already. Ubisoft's pace has averaged roughly 1,000 people cut per year over the past four years. Even as it makes these cuts, Ubisoft says it has to be careful about staff retention.
"The sudden departure of members of the games core teams could be damaging to the Group's development and could have a significant impact on its editorial policy," Ubisoft observes.
"The Group's success also depends on its teams' know-how and skills in a highly competitive international market. Indeed, the video game industry requires a certain number of innovative skills at the cutting edge of their respective fields. The Group is therefore exposed to a situation of dependence on certain key talents whose creativity or technical expertise is rare and highly valued in the market (artificial intelligence, cloud gaming, data, etc)."
To help mitigate these risks, Ubisoft says it's established a succession plan for executive officers and is working toward "the gradual implementation" of a similar plan for key roles like creative director, producer, and studio general manager. Various corporate muscles have also been flexed – including "the monitoring of commitment levels" and "the development of a differentiated compensation policy" – to help promote leadership skills, knowledge sharing, and training.
Ubisoft's report notes high turnover, "particularly for senior talented individuals in key roles," as a relevant factor here, alongside inadequate training, the need for new skills, and a working environment that "does not meet the aspirations of talented individuals."
This connects nicely to the report's discussion of bringing in new talent. "Ubisoft faces increasing pressure from not only its direct competitors in the video game sector, but also from competitors in other sectors/industries in search of the same talents (engineers, etc.)," the report continues.
In this space, Ubisoft targets an evolved and "selective recruitment, development and retention policy" as a way to bring in and hold onto people, promote career advancement, build a "welcoming and inclusive" workplace, and engender "continuous learning."
In one of the most interesting lines in the whole 356-page report, Ubisoft directly acknowledges the conflict between its actions (laying people off) and these aspirations (finding and keeping people), describing the "development of a deep-rooted corporate culture, promoting well-being at work, allowing talented team members to reach their full potential, despite a transformation plan that is necessary to return to the expected level of performance."
The company's report underscores a growing problem in the industry: great games cannot just be made by anyone, and, in this consolidation-heavy time, that may mean that a company gaining an IP but losing the people who defined it doesn't really get it much in the end. In fact, everyone loses out.
I'm reminded of a quote from New Blood head Dave Oshry, who I spoke to as part of a larger 2025 report about what people get wrong about game development.
"With the exception of solo devs, games are an artistic endeavor that require the cooperation of handfuls, dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people at once working together to create interactive art," Oshry said. "You can put all the great programmers, artists, animators and sound designers you want in the same building but that doesn't mean they can make a great game. Great games are made by great teams that work great together. It helps when they're all friends, too."
