Ubisoft Barcelona – one of the development teams behind Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced – will be laying off 51 staff by the end of the month, one dev says.
In a post on LinkedIn (via Kotaku), Isabel Codina García, quality assurance/quality control lead at Ubisoft Barcelona, said yesterday, "Today is a bittersweet day."
She continues, "Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced releases today, the project I have been working on for the past 2.5 years. However, two weeks before launch, the whole AC team at Ubisoft Barcelona was informed of a collective redundancy plan."
The dev explains that Vantage Studios – the Ubisoft-Tencent conglomerate established last year – told the studio that there "will not be further mandates for the Barcelona studio, despite the team proposing new AC projects." As for the scale of the layoffs, she says "51 people, myself included, will be affected by the end of July."
The studio's LinkedIn lists it as being made up of "51-200 employees" with 119 of those employees being members of the site, so it seems a large chunk of the studio is set to be affected.
At the end of June, staff at Spanish union La Confederación General del Trabajo released a bulletin stating that Ubisoft Barcelona staff were going on strike (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) over the proposed layoffs, with attempts to ensure that the 51 staff were retained, requests for job protection to prevent more mass layoffs for "a minimum of five years," a demand that already-agreed promotions be given, as well as the option to work from home.
Codina García adds, "After 7 years at Ubisoft Barcelona, this is not how I imagined it would end. But I am genuinely grateful for the people I have met and everything I have learned along the way."
Frustratingly, it's becoming increasingly common occurrence in the games industry that even if your projects are successful, that isn't enough for execs. Resynced is the fourth highest rated game in the series, saw the biggest Steam launch in the series, and will undoubtedly sell millions as a remake of the series' most beloved game.
And those making these decisions aren't the people affected even if the game somehow was a flop. But now, years of experience is leaving the studio, which will in turn leave future projects in a worse place, and more importantly, 51 people looking for work in an industry that feels like it is laying off far more often than hiring.
We have reached out to Ubisoft for comment on this situation, and will update should we receive a response.
