Ubisoft Barcelona Laying Off 51 People Despite Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced's Successful Launch

Layoffs continue to be an unfortunate part of the video game industry over the past few years.

We're still learning about the fallout and impact from the massive XBOX layoffs of this week, which will result in a total of 3,200 developers needlessly losing their jobs as the company undergoes a "reset" under new CEO Asha Sharma.

They're not the only developer suffering from layoffs, though. It's been a massive issue across the industry, affecting both major AAA developers and smaller outlets alike. Aside from XBOX, you can argue that Ubisoft is the other big fish in the sea that has been heavily impacted by these layoffs.

With the launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, this was supposed to be a chance of hope and optimism for the company, yet here we are again, talking about the same thing we've been talking about several times over. More developers are losing their jobs.

Ubisoft Barcelona Would Undergo Layoffs Regardless of Black Flag Resynced's Performance

According to Insider Gaming, 51 employees at Ubisoft Barcelona, including those who primarily worked on Black Flag Resynced, are being let go from the company. Insider Gaming adds that the announcement came on June 10th, due to the nature of how Ubisoft works. They also add that no matter how well the game performed, the affected employees were losing their jobs no matter what. They were in a losing situation despite their best efforts.

In short, once a project is nearing completion, Ubisoft will assign you to a new team. Sometimes this can even happen up to a year in advance. However, there were already some concerns from Barcelona developers when they weren't being assigned a new project as early as last year. Insider Gaming was able to speak with a developer at the studio, who expressed that the layoffs reflect "a pattern of constant mistreatment, loss of talent, forced departures resulting from the erosion of workers’ rights, and an increasingly top-down management culture that leaves employees with little voice in decisions affecting their work."

While the XBOX layoffs are dominating the headlines, Ubisoft has been in the news far too often regarding layoffs this year alone. Ubisoft Halifax was closed shortly after the developers unionized. A week later, 55 members of Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft Stockholm were let go.

Also notable last month was Ubisoft's closing of its Winnipeg and Belgrade studios. This was a story made even more absurd and frustrating based on the fact that they tried to embargo the announcement to news outlets. News embargoes are quite commonplace in the industry, but never in my life have I ever seen someone try to embargo the announcement of layoffs.

Gamers and Developers Are Starting to Push Back

To their credit, Ubisoft developers aren't taking the news sitting down. Employees at Ubisoft Barcelona are going on strike in response to the departure of their former co-workers, with the following demands:

• Binding new studio mandate protecting the 51 employees affected by the latest downsizing
• Five-year guarantee against future collective layoffs
• Immediate execution of previously agreed internal promotions
• Return to a 60% monthly work-from-home ratio
• Review of salary improvement plans and social benefits

Gamers aren't taking things lightly, either, having vocally expressed their frustration and disappointment with XBOX online. Those frustrations and disappointments are going beyond company layoffs and include poor corporate decision-making, too.

Last week, Sony announced that they will stop producing physical copies of PlayStation games starting in 2028. As you can imagine, people were pissed​​​​​​. A petition asking Sony to reverse the decision is, unexpectedly, gaining traction. After a social media silence following the announcement, a new PlayStation post advertising a fight stick was, unsurprisingly, flooded with angry comments.

It's clear that we've not only reached a boiling point in the industry, but have blown by it. Corporations are still chasing the record profits they saw during the video game spike that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the name of year-to-year growth, decisions are being made to cut costs in the name of profit without realizing that they're destroying what made them a profit to begin with.

We'll see if anything happens in the industry to change course. As it stands now, unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced

9/10

Released July 9, 2026

ESRB Mature 17+ / Blood, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol, Violence / In-Game Purchases, Users Interact