Ubisoft Montreal continues to lay off employees in an effort to cut costs

Ubisoft Montreal recently announced that it plans to make cuts to staff as part of an ongoing company-wide reorganization.

The studio responsible for hit video game series such as Assassins Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, confirmed to Kotaku that it will lay off 98 employees across its Canadian offices. Employees affected include those in general and administrative teams, the company’s SFX studio Hybride and Ubisoft IT.

In a notice to the government of Quebec, Ubisoft explained that the cuts will allow the company to “optimize its resources to be more sustainable in the long-term.” Aside from the cuts, Ubisoft also added that extra positions will be eliminated over the rest of its Canadian offices, with 124 jobs in total being terminated.

Ubisoft Montreal is the parent company’s largest in-house development team, with the office employing nearly 4,000 employees as of two years ago.

These layoffs aren’t entirely surprising. IGN recently reported on misleading policies regarding Ubisoft’s hybrid return-to-office policy. It was reported that a handful of Montreal employees compared the end of fully remote work to a “soft layoff,” effectively allowing the studio to quietly weed out employees without needing to pay severance.

Apart from Montreal, Ubisoft as a whole has cut ties with over 1,000 employees since September 2022. The cuts are said to be in an attempt to recoup costs of $215 million over two years to make up for underperforming projects.

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Via: Kotaku