Even critical acclaim and fan enthusiasm after a game's release can't always save a job. For example, Ubisoft "rewarded" its Barcelona branch for the successful launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag: Resynced by laying off 51 employees.
Even critical acclaim and fan enthusiasm after a game's release can't always save a job. For example, Ubisoft "rewarded" its Barcelona branch for the successful launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag: Resynced by laying off 51 employees.
The launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag: Resynced, the long-awaited (and highly-rated) remaster of one of the best games in the Assassin's Creed series, was followed by the firing of 51 of its game designers from Ubisoft Barcelona, Windows Central reports .
Ubisoft has a habit of assigning teams to new projects long before the current ones are finished (sometimes at least a year). Back in 2025, developers tried to raise the issue of the lack of a new project with Ubisoft management, but in this case, they were never given any tasks before being fired.
One of the employees affected by the cuts said: “These layoffs come against a broader backdrop of long-standing workplace problems. This is not an isolated incident; it reflects a sustained trend of ongoing abuse, talent loss, forced layoffs due to employee rights cuts, and a top-down management culture that effectively removes employees from decisions that affect their jobs.”
In response, the Ubisoft Barcelona team will hold strikes every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon from June 30 to July 16, 2026.
To further compound the gravity of this depressing situation, the announcement of the release comes shortly after the successful launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag: Resynced. The game currently holds a solid 84 on Metacritic (based on 84 reviews) and has received mostly positive reviews from fans on its Steam page.
This will undoubtedly undermine the morale of Ubisoft developers, because now they know that even if the game is released to a barrage of positive reviews from critics and fans, they can still be fired before the first official sales figures appear.
