Ubisoft has fired 45 people in their US studios, including Red Storm Entertainment.
As reported by Bloomberg, those layoffs were made at Ubisoft San Francisco as well as Red Storm. Ubisoft’s spokesperson said that the “difficult yet necessary decision was made to align these studios’ organizations with their future business and development objectives.”
Game Developer adds that Ubisoft has also had layoffs last April across their global publishing departments, and that they have already laid off 1,700 workers since 2022.
Red Storm Entertainment was and is the original studio that made Tom Clancy video games. As you may imagine, the company took its name from Clancy’s novel Red Storm Rising. They started making Tom Clancy video games in 1997 with Tom Clancy’s Politika, and between releasing Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear and Tom Clancy: Ghost Recon, they were acquired by Ubisoft in 2000.
Most recently, they had been working on Tom Clancy’s The Division: Heartland, a free-to-play PvPvE multiplayer shooter with survival elements. This title was announced in 2021, and was finally cancelled just last May.
There were rumors that there were issues with the development of Tom Clancy’s The Division: Heartland behind the scenes. Admittedly, whoever insiders had information were not sharing that much. A month before the cancellation, the rumor going around was it was actually not yet cancelled, but getting significant changes.
Ubisoft explained when they announced their cancellation that they would shift focus on XDefiant and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. Since then, Ubisoft’s announced a new membership subscription for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, which went about as well as you can guess.
On the other hand, Ubisoft told investors in their latest earnings call that XDefiant has gone off to a promising start. It’s hard to say that Ubisoft definitely made the right decisions here, but one can imagine that Ubisoft got cold feet in investing too much in too many live service games at the same time.
We gamers can’t really speak to what Ubisoft should or shouldn’t do, even if we think we do. Ubisoft cited Skull and Bones as one of their few games-as-a-service titles that was performing well, well enough that they are going ahead with bringing it to Steam.
But we can definitely say that Ubisoft, as well as all these other AAA video game companies, made very bad choices investing in live service, just as the pandemic hit its lockdown phase. Some companies apparently thought the lockdown profits would keep going after people would be allowed to leave their houses again. It was these poor choices that the industry paid for dearly.
But, we have also seen more and more reports of job openings across many studios that had layoffs. So we’re hopeful that we’re turning the page on this chapter of the industry, if not today, in due time. GameRanx wishes the best for the exiting employees at Ubisoft San Francisco and Red Storm Entertainment, and hope they can find placement back in the video game industry.
