Ubisoft has reportedly laid off around 45 employees at two of its US studios. Although Ubisoft managed to hold out for a while, the company is forced to follow in the footsteps of most other major publishers in the industry and implement increased cost-cutting measures in 2024.

According to Bloomberg and IGN’s Jason Schreier, 45 employees were laid off yesterday at Ubisoft’s San Francisco and North Carolina studios. However, Ubisoft will offer those affected severance pay and “career assistance” to help them find new jobs. The exact details of the career assistance program have not yet been made public, however.

These two studios were better known as Ubisoft San Francisco and Red Storm. The layoffs at Red Storm came just months after the cancellation of long-in-development free-to-play title The Division Heartland.

Previously, both studios had worked on projects such as XDefiant, The Division Heartland, Rocksmith, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, and various games in the Tom Clancy and Far Cry franchises.

KitGuru says: Ubisoft also experienced layoffs in late 2023, like many other publishers. Ubisoft in particular has also been struggling with declining revenues. For now, the strategy seems to be to slim down teams and use AI tools to aid the development process. This would be nothing new for Ubisoft, as the company is known for adopting new technologies quickly, sometimes to excess, as we saw with the failed Quartz platform.

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