More cuts spilled out from Ubisoft this week, with the publisher closing its Halifax studio this week. This move, which will push 71 people out of work, comes off the heels of the studio’s unionisation, which Ubisoft insists is unrelated.
Ubisoft Halifax began as Longtail Studios, before being acquired by the Assassin’s Creed publisher in 2015. The studio worked primarily on mobile projects, including Assassin’s Creed Rebellion and Rainbow Six Mobile.
Employees at the studio, who learned of its closure in an internal email, announced their unionisation just this week, joining the Game & Media Worker’s Guild of Canada. This made them the first Ubisoft labour union in North America.
The union question
The publisher has stressed that the shutdown is unrelated to recent unionization at the studio, with a Ubisoft spokesperson stressing to GamesIndustry.biz that the restructuring process at Ubisoft began right after the pandemic. This does follow with Rebellion‘s loss of revenues, as well as other big cuts at the publisher, such as with Massive’s shutdown last year.
However, many remain skeptical. Rockstar’s alleged union-busting in the UK is still a hot story, and stands as a reminder of the anti-union sentiment in the industry’s upper echelons. The games industry is still young, and many of its leaders, who benefit from crunch culture and cutting jobs on a whim, have been inclined to push back the frontiers of unionization while they can.
In a statement to Game Developer, the CWA asserted that it would be “demanding information” from Ubisoft, pushing the publisher to prove that unionization was truly irrelevant to its decision. The union has also stated that it will “pursue every legal recourse” to ensure that the laid-off employees receive justice.
