Ubisoft announced plans to cut up to 200 jobs at its Paris headquarters - 18% of the workforce - as part of what they're calling a "major company reset." Translation: workers pay the price for executive failures.
The layoffs are happening through a Rupture Conventionnelle Collective, which is French corporate-speak for "voluntary mutual termination." Voluntary. Right. Because when a company announces €200 million in cost cuts and cancels six games, people are volunteering to lose their jobs.
This is the same Ubisoft that delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows multiple times, cancelled the Prince of Persia remake after three years, and has been hemorrhaging talent and goodwill for months. The company is restructuring into "autonomous creative houses" - which sounds like consultant-speak for "we're shuffling the org chart instead of fixing actual problems."
Here's what drives me up the wall: Ubisoft posted over €2 billion in revenue last year. They're not a struggling indie studio scraping by. They're a massive publisher that made bad bets, mismanaged franchises, and kept greenlighting projects without clear direction. And when it all goes sideways? The developers - the people actually making the games - get shown the door.
Meanwhile, CEO Yves Guillemot keeps his job. The executives who approved all these failed projects keep their jobs. The marketing department that somehow convinced people Skull and Bones was worth $70 keeps their jobs.
The 200 people in Paris who were probably just trying to make good games? Gone.
This is the gaming industry in 2026: record profits at the top, mass layoffs at the bottom. Crunch culture when games are in development, pink slips when they ship. And we're all supposed to believe this is just how business works.
No. This is how bad business works. And until gamers start holding these companies accountable - not just with Twitter outrage, but by actually not buying their broken, overpriced games - nothing changes.
