The latest in the ongoing wave of layoffs in the dying video game industry, Ubisoft, the company behind the upcoming releases of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which has faced heavy criticism due to its racist nature, and Star Wars Outlaws, has announced another round of staff reductions.
According to Bloomberg, the France-based developer revealed this week that they will be laying off 45 employees across their San Francisco and North Carolina (Red Storm Entertainment) offices. Those affected will reportedly receive severance pay and career assistance.
These layoffs primarily affect the development teams behind XDefiant, Ubisoft’s free-to-play attempt at rivaling Call of Duty. However, the San Francisco office mostly operates as a support studio for Ubisoft’s other projects. On the other hand, their North Carolina-based Red Storm Entertainment, once renowned for its Tom Clancy Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon titles in the early 2000s, has recently shifted focus.
In recent years, they’ve produced less prominent titles like 2016’s Werewolves Within, 2017’s Star Trek: Bridge Crew, and the Meta Quest VR exclusive Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, which was likely a financial flop. Notably, their in-development project, The Division Heartland, a free-to-play live-service spin on the franchise was canceled by Ubisoft in May 2024 after years of work.
The reduction of 45 employees is relatively small for a company as large as Ubisoft, merely trimming a minor fraction of its workforce. This follows Ubisoft’s June layoff of 33 staff members at its Toronto studio as part of a “targeted realignment,” affecting teams working on the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake and the Splinter Cell reboot. Additionally, 45 workers were laid off from Ubisoft’s global publishing teams in April.
Ubisoft, like many other companies in the video game industry, has been steadily downsizing over the past few years. This trend mirrors the broader industry pattern, where companies have increasingly relied on diversity hires and affirmative action to secure tax benefits. However, these employees are often lacking in skill or creativity as they inject political ideologies into the products.
Before co-founding Sweet Baby Inc, Kim Belair worked at Ubisoft Montreal, where she claimed to have pressured higher-ups into implementing inclusivity changes in game development by strategically intimidating the company’s marketing team.
Driven by short-term financial incentives tied to ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) principles, Ubisoft, like many developers, has been facing continually disappointing financial results.
The company is heavily focusing on the Assassin’s Creed franchise in the coming years, starting with the release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows in November.
This title is controversial for its portrayal of a fantasized samurai setting centered around the historically obscure figure Yasuke, marking the first time Ubisoft has made a historical figure playable in the series, it certainly doesn’t help that the main writers for the game itself have connective ties to the Sweet Baby Inc consultancy or have previously proclaimed that White people are privileged in the gaming industry.
Additionally, Ubisoft has several other titles in development. The publisher has confirmed that Star Wars Outlaws has the largest marketing budget of any game they have ever produced.
Despite this, the game’s reception has been negative, with many criticizing its lackluster gameplay. Similarly, the response to Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been marred by controversy, particularly over blackwashing Japan’s history.
Ubisoft has spared no expense in promoting Star Wars Outlaws, including flying content creators to Disneyland and other exclusive events to conduct interviews with the developers, among other marketing efforts.
This type of strategy is fairly common in product promotion, where companies seek positive reception for their offerings. The car review industry operates similarly, with car manufacturers often flying out influential reviewers, providing them with first-class accommodations, all in an effort to secure favorable coverage.
This approach is effective; for example, YouTuber “The Act Man” was flown out by Overkill for exclusive pre-launch beta coverage of Payday 3, and despite the game’s notorious flop, he provided it with a glowing, biased review at launch, ultimately ousting himself as a shill and killing his reputation.
Consumer reception for Ubisoft’s upcoming games has been largely negative, while journalists either ignore the criticisms or support Ubisoft’s DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) driven narratives in favor of complaining about how Chinese developed games don’t have Black people in them.
This controversy is evident in the depiction of Yasuke, a Black “samurai” which has sparked rightful controversy despite fans’ long-standing desire for an Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan. Ubisoft further compounded the issue by mistakenly promoting a replica sword from One Piece as an authentic piece in an “immersive” experience for the game at this year’s Japan Expo.
During their FY2024 First Half Earnings Report in September 2023, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot confirmed that the company had cut around 1,300 employees across all offices as part of a significant cost-cutting initiative. The high cost of video game production has made it increasingly difficult to justify spending tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars and years of development time.
Ubisoft learned this lesson the hard way with the release of Skull and Bones in February 2024. Touted as the world’s first “AAAA” game, it ultimately flopped after nearly a decade of development, offering little more than an inferior version of the sailing experience found in Assassin’s Creed IV.
Ubisoft is teetering on the brink of collapse, with their relentless efforts to slash their workforce indicating they may be just a few financial failures away from unraveling entirely.
The company has also stirred significant controversy with its approach to “historical accuracy,” particularly by reinterpreting Japan’s history through a lens of Black fragility in their portrayal of Yasuke, a historically minor figure with scant documentation from Japan’s Sengoku Period.
Yasuke’s role, likely serving as a retainer to Oda Nobunaga to being paraded around naked for entertainment, lacks any historical evidence of him ever being recognized or honored as a true samurai.
Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped some Western narratives, like those of author Thomas Lockley, who wrote two books on the “mythical samurai” Yasuke, despite altering Wikipedia entries and citing his own unpublished “studies” as legitimate sources for his samurai agenda.
This revisionism has caught the attention of Hollywood, Netflix, and now Ubisoft, a company committed to artificial diversity and inclusion in its games.
By forcing a fictional narrative onto a historical figure, Ubisoft is diverging from its tradition of featuring fictional characters who are ethnically aligned with the real-world events they are based on.
In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, set during Japan’s Sengoku Period, a time when foreigners were regarded as barbarians, players will embody the “Black samurai” Yasuke. This depiction not only subverts but outright distorts history to push a false narrative of Black history in Japan, subverting Yasuke’s entire existence as culture war bullshit.
Ubisoft’s upcoming AAA titles are heavily infused with woke ideology, raising concerns among investors. During a recent investor meeting, requests for pre-order figures and comparisons to previous Ubisoft releases were brushed aside, there’s a growing disconnect between consumers and journalists as evidenced with Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Star Wars Outlaws.
If these games turn out to be financial failures, Ubisoft could face a downward spiral, with their stock prices continuing to plummet and potentially pushing the company toward a critical breaking point and I for one cannot wait to piss on their grave.
