Ubisoft’s AC empire crumbles: Shadows’ flop unleashes a layoffs tsunami that’s about to drown the franchise. 🌪️
Insiders leak a brutal restructure—voluntary “exits,” studio shutdowns, and 600+ jobs gone since last year—tied to Shadows’ sales nosedive and canceled Civil War sequel. Assassin’s Creed’s golden era? Buried under corporate axes. Is this the end of Ezio’s legacy?
Expose the memos and memos that spell doom for Ubisoft’s hit factory:
The house of Ubisoft, once a towering fortress of open-world epics and historical hijinks, is showing cracks that could topple its crown jewel: the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Fresh off a disastrous October 22 statement that critics are dubbing the “worst layoff announcement ever,” the French gaming giant is urging developers to “voluntarily exit” amid a sweeping restructure tied to a $1.25 billion Tencent investment. This comes after 185 jobs were axed in January—including the full closure of Ubisoft Leamington, a key support studio for Assassin’s Creed and Star Wars Outlaws—and a staggering 676 positions eliminated across waves since November 2023. Insiders whisper that the underperformance of Assassin’s Creed Shadows (released March 20, 2025), which sold a respectable but underwhelming 12 million copies in its first half-year—trailing Valhalla‘s 20 million pandemic peak—has accelerated the bloodletting. Coupled with the mid-2024 cancellation of an ambitious post-Civil War Assassin’s Creed entry due to “political tensions” and backlash over Shadows‘ Black samurai protagonist Yasuke, Ubisoft’s movements scream desperation. Is this the prelude to mass layoffs eclipsing 1,000 cuts, or a calculated pivot to “maximize value creation” in a Tencent-backed “Vantage Studios” era? The signals point to turmoil that’s already rippling through Assassin’s Creed‘s storied veins.
The October 22 memo, leaked via Game File and blasted across X, reeks of corporate euphemism: “We are inviting team members to voluntarily explore opportunities outside Ubisoft as part of our ongoing transformation.” Translated: Self-select your pink slips, or we’ll do it for you. The backlash was immediate and ferocious. “Bitch, just call them layoffs,” tweeted one user, while another accused the company of AI-generated drivel: “Insulting way to say we fired a bunch of our workers for no reason other than tiny profit margins.” Ubisoft’s stock, already battered by Star Wars Outlaws‘ $200 million flop in August 2024, dipped another 2.3% post-announcement, per Bloomberg data. This “restructure” stems from Tencent’s July 2025 infusion—$1.25 billion for a 25% stake in Vantage Studios, a new “creative house” helmed by Ubisoft vet Christophe Derennes, tasked with churning out sequels for Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six Siege. But whispers from Montreal and Quebec studios suggest the cash isn’t a bailout—it’s a leash, prioritizing “evergreen” IPs while slashing overhead. “Tencent wants ROI on Shadows’ delays and Mirage’s Saudi-funded DLC,” one anonymous dev told Kotaku, referencing the controversial Prince of Alwaleed-backed Mirage expansion that sparked internal unrest over “partnering with regimes that don’t share our values.”
Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the franchise’s latest gambit, sits at the epicenter of the storm. Delayed twice—from November 2024 to February, then March 2025—for “polish,” it promised a dual-protagonist revolution: Naoe the stealthy shinobi and Yasuke the hulking ronin, navigating Sengoku-era Japan with parkour duels and Isu artifact hunts. Early sales hit $450 million in three months, buoyed by a 9/10 IGN score for its “evolving sandbox.” But by October, player counts on SteamDB plummeted 35% from launch peaks, plagued by “repetitive radiant quests” and microtransaction gripes in the Claws of Awaji DLC. Ubisoft touted it as a “must-have” for the series’ 200 million lifetime players, but analysts like Wedbush’s Michael Pachter peg it as a “modest win” at best—$800 million projected lifetime, far from Odyssey‘s $1.2 billion. The Yasuke reveal in 2023 ignited a firestorm: X threads with 500,000+ engagements decried “historical revisionism,” with Elon Musk slamming it as a “terrible game” Ubisoft “paid streamers to promote.” Ubisoft clapped back with a roast of Musk’s “cheating” in online games, but the damage lingered—pre-orders dipped 15% in conservative markets, per NPD Group.
This controversy directly torpedoed the canceled Assassin’s Creed project, codenamed “Invictus” by insiders. Conceived in early 2024 at Ubisoft Quebec, it would’ve plunged players into the Reconstruction-era American South (1860s-1870s) as a formerly enslaved Black man recruited by the Brotherhood to dismantle the nascent Ku Klux Klan. “It was ambitious—stealth raids on plantations, moral quandaries over vigilante justice, ties to Connor from ACIII,” a former producer told Game File. But by July 2024, Paris execs pulled the plug, citing Yasuke backlash and a “tense U.S. political climate” ahead of the 2024 election. Five sources confirmed the fears: Online vitriol over “woke” representation, coupled with rising cultural wars, made it a non-starter. “We bowed to controversy,” one dev lamented, echoing Ubisoft’s 2023 “anti-harassment plan” for Shadows staff amid death threats. The cancellation, leaked October 8, sparked Reddit fury: r/gamingnews threads with 122 upvotes decried it as “cowardice,” while X users like @xboxera tied it to broader headlines: “Ubisoft cancels AC Civil War—political fear wins.” Ubisoft declined comment, but the void leaves Shadows as the franchise’s riskiest bet yet, now under Vantage’s Tencent scrutiny.
The human toll is stark. January’s 185 cuts shuttered Leamington entirely—its 50 devs, who polished Shadows‘ naval mechanics and Outlaws‘ open-world, now job-hunt en masse. August 2024 saw 45 U.S. roles vanish from San Francisco and Cary studios, hubs for Assassin’s Creed‘s multiplayer experiments. Add November 2023’s 124 Canadian slashes (mostly admin, but hitting Montreal’s AC pipeline) and September’s Tencent-timed trims, and the tally nears 700—10% of Ubisoft’s 19,000-strong workforce. “Families wrecked, retirements delayed, even suicides—we don’t talk about it, but we should,” vented a Redditor in r/gaming’s 6,800-upvote thread on the Leamington closure. Ubisoft offers severance and “career assistance,” but Glassdoor ratings plummeted to 2.8/5, with ex-Devs citing “soul-crushing crunch” on Shadows rewrites.
Leadership shakeups compound the chaos. On October 14, Marc-Alexis CĂ´té—Assassin’s Creed‘s 20-year steward, from Brotherhood‘s levels to Shadows‘ executive production—bolted after a March “restructuring.” “I did not walk away—Ubisoft asked me to step aside,” he clarified on LinkedIn, rejecting a demoted role at Vantage. CĂ´tĂ©’s exit, mere weeks after Vantage’s launch, smells of scapegoating: Shadows was his swan song, a “best-seller” by Ubisoft’s metrics, yet it failed to stem stock slides. IGN quoted a rep praising his “lasting mark,” but X snarked: “Sacrificed for Tencent’s bottom line.” Now, Derennes—a Far Cry alum—oversees the brand, with whispers of “Saudi strings” on Mirage DLC fueling paranoia.
Financially, it’s a vise grip. Ubisoft’s Q3 2025 earnings (due November) loom like a guillotine: Net bookings flat at €1.65 billion, down 2% year-over-year, with Shadows blamed for a 15% digital sales dip amid piracy spikes. The franchise, a $7 billion behemoth since 2007, faces “evergreen fatigue”—Shadows‘ 85% completion rate on Ubisoft Connect lags Origins‘ 92%. Tencent’s stake buys time, but PwC forecasts a 12% RPG market contraction by 2027, squeezing annual releases. “One more flop, and Vantage shutters Quebec,” predicts Forbes. Free updates like October’s “Advanced Parkour” and November’s “A Puzzlement” quest aim to juice engagement, but X mocks: “Band-Aids on a sinking ship.”
Fan and industry reactions form a powder keg. On X, #UbisoftLayoffs exploded post-memo, with @SmashJT’s “BREAKING: MASSIVE LAYOFFS” video (43 likes) blaming Shadows‘ “failure” for “the end of Ubisoft.” Reddit’s r/gamingnews (122 upvotes on the Civil War leak) splits: 60% blast “cowardice,” 40% shrug “good riddance to politics.” Broader sentiment? Sympathy laced with schadenfreude: “After Skull and Bones and Outlaws, they earned it,” tweets @xboxera in a headlines roundup. Devs unionize quietly—Montreal’s STJV pushes for strikes—while rivals like EA eye poaches.
Yet, glimmers persist. Shadows‘ Switch 2 port (December) and Vantage’s Hexe (2026 witch-hunt tale) could rebound. But with Guillemot’s CEO tenure on thin ice amid French court harassment probes, the franchise teeters. Assassin’s Creed birthed legends—Ezio’s charm, Bayek’s tragedy—but now risks becoming a cautionary tale: Bow to backlash, bleed talent, beg investors. As one X post quipped post-CĂ´tĂ©: “Nothing is true… except layoffs.” Ubisoft’s creed? Survival at all costs. The leap of faith feels fatal.
