Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced Developers Fight Ubisoft Layoffs

Ubisoft Barcelona staff walked out again this week, and the reason is the gap between the two numbers. One is 2 million, the copies of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced sold in its first 24 hours. The other is 51, the jobs Ubisoft wants to cut at the studio that helped build it. Striking employees have called the company's opening severance offer "below any reasonable standard."

The layoffs landed last month as one piece of a wider round. Ubisoft is letting go of 380 people, and in this wave, it closed two studios, Winnipeg and Belgrade, outright. Barcelona stays open, but the plan strips it back to a single job: Rainbow Six. Up to 51 roles are at risk there, which earlier reporting put at close to a third of the studio. Narrowing Barcelona to one franchise ends its run as a studio that fed work into projects across Ubisoft, and it ties the survivors' future to the health of Rainbow Six alone.

That framing stings because of what Barcelona actually did on Resynced. Ubisoft Singapore led the remake, but the Barcelona team spent more than two years on it. The studio built the underwater diving side-missions it became known for, the in-game region of Gibara, a run of quests and contracts, and it handled enemy combat AI and boss fights. Several main quests came out of Barcelona as well, including a few that Ubisoft showed off during pre-release hands-on previews.

Manel Cota, a tech and gameplay animator at the studio, said as much in a post on X.

"Ubisoft Barcelona did all the underwater levels. And that same team is being fired right now because Ubisoft thinks that's what we deserve:)"

— Manel Cota

The commercial side has gone the other way. Resynced sold more than 2 million copies across platforms on day one, and on Steam alone, it pulled in $35 million of revenue within five days, the best launch any Assassin's Creed has managed on the platform. Cosmetic DLC added another million on its own. It became the first game in the series to pass 100,000 concurrent players on Steam, and it sits as the highest-rated entry since 2013, with a user score near 8.7. It holds an 84 on Metacritic. Ubisoft has held the launch up as proof that its remake strategy pays off, which is part of what makes the timing of the Barcelona cuts land so badly. That success has already fed talk of more, including a teased Assassin's Creed (2007) remake.

Around 90 people joined the walkout this week, carrying a banner that reworked the series logo into "Corporate Greed" and flying flags for the CGT union. Barcelona staff had already launched strike in previous month when the plans first surfaced, and the action resumed now, with a further strike set for today, Thursday, July 16.

The core of the dispute is the money. Workers say the payout on the table falls short of the legal minimum and of what Ubisoft paid people it let go from the same studio before.

"The severance pay they're offering is far below the minimum expected, and below what they've offered for previously laid off employees from the studio."

— A Ubisoft Barcelona employee, to IGN

Some roles may still be saved, and part of the team could shift onto Rainbow Six, but staff describe the cut to the Assassin's Creed group as settled.

"There are still discussions about saving some of the jobs, and it's likely that at least some will move to Rainbow Six, but the job positions themselves seem quite definite, and the Assassin's Creed team has been certainly cut."

— A Ubisoft Barcelona employee

Barcelona is not an outlier. Ubisoft opened 2026 by canceling six games, among them a Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake, and shutting Ubisoft Stockholm and Ubisoft Halifax, with further cuts at Abu Dhabi, Trials maker RedLynx, and Massive Entertainment. Days later it moved to drop 200 jobs at its Paris headquarters, which drew protests in the city. February brought 40 cuts at Ubisoft Toronto and renewed worry about the long-promised Splinter Cell remake; in March, 105 roles went from veteran Tom Clancy studio Red Storm Entertainment. Winnipeg and Belgrade together accounted for roughly 165 of the 380 jobs in this round.

Ubisoft calls the Barcelona plan a proposal rather than a decision. A spokesperson said the company respects employees' right to strike and has begun a proposed restructuring to cut costs and focus resources on strategic priorities, with the studio moving to Rainbow Six work and up to 51 people affected. No final call arrives, the statement said, until the collective consultation process concludes.

The pattern reaches past Ubisoft. Weeks earlier, Bethesda's Union marched against Xbox layoffs that ran past 440 positions across Bethesda's studios and swept up long-serving staff, among them Christiane Meister, an artist of 27 years credited with shaping the look of Skyrim's Khajiit. More than 240 Bethesda staff had unionized in 2024, and they argued their certified status gave them rights that non-union studios lack. The union's line was blunt: the company wanted the cuts treated as done, and the workers refused.

I don't dispute the analytics behind these layoffs; if anything, I think the numbers are the real driver. What I can't square is the branding, because firing the developers of your most successful launch in a decade and then lowballing their severance tells everyone watching how little the company values them. I'd rather see Ubisoft spend some of its goodwill on a graceful exit than save a few euros and look like it shoved its own talent out the door.

Read also, Ubisoft may reveal its next mainline entry, Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe, at Gamescom 2026 in Cologne this August, according to insider xj0nathan; the game is set in 16th-century Germany during the Holy Roman Empire and follows a new protagonist named Anika, though Ubisoft has yet to confirm what it will bring to the show.