Ubisoft close the studio behind Assassin's Creed Rebellion days after the developers vote to unionise

Insist there's nary connection

Ubisoft are closing Ubisoft Halifax, the Canadian developers of mobile games Rainbow Six Mobile and Assassin's Creed Rebellion. This is strictly speaking extracurricular our mandate arsenic a PC gaming site, of people - I fearfulness smartphones similar Hell itself, and lone ever pass implicit agelong distances utilizing homing pigeons - but it's each portion of Ubisoft's wider translation into a heavy Tencent-backed publisher, and the nasty twist is that Ubisoft Halifax had lone conscionable voted to unionise.

As reported by Gamesindustry.biz, Ubisoft Halifax unit announced the founding of Ubisoft's archetypal labour national successful North America earlier this week, having begun the process successful June 2025. Almost 74% of the studio's unit voted successful favour, spanning the programming, production, design, creation and R&D departments. The ballot was really owed to instrumentality spot past June, but Ubisoft mounted challenges that were yet dropped up of vote-counting successful December.

In announcement materials, the freshly unionised Halifax unit appeared affirmative astir their narration with the company. "We judge that creativity flourishes erstwhile workers consciousness secure, supported, and empowered," they wrote. "We are unionising not successful absorption to Ubisoft, but successful partnership, with the extremity of ensuring our workplace remains a beacon of equity, excellence, and innovation."

Now, Ubisoft person binned them off, though they've stressed to GI that this has thing to bash with unionisation. "Over the past 24 months, Ubisoft has undertaken company-wide actions to streamline operations, amended efficiency, and trim costs," the institution said successful a statement. "As portion of this, Ubisoft has made the hard determination to adjacent its Halifax studio. 71 positions volition beryllium affected. We are committed to supporting each impacted squad members during this modulation with resources, including broad severance packages and further vocation assistance."

According to an Ubisoft spokesperson, the closure forms portion of cost-cutting that dates backmost to the lifting of Covid restrictions and the extremity of the pandemic gross boom. They stay blessed to recognise and enactment with unionised unit successful general. It should of people beryllium noted that determination are plentifulness of unionised Ubisoft unit successful different regions, but still, I'm not definite burning down a subsidiary wrong weeks of a national ballot indicates beardown tendency for a steadfast dialog with the workers.

Ubisoft Halifax weren't ever a mobile-dedicated studio. Prior to their acquisition by the House of Guillemot successful 2015, they were known arsenic Longtail and worked connected guitar crippled Rocksmith.

Following a unsmooth mates of years defined by plummeting banal prices and shareholder uprisings, Ubisoft are presently restructuring astir a Tencent-funded halfway "creative house", shoring up their halfway Far Cry, Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six operations portion trimming the books elsewhere. They precocious announced plans for redundancies astatine Massive, creators of Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Wars Outlaws, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, unneurotic with a alteration of absorption for Trials devs Redlynx.

Best of luck to each Ubisoft Halifax unit present looking for caller jobs.