Ubisoft dismisses Assassin's Creed team after project completion

The trigger for union mobilization came as a strong response from the affected professionals. Through the Video Game Union Coordinating Committee, the workers at Ubisoft Barcelona agreed upon a schedule of partial strikes set for every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, from June 30 to July 16, totaling six organized strikes over three weeks of protest. It is invigorating to see the operational base come together to confront the management's misconduct, demonstrating that the industry's workforce will not silently accept systematic workforce dismissals.

The corporate gears of Ubisoft operated with the usual bureaucratic coldness when they announced the dismissal of 51 professionals from the division in Spain on June 10, directly impacting developers who had spent recent months dedicated to building the title. Sources from behind the scenes reported to the portal Insider Gaming that staff cuts had been planned by upper management long before the project's completion and would happen regardless of the product’s reception in virtual stores. Treating creators as disposable machinery parts right after extracting the most from their technical effort is one of the most regrettable and cowardly attitudes in the current development landscape.

“These layoffs coincide with the broader context of ongoing issues in the working environment. It is not an isolated event; it reflects a pattern of constant mistreatment, talent loss, forced layoffs resulting from the erosion of workers' rights, and a management culture that is increasingly top-down, leaving employees with little say in the decisions affecting their work.”

The justification for clearing the desks at the Spanish office exposes a critical error in the holding’s long-term planning. The company habitually ties new projects to its creative teams well in advance, often a year before the current timeline ends. The Barcelona branch had been issuing formal warnings about the productivity gap in its assembly line since the summer of 2025, but their requests were solemnly ignored by the general directors. Without a new game assigned in the management system, the completion of tasks on Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced left the team without an official direction within the conglomerate’s structure.

All this enforced restructuring happens at an excellent technical moment for the intellectual property, which had a strong commercial performance during the pre-launch phase and holds an aggregate score of 84 on the site Metacritic. The game received a fantastic reception from both the press and the general public, making the dismantling of the technical team even more incomprehensible from an artistic standpoint. To top off the disrespect towards the team, the multinational’s management decided to abruptly cancel the celebration party that was planned to welcome the game’s market launch, replacing the event with a modest snack set up in the building’s cafeteria, an act of pettiness that felt like mockery and created an unsustainable atmosphere among employees holding their notice of termination.