[STEAM] Assassin's Creed Black Flag Developers in Barcelona Are Being Laid Off as Ubisoft Celebrates Game's Success

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Ubisoft Barcelona developers who contributed to

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have spoken out about the company's plans to lay them off — just as their final project becomes a commercial success, selling 2 million copies in around 24 hours.

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as part of a wider wave of job losses across the firm. 380 staff are being let go in this latest downsizing, spread across offices in Winnipeg and Belgrade (which will close completely), in Barcelona, and in the company's global publishing division.

Ubisoft Barcelona has a history of supporting projects typically led by other, larger Ubisoft studios, such as games in the Rabbids series and Star Trek: Bridge Crew. For Assassin's Creed ****** Flag Resynced, the team worked on the game's diving side-missions — a secondary activity that a separate team also worked on in the original ****** Flag.

"Ubisoft Barcelona did all the underwater levels," wrote Manel Cota, a tech and gameplay animator at the studio, via a

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on social media. "And that same team is being fired right now because Ubisoft thinks that's what we deserve :)"

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

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— Manel Cota (@MaNeo_O)

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"Today is a bittersweet day," added Isabel Codina García, a quality assurance lead at Ubisoft Barcelona, via a post on

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that noted that a portion of the Barcelona studio had been working on the game for over two years. "However, two weeks before launch, the whole AC team at Ubisoft Barcelona was informed of a collective redundancy plan."

Yesterday, workers

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a strike against the layoffs will take place today, Tuesday July 14, and continue over the next couple of days. A flyer advertising the walkout claims that "51 staff will lose their jobs in the coming weeks."

"After years of dedication to our team, the company has turned its back on us," the flyer states. "We will never see the fruits of our labor, and the reward for our hard work will be the loss of our jobs."

Ubisoft plans for its Barcelona team to now focus solely on the Rainbow Six franchise, IGN understands, as part of wider organizational changes that have seen repeated reshufflings and redunancies across the whole company.

In March, Ubisoft confirmed that

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, as part of a move that downsized the studio permanently, following three previous waves of layoffs at the company since 2022.

Ubisoft has cut hundreds of staff and fully closed numerous studios in recent times, with 2026 already off to a brutal start. In January, the company canceled six games including its

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and

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(Ubisoft Stockholm and Ubisoft Halifax), while making layoffs at its office in Abu Dhabi, at Trials studio RedLynx and at Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora outfit Massive Entertainment.

Just a week after that, Ubisoft

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, leading to protests within the French capital. Next, in February, Ubisoft was forced to reassure fans that its long-awaited

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remained in development

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.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky

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