Two weeks in the past, workers at Ubisoft Halifax formally fashioned a union, with 74% of its staff voting in favor of forming a bargaining unit after the Murderer’s Creed Rebel developer filed for unionization in June. Right now, Ubisoft introduced that it is closing the Halifax studio, claiming that the timing is merely coincidental (through GamesIndustry.biz).
“Over the previous 24 months, Ubisoft has undertaken company-wide actions to streamline operations, enhance effectivity, and scale back prices,” the writer stated in an announcement. “As a part of this, Ubisoft has made the tough resolution to shut its Halifax studio. 71 positions will probably be affected.”
Carmel Smyth, president of the studio union’s mum or dad group CWA Canada, known as the information “devastating.”
“We’ll pursue each authorized recourse to make sure that the rights of those staff are revered and never infringed in any method,” Smyth stated in a press launch. “We will probably be in search of Ubisoft to point out us that this had nothing to do with the workers becoming a member of a union. The employees, their households, the individuals of Nova Scotia, and all of us who love videogames made in Canada, deserve nothing much less.”
Ubisoft Halifax started as a department of Longtail Studios, based in 2003 by Ubisoft co-founder Gérard Guillemot. As IGN reported in 2023, Longtail’s Quebec department had beforehand began one among North America’s earliest sport studio unionization efforts in 2008, which in the end collapsed because of firm administration’s opposition to the group drive.
Longtail’s Halifax department would later grow to be Ubisoft Halifax following the studio’s acquisition in 2015. Since then, its improvement efforts have been centered on Ubisoft cell titles like Murderer’s Creed Rebel and Rainbow Six Cell.
Ubisoft is not the one main firm within the trade that is not too long ago eradicated the roles of staff who’ve pursued office unionization. Final 12 months, Rockstar fired greater than 30 GTA 6 builders who had been concerned in labor group, producing inner and exterior protest and welcoming parliamentary skepticism regardless of the corporate’s claims that the employees had engaged in “gross misconduct.”
Ubisoft claims the Halifax studio’s closure is unrelated to its current unionization, however was as a substitute a part of its bigger cost-reduction effort that is produced years of comparable studio shutterings, “voluntary profession transitions,” and widespread layoffs. The corporate stated it is “dedicated to supporting all impacted group members” with severance packages and profession help.
