Today Ubisoft shut down its Winnipeg and Belgrade studios. Around 380 jobs gone across those two closures plus cuts at Barcelona. Insider Gaming broke Winnipeg first. Belgrade followed shortly after. Ubisoft hasn't responded to any requests for comment.
Sixth round of layoffs in 2026. It's June.
January: Stockholm closed, Halifax closed, 55 at Massive Entertainment, 29 in Abu Dhabi, 60 at RedLynx. February: 40 at Ubisoft Toronto. March: Red Storm Entertainment, 105 jobs, game development formally ended. June: Winnipeg (65), Belgrade (100), Barcelona loses 51 people and gets narrowed to Rainbow Six work only.
Rough total for 2026: around 680 jobs. Ubisoft had over 20,000 employees in 2023. Before today they were at 16,590.
Ubisoft Winnipeg built and maintained the Anvil and Snowdrop engines — the technology that powers Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Rainbow Six, The Division, Star Wars Outlaws. Not the games. The tools other studios use to build the games. Someone from their team gave a GDC talk about vehicle AI in Star Wars Outlaws specifically. Winnipeg also contributed to Rainbow Six Siege, XDefiant, Far Cry 6, and Assassin's Creed Valhalla over its seven years.
Ubisoft Belgrade spent ten years as a support studio. Ghost Recon Wildlands, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, The Crew 2, Rainbow Six, Riders Republic, Skull & Bones. Started with 10 people in 2016, reached 100.
Red Storm Entertainment was founded in 1996 — turns 30 this year. Made the original Rainbow Six. Made multiple Ghost Recon titles. Game development ended there in March, third round of layoffs in three years, studio kept alive only to maintain Snowdrop. The studio that created Rainbow Six is now doing technical upkeep for the franchise it created. That took thirty years and three rounds of cuts to produce.
Winnipeg built Snowdrop tools, closed today. Red Storm was converted into a Snowdrop maintenance team three months ago. That either means someone planned a deliberate handoff or two separate problems got stapled together and called a restructure. Possibly both.
Who at Ubisoft made the decision to close Winnipeg, and when exactly was it made? Was it before or after the January restructure announcement? And if Red Storm is now absorbing Winnipeg's engine work, what's the plan when Red Storm's reduced team — already down from 180 to a skeleton crew — hits capacity limits on that? These are not complicated questions. They just haven't been asked yet, or if they have, haven't been answered.
Ubisoft Barcelona loses 51 people — 28% of staff, according to a figure a Ubisoft Paris programmer posted on LinkedIn — and gets narrowed to Rainbow Six work only. Barcelona had been working on Beyond Good and Evil 2 and several unannounced projects based on job listings through the early 2020s. Whether those projects are cancelled or moved somewhere, Ubisoft hasn't said. What happened to Beyond Good and Evil 2? It's been in development in some form since 2017. Is it cancelled, quietly shelved, or handed to another studio? A yes or no would do.
Barcelona has a union. Halifax had a union too, and was closed twenty days after workers voted to join it in December. Barcelona survived, barely, with a quarter of its staff gone and its work reduced to one game series.
That series is Rainbow Six Siege. Year 11. Still Ubisoft's most reliable live service revenue. It was hacked in December 2025 — attackers got into the backend and distributed around $13 million in premium currency to players before servers were shut down globally. Multiple studios now depend on that game staying healthy. That's a narrow foundation.
Ubisoft's approach to telling the press about today is worth a separate note.
Insider Gaming broke Winnipeg independently. Other outlets heard directly from Ubisoft — which companies don't usually do with layoff announcements. The news came with a time embargo, the kind typically attached to game reviews or product launches. In at least one case a journalist agreed to the embargo without being told what it covered. Ubisoft only disclosed the subject close to the lift time.
Ubisoft justified the embargo in at least one instance by saying Belgrade staff were still being informed at that moment. HR notifications and press embargo management running at the same time, on the same event. Why did Ubisoft contact journalists before employees had been told? Who made that call? And did the journalists who agreed to an embargo on an undisclosed subject feel that was a fair ask? At least one outlet, Aftermath, reported it wasn't. Nobody from Ubisoft's communications team has addressed that specifically.
All of this sits inside the January restructure. Ubisoft split into five Creative Houses and launched Vantage Studios, the Tencent-backed subsidiary holding Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six. The cost target is €500 million in fixed cost reductions by 2028. Phase one, €100 million, done ahead of schedule. Phase two, another €200 million, ongoing.
Support studios are how you hit that number. Winnipeg and Belgrade weren't lead development studios on flagship products. They were the scaffolding. Closing them cuts fixed costs without touching the franchises that Tencent's investment is actually tied to. Whether the work they did gets absorbed or just stops getting done isn't something Ubisoft has addressed publicly.
Ubisoft had committed to tripling Winnipeg's workforce from around 100 to 300 employees by 2030. That was an official announcement. The studio closed today with 65 people. Nobody at Ubisoft has mentioned that commitment in any statement made today. No reporter has appeared to ask about it directly yet either. When was that plan abandoned? Were the workers hired on the basis of that growth promise told it was no longer the plan before today? Did anyone in government — the province committed public support to Ubisoft's Winnipeg expansion — get any prior notice?
Red Storm turns 30 this year. Ubisoft hasn't commented.
