Video game studio Ubisoft will reportedly lay off 51 workers at its Barcelona branch, the cuts coinciding with the label’s launch of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. The job cuts, confirmed in a new Insider Gaming report, affect roughly 30 percent of the studio’s staff and are allegedly part of the embattled studio’s ongoing restructuring efforts.
“These layoffs coincide with the broader context of ongoing workplace issues,” an anonymous employee explained to Insider Gaming. “This is not an isolated event; it reflects a pattern of constant mistreatment, loss of talent, forced departures resulting from the erosion of workers’ rights, and an increasingly top-down management culture that leaves employees with little voice in decisions affecting their work.”
Ubisoft typically “assign[s] a new project to teams well before they complete their current project, sometimes a year in advance,” but Insider Gaming’s report reveals the crew at Ubisoft Barcelona had not received a new assignment since last summer.
The report also alleges the French studio canceled the internal Black Flag Resynced launch celebration and instead held a “small catering get-together at the studio.”
Ubisoft’s global restructuring efforts eliminated hundreds of roles in 2026
Staffers at Ubisoft’s Barcelona office anticipated layoffs regardless of how well Black Flag Resynced performed. Workers began protesting the potential layoffs late last month in twice-weekly demonstrations. Spanish trade union Confederación General del Trabajo announced the strikes would occur on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from late June through Thursday, July 16, comprising six demonstrations in three weeks.
Layoffs at Ubisoft Barcelona follow myriad cuts across the brand’s other studio locations around the globe. On June 10, Ubisoft announced it would shutter its Winnipeg and Belgrade offices as yet another shareholder-approved cost-cutting measure. Ubisoft Barcelona was named specifically in the report as a potential future target.
In February, Ubisoft announced it would lay off dozens of employees at its Toronto studio, affecting several behind the beloved Splinter Cell franchise. Just a week earlier, an estimated 1,200 Ubisoft employees protested the company’s controversial return-to-office policy.
In January 2026, Ubisoft closed its newly unionized Halifax studio, eliminating 70 roles. Later that month, the company announced dozens of additional redundancies at its Stockholm office and The Division studio, Massive Entertainment.
Altogether, Ubisoft has laid off upward of 500 workers in 2026.
This is a developing story. Stay tuned to Outrun Gaming for more information as it becomes available.
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