Ubisoft Barcelona is laying off 51 workers even as Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced becomes a commercial hit, selling 2 million copies within its first day on shelves. The timing has sparked anger among staff who spent over two years building the game's diving missions, only to learn of their redundancy two weeks before launch.
The Barcelona studio contributed the underwater levels that feature prominently in the remaster, a task that required sustained creative effort from its animation and quality assurance teams. Manel Cota, a tech and gameplay animator, posted on social media that the entire Barcelona team responsible for this work is now facing termination. "Ubisoft Barcelona did all the underwater levels," he wrote. "And that same team is being fired right now because Ubisoft thinks that's what we deserve :)"
Isabel Codina García, a quality assurance lead at the studio, called the moment "bittersweet" in a LinkedIn post, emphasizing that workers had invested years into the project only to face collective redundancy notices mere weeks before the game's arrival in stores.
Workers began a strike on July 14 that is scheduled to continue through July 16. A walkout flyer distributed by labor organizers captured the frustration bluntly: "After years of dedication to our team, the company has turned its back on us. We will never see the fruits of our labor, and the reward for our hard work will be the loss of our jobs."
The Barcelona cuts are part of a broader restructuring at Ubisoft that has devastated the company throughout 2026. In January alone, the publisher canceled six games including the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake and shuttered Ubisoft Stockholm and Ubisoft Halifax entirely. Subsequent rounds of cuts followed at Paris headquarters, Red Storm Entertainment, Toronto, and other locations. Combined with earlier waves of layoffs dating back to 2022, Ubisoft has eliminated hundreds of positions across its global operations.
The Barcelona studio, which has historically supported major projects led by other Ubisoft divisions like the Rabbids franchise and Star Trek: Bridge Crew, is now being redirected toward exclusive focus on the Rainbow Six franchise as part of wider organizational reshuffles that continue to destabilize the company.
Author Emily Chen: "It's a brutal reminder that commercial success at a megapublisher doesn't protect workers from the spreadsheet math of cost-cutting, especially when you're a smaller support studio rather than a flagship team."
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