Ubisoft Ain't Doing Too Well Right Now

Corporate restructuring, 7 canceled projects, a call for strikes...

Author

Rutledge Daugette
January 23, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Ubisoft Restructures, Stocks Tumble

(and not in a parkour kinda way)

There’s a large shift at the French AAAA developer right now, all in response to years of decline. The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake has been officially canceled, along with six other unnamed projects. Ubisoft is still committed to structuring into five creative houses, each of which focusing on a different pillar of their gaming portfolio.

That gaming portfolio is getting “refocused” as part of Ubisoft’s goal to make games that meet a new standard of “enhanced quality.” This means delays of seven other games, and additionally, the company wants to cut €200 million in spending over the next two years. Unfortunately, part of this reorganization also means a bigger focus in generative AI. Their stocks dropped by roughly one-third compared to where they were 30 days ago.

As you might expect, all these project cancellations, delays, and slashed budgets means layoffs are afoot (in this industry? Shocking, I know). Thankfully, one of France’s largest unions, Solidares Informatique, called for a half-day strike on Jan 22 to push back on these cost-cutting announcements, as well as the return-to-office policies. There’s more talk of longer-term strikes soon as well.

I can only hope that these strikes will lead to something greater. The games industry has been dominated by C-suites making decisions from the top down, leading to people’s lives being upended. “Restructure” is often a nice way to cover the fact that people are losing their way of life, sometimes with a family to worry about too. Unions are few and far between in games, and it’s nice to see one try to make a big push against one of the bigger names in gaming.

Funny enough, just days before this restructuring was announced, Ex-Assassin's Creed Boss Marc-Alexis Côté sued the company for $1.3 million, alleging “constructive dismissal.” In other words, he alleges that the company essentially forced him to resign and without severance. That $1.3 million is supposed to be two years’ worth of severance and a couple extra thousands for moral damages.

Ubisoft is in a very weird place right now. It has a lot of recognizable IPs, it diversified into TV and movies, and it even has some live-service games for that consistent cashflow that capitalism covets. Yet, nothing really has quite hit for them in the past couple years. There’s no widely beloved darling, there’s no moneymaker on the level of Call of Duty or Fortnite.

Things that should have been slam dunks for them end up bouncing off the rim. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws have all the power of massive IPs behind them, but they haven’t helped the company catch its breath. Longtime promises like the Sands of Time remake and Beyond Good & Evil 2 have felt vaporware. The first one ended up becoming just that, while the latter is allegedly still being worked on, according to job listings.

Regardless, I feel bad for the workers at Ubisoft across the globe. This is a multinational company that is currently on a nosedive. Leadership is trying hard to pull back up, but unfortunately, that means they have to lighten their cargo, no matter how many individual workers’ lives that might impact. But hey, if they successfully lay off enough people, the numbers will go up. Capitalism loves that.

In other news, the Wizards of the Coast has created five islands for players to check out with all sorts of D&D-flavored minigames, of sorts. There’s a co-op roguelite in early access in particular that looks interesting.

Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons, former Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser is rolling initiative now at Hasbro’s board of directors. He’s the newest executive on the block alongside Carla Vernon, The Honest Company’s CEO.

TechRaptor’s third best indie game of 2025 is getting a major update on Jan 26, which includes new characters, more balls, and an exciting surprise. If you haven’t tried out Ball x Pit, I really recommend it. It’s so easy to pick up, yet so hard to put down.

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