It’s simple. Game companies made a killing during the pandemic with money meant to sustain the economy. Now the economy isn’t so good and debt is expensive, so it’s time to cut headcount as fast as possible to book record profits. Same for most tech companies, hell companies in general.
Then they’ll start whining it’s hard to make money these days and they need a tax payer backed boost to get people working again “for the benefit of the economy”. They are holding it hostage, and the politicians are playing into it for personal gain.
Needless to say it’s not getting better any time soon.
Ubisoft has not had any layoffs. They haven’t even had a full hiring freeze. They have just not hired people at the same rate as before. I just wanted to clarify that.
Didn’t Ubisoft layoff 45 people in April, and then 100+ people before last Christmas? Sure that’s not Google/Microsoft numbers, but I’m struggling to see how that’s not related to the “reducing headcount” here.
They’ve also had a bunch of games cease production/get quietly cancelled, and if there were contractors working on those instead of full employees, those wouldn’t count as “layoffs”.
Edit: Apr. 2024: Ubi lays off 45.
Nov. 2023: Ubi lays off 124 people, 98 in Canada
Sept. 2023 - they closed their London studio and 60 positions were “affected” (they never said if they were let go or redistributed within the company)
There has been reorganisations, yes. Some of these has affected jobs. Every affected person has been given relocation offers. The amount of restructuring has not been much higher than any other year.
I feel this doesn’t compare to the mass layoffs at most tech giants lately.
Bookings? Is Ubisoft running hotels now?
