Ubisoft Barcelona workers walked out this week in a three-day strike after the studio confirmed 51 layoffs, nearly a third of its headcount, right on the heels of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced moving 2 million copies in its first day. The Barcelona team handled the game’s underwater exploration sequences, the very feature that helped the remake post the highest Steam concurrent players ever recorded for an Assassin’s Creed title. Staff describe the cuts as a pre-planned restructuring that Vantage Studios green-lit months earlier, with no new projects lined up despite the team pitching fresh AC ideas.

The union CGT Catalunya and CSVI are demanding the layoffs be scrapped, five-year job security guarantees, and the restoration of the prior 60 percent remote-work policy that Ubisoft quietly rolled back. Anonymous developers told outlets the timing felt especially cruel after years on the project, with one noting “this is not how I imagined it would end.” Ubisoft has yet to respond beyond the standard “strategic shift” line that accompanied the broader wave of studio closures in Winnipeg and Belgrade.

This is the same pattern Riley has tracked for years: ship the game, harvest the sales, then clear the decks. The receipts are public, the outrage is loud on X, and the workers are the only ones paying the tab.