CHRIS CAME BACK FROM his winter break feeling energized. Ubisoft’s Halifax studio, where he worked, had recently unionized with 74 percent support, joining CWA Canada. On January 5, employees returned from vacation eager to prove that unionization would make them stronger workers. But two days later, it all came crashing down.
Jean-Michel Detoc, chief mobile officer from the company’s France office, walked through the front door, unannounced. Dread descended upon the staff. By 10 a.m., all seventy-one employees were laid off. Some started crying. Others were furious. “You lose your job like that—it sounds dramatic, but it’s a traumatic experience,” says Chris (whose name has been changed to avoid professional repercussions).
A company-wide announcement later that afternoon spelled out the reasons: a “shortage of viable work both immediately and in the forecasted future” meant that the Halifax office no longer had a “justifiable mandate” to continue. “I’m thinking this is really confusing, because we’re all super busy,” says Chris.
Chris is now looking for a job and fears speaking out, because in the video game industry, talking to the press can be a death sentence for your career. I contacted five other employees, none of whom were willing to go on the record.
Ubisoft, the video game publisher behind massively popular franchises, like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, shrank from 21,000 employees globally to 17,000 between 2022 and 2026. Before the Halifax layoffs, the company had 5,000 employees in Canada, with around 4,000 in Montreal and the rest spread across Quebec City, Winnipeg, Toronto, Chicoutimi, and Sherbrooke. It’s been reported that Ubisoft plans to lay off another 200 to 400 people internationally this year (a company spokesperson declined to comment on the matter in a response to The Walrus).