Ubisoft Layoffs Under Fire Over Attempted Embargo

Often, announcements in the video game industry will be embargoed. That means that some outlets, including our own, will get given the details on a new game or trailer ahead of time, so a full article is ready to go live as soon as the company announces it officially.

However, in all my years, I have never heard of layoff announcements being embargoed. Typically, these are just announced whenever the company has to make the news public, and more often than not, this is after the news has been broken by journalists or workers on social media.

Yet as Ubisoft is rolling out more layoffs, it seems like it tried to get ahead of the story. Yesterday, it was announced that Ubisoft is shutting down two studios and cutting jobs at another as part of its latest round of layoffs. The news broke officially at 6pm BST, and as you can see, this is when many outlets reported on it. Now, some journalists say that this is because the news was shared with these outlets under an embargo, ensuring it would go out in a controlled manner.

Ubisoft Is Under Fire For Layoffs – And For Putting An Embargo On The News Of The Layoffs

Both Nathan Grayson from Aftermath and Tom Henderson from Insider Gaming have backed up claims that the layoff news was under embargo. Insider Gaming actually reported on the layoffs before the embargo, and Henderson says that Ubisoft got in touch to tell them they were breaking it, despite never agreeing to it.

Ubisoft told TheGamer it has no comment on this story.

Henderson has talked about this at length, taking issue with how Ubisoft tried to get ahead of the story and control when it got out.

“Am I glad we published articles on layoffs today? Hell no. But I am glad that we did what we were supposed to do,” he says. “Personally, I think as an industry, we’re running into quite dangerous ground when we start abiding by embargoes about layoffs, but even more so when we publish the info like we learned info from sources rather than the company itself.”

As for the layoffs, those include complete studio closures in Winnipeg and Belgrade, with additional layoffs in Ubisoft’s Barcelona studio. Ubisoft Barcelona is now expected to work solely on Rainbow Six.

This is far from the only sign of trouble at Ubisoft. Earlier this year, it cancelled multiple games, including a Prince of Persia remake that appeared to be close to launch.