Skull and Bones creators to lose around 70 staff, allegedly
Ubisoft are planning to shut down RedLynx, creators of the side-scrolling Trials arcade racing games, according to a report, while laying off staff at Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynched studio Ubisoft Singapore.
The report is from VGC, who've heard that Ubisoft management made the decision in the course of a wider studio review. They previously cut staff at Redlynx in October 2025, while instructing the studio to focus on mobile game projects. Now, they're said to be proposing a full closure with around 52 people potentially affected.
Redlynx apparently don't have a game project right now – back in October, they had two unannounced games in the offing – which naturally makes it easier to justify junking them. Redlynx are based in Finland - Ubisoft will have to negotiate the proposal with their employees under local labour laws. All this follows wider layoffs this summer, and comes amidst strikes at another studio over Ubisoft's work-from-home policies.
Redlynx were founded way back in 2000, finding fame with Trails in the late noughties and early 2010s. Ubisoft bought them in 2011. I haven't played Trials much lately, but it was an office favourite back when I worked in an office: a spinny, physics-crazed biking experience in which you'd faceplant every five seconds and spend hours mastering the contours of That One Logpile on That One marathon track.
Trials Evolution takes the thrill of serial faceplanting, and combines it with the deep hatred of That One local multiplayer opponent who streaks ahead and makes everybody fall off screen. And also, the glow of human closeness when all the participants wipe out simultaneously on the same chunky tractor tire. I'm not sure how many of the old Trials devs are left at Redlynx – recently, the studio appears to have worked primarily as a support for Divison 2 and Star Wars: Outlaws devs Massive - but I'm very sorry to anybody facing the axe.
Ubisoft Singapore, meanwhile, are reportedly losing about 70 people. You will likely know them best as the creators of infamously delayed naval sim Skull and Bones, but they've also worked across a swathe of Assassin's Creed games since their founding in 2008. They led development on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, back in the news this week after dataminers discovered evidence of a potential teaser for an Assassin's Creed 3 flavoured thingy of some kind. Again, best of luck to everybody affected. We've asked Ubisoft for comment.