Following yesterday’s news that Ubisoft intends to close down Finland’s Ubisoft Redlynx, as well has laying off 70 staff from Ubisoft Singapore, Game File brings us more horrible news: the publisher is aiming to reduce its German workforce by 100 employees. Aiming for voluntary redundancies with buyouts, rather than layoffs, it’s yet more carnage within the once super-successful French company.
Game File spoke to an Ubisoft representative who said, “In Germany, we initiated discussions with the Works Council last week regarding a proposed voluntary departure plan across Ubisoft Düsseldorf, Ubisoft Berlin and Ubisoft Mainz.” The goal is to encourage around 100 of the 600 or so employees across the three studios to offer to resign, in return for a buyout. Game File‘s sources said this figure would be based on a person’s monthly salary multiplied by 1.5, and then multiplied by the number of years they’d worked with the company.
A German works council, or a Betriebsrat, is an elected group of employees from within a company that then work with management to negotiate working conditions, voice employee views, and improve bargaining power. It’s like a union in some ways, but German unions represent an entire industry, whereas a works council operates at a company level. It seems this financial offer has yet to be finalized with this group.
A tangled web
The mess of studios across Ubisoft’s network gets extremely confusing when you try to unpick it all. Düsseldorf, Berlin and Mainz are still technically grouped under the brand of Blue Byte, the company formed in 1988 and responsible for legendary 1990s series like Battle Isle and Settlers. Later, Blue Byte worked in collaboration with Anno creators Related Design, which later became known as Ubisoft Mainz…and yeah, there’s a point where you just have to stop pulling on the threads.
But despite this, Ubisoft Mainz currently falls under the so-called Creative House 4 (Ubisoft’s current structuring strategy that it’s been implementing since January this year), grouped with Milan, Montpellier and Paris’ Ubisoft Nadeo, and not the other two German groups, now primarily responsible for Anno, Rayman, Might & Magic, Prince of Persia and Beyond Good & Evil. Düsseldorf (by far the largest with just over 400 employees) and Berlin are instead now grouped within the new “Creative Network,” the confusing title for the studios not included in Creative Houses, but existing to support each Creative House with their projects. And oh god, this is a headache.
But not nearly the headache for staff across the German studios, who were only just hit with 185 layoffs in 2025. While buyouts are certainly a better offer than flat redundancies, it’s hard to imagine this will be the last time Ubisoft’s c-suite comes looking for savings in the area.
And yet again, if Ubisoft was hoping any of these moves would give its shareholders confidence that the hemorrhaging company is going to turn itself around, it’ll be bitterly disappointed. Yesterday’s cuts saw shares fall yet again, now back under €5 for the first time in a month, more than 95 percent less than in 2018.