Ubisoft Announces “Quality”-Focused “Reset”: Multiple Games Cancelled, Studios Closed, Employees Ordered Back To Office
It’s slash-and-burn season for Ubisoft, with the embattled French video game developer kicking off a new round of production-forward restructuring by not only divvying up their various franchises among new specialized subsidiaries, but also giving the pink slip to a number of in-development titles that apparently did fell short of their “new enhanced quality” standards.
Following from Ubisoft’s ongoing attempt to right their ship after the abysmal performance of Star Wars Outlaws and their recent neglecting of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, the first step of which involved the October 2025 reassignment of their popular Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed, and Rainbow Six franchises to their fledgling subsidiary Vantage Studios, this new “major organizational, operational and portfolio reset” was unveiled to the public via a January 21st press release published to the Investor Relations section of the studio’s official website.
Per Ubisoft, this reset is “designed to reclaim its creative leadership, regain agility and drive a sharp rebound, renewing the Group’s trajectory toward sustainable growth and robust cash generation”, as will be delivered through “three main pillars”, those being “a new operating model”, “a refocused portfolio with a meaningfully revised 3-year roadmap”, and “the right sizing of the organization”.
“Today’s announcement introduces a radically new value-creation model: a more gamer-centric organization, structured around creative genres, relying on integrated business units with faster, decentralized decision-making and a greater ability to quickly adapt to players’ expectations. This transformation will be supported by a rightsized and more agile organization, delivering improved structural efficiencies over time.”
(However, before Ubisoft faithful begin to cheer, it should be noted that despite the studio’s flowery rhetoric, their plans are unabashedly corporate, with their new model centering “on Open World Adventures and GaaS-native experiences, supported by targeted investments, deeper specialization, and cutting-edge technology, including accelerated investments behind
player-facing Generative AI”, as well as demanding that employees all “return to five days per week on site”.)
One major element of this restructuring is its creation of five new “Creative Houses”, each of which will be tasked with shepherding specific ‘styles’ of games, including:
- Creative House #1 (Vantage Studios), as “focused on scaling and extending Ubisoft’s largest and established franchises to turn them into annual billionaire brands,” will be in charge of the Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Rainbow Six franchises.
- Creative House #2 will be “dedicated d to competitive and cooperative shooter experiences” and have oversight of such brands as The Division, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell
- Creative House #3 is “designed to operate a roster of select, sharp Live experiences”, its assigned franchises including For Honor, The Crew, Riders Republic, Brawlhalla, and Skull & Bones
- Creative House #4 has its sights set on “immersive fantasy worlds and narrative-driven universes’, as seen in such series as Anno, Might & Magic, Rayman, Prince of Persia, and Beyond Good & Evil
- And Creative House #5, which will focus on “reclaiming position in casual and family-friendly games”, as facilitated by their management of the Just Dance, Idle Miner Tycoon, Ketchapp, Hungry Shark, Invincible: Guarding the Globe, Uno, and Hasbro IPs.
To this end, Ubisoft further announced that due to this shake-up, they had “discontinued 6 [in-development] games that do not meet the new enhanced quality as well as more selective portfolio prioritization criteria at Group level”, with the cancelled titles including the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake as well as 4 unannounced titles, including 3 new IP’s, and a mobile title.”
The studio will also “allocate additional development time to 7 games in order to ensure enhanced quality benchmarks are fully met and maximize long-term value creation. This includes the unannounced title initially planned for FY26, that has been delayed to FY27.”
In further advancement of their goals, Ubisoft additionally confirmed that they had “taken decisive actions to adjust its studio footprint”, which as of reporting included “the closure of the Halifax mobile studio earlier this month and the Stockholm studio, as well as restructurings at Abu Dhabi, RedLynx and Massive.”
As noted above, while a hopeful reading would suggest this move was being done out of the company’s care for the medium and their customers, the sheer ‘profit first’ cynicism dripping off of this press release suggest that the entire situation is just smoke and mirrors for Ubisoft’s investors, with these promises of ‘quality’ ready to be thrown to the wayside at the first opportunity to crap out an easy cash-grab.
Only time will tell – but at the very least, don’t expect the Assassin’s Creed franchise to rocket back to its golden years any time soon.
