It's unrelated though, trust me bro it just is. 🙄
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I don't like Assassin's Creed or Tom Clancy's games enough anyway: Ubisoft now blocked on my Steam list.
Haven't touched anything Ubisoft for a very long time. It appears I still don't have to.
Ubisoft hate Linux so I hope they go away and make way for something better.
I'm not sure I understand why a large multinational company having multiple studios is a special level of "fuck you" to employees?
they same ubisoft, that used a show on apple tv+(mythic quest) to make good propaganda about the company to paint a positive light.
71 people lose their jobs just to send a message
And the message is:
Unions should be a constitutional right
(And it is, in Denmark)
It is also a right in Canada, where this happened and where we don't refer to our rights as "constitutional" since they don't primarily derive from our constitution but rather from the charter of freedoms and case law
These employees did exercise their right to unionize, but there's no way to force employers to keep the union. A union just means that you can bargain collectively, and it should theoretically protect employees because what kind of scummy employer wants to fire ALL their employees, right? Turns out Ubisoft IS that scummy.
I mean it absolutely is illegal to retaliate against unionizing workers by firing them, that's why they didn't say "we fired them because they unionized". And Canada isn't America, we don't have right to work legislation and you can't generally just fire people en masse without cause out of the blue
Except ubisoft is hemorrhaging money so it's an extremely easy sell to say "the studio is not profitable and we're in dire need to cut waste" and indeed can the lot.
They can, and they can try to make the case that this is unrelated to unionization and fight that in court. Good luck
I mean, I'd bet dollars to donuts Ubisoft would win it handily if it gets to a class action or whatever equivalent.
For one, they're basically on the verge of falling over so the economic motivation is a no-brainer.
For two, it's a massive multinational company headquartered in France (a country with stronger labour laws than Canada) with plenty of legal advice available on these matters. I highly doubt they'd do it this blatantly if they were not confident this is an easy sell, instead of waiting something like 6 months to separate the 2 events enough for plausible deniability.
For three, good luck holding a foreign company accountable, in general.
I highly doubt they’d do it this blatantly if they were not confident this is an easy sell
I mean, I would have agreed with you, except we've also just recently seen even more blatant and indefensible union-busting from Rockstar in the UK, another country with good labour laws, and another country with more than adequate legal resources.
I think you're probably right that Ubisoft has sufficient legal cover to win this case, but that's because of the merits of this case, not because a big company from a country with good laws could never do something stupidly illegal.
And that message is "Don't ever buy from Ubisoft ever again"
I've been avoiding ubi for a decade or longer because they suck in many other ways, but here's another reason to not give them a single penny.
Ubisoft is actually the worst possible video game corporation.
They almost never make a game that's worthy of anyone's time, their business practices are scummy, they kill off their games and tell people to get used to not owning them, treat their workers like shit and their stock price is in the gutter so not even the wallstreet ghouls benefit from how awful they are.
It's incredible.
Rockstar had a similar scandal firing unionising workers last year
Here if over 50% want to form a union its illegal to stop it. I wonder if the USA has that?
What are the chances that it was shut down because of the unionization, vs just bad timing?
I support unions, but at this point I'd be terrified to join a new one. Especially when you're somewhere owned by a large company or private equity firm. There are just no protections for unions anymore, and these days large companies would rather just close down entire departments than give employees basic rights.
I get that the fear and intimidation are the point, but that really doesn't help. Having a gun pointed in your face is also a form of fear and intimidation, but knowing that doesn't make it any less dangerous when it happens to you.
I just don't know what to do anymore, every single thing feels like a losing option while the world just continues to get worse and worse. I've scrimped and saved for years to have some sort of nest egg, and its barely more than what more successful people casually spend in a week. I don't see a way out of this mess.
Remember that 100 years ago making or joining a Union could made you get shot or get beaten. Fear was and is always their no1 weapon.
You basically just said "don't team up with your friends for protection because the bullies might get madder"
Original: The layoffs across the video game industry are getting started early in 2026. Ubisoft has announced the closure of Ubisoft Halifax.
The closure will see 71 people lose their jobs.
The news of the studio’s shutdown comes just days after it was announced that 61 of the studio’s employees joined the Game & Media Workers Guild of Canada, Local 30111. The certification for the union came on December 18, 2025, and was branded as the Ubisoft Workers of Canada, Halifax.
In a statement, Ubisoft says that decision comes after two years of “company-wide actions to streamline operations”.
“Over the past 24 months, Ubisoft has undertaken company-wide actions to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and reduce costs,” the company said. “As part of this, Ubisoft has made the difficult decision to close its Halifax studio. 71 positions will be affected.
“We are committed to supporting all impacted team members during this transition with resources, including comprehensive severance packages and additional career assistance.”
The decision, Ubisoft claims, was made “well before” the staff unionized. Ubisoft added that it respected its employees right to join a union. Insider Gaming has reached out for a statement from members of the Union. Should that be received, it will be added to this story.
Prior to its closure, Ubisoft Halifax was working on mobile games for Rainbow Six and Assassin’s Creed.
“In Canada, it is unlawful for a business to close because its workers decide to unionize,” the statement reads. “While we are not saying that this is what happened here, we will be demanding information from Ubisoft about the reason for the sudden decision to close.”
“Over the past 24 months, Ubisoft has undertaken company-wide actions to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and reduce costs,” the company said. “As part of this, Ubisoft has made the difficult decision to close its Halifax studio. 71 positions will be affected.
Shady assholes would use that excuse to happen to close a branch that unionized... we know why...
At least Canada has some precedent of courts ruling against this sort of thing. Most of the precedent I've found related to the Quebec Labour Code, so it might not be the same with Nova Scotia, but the jist of how the Supreme Court has ruled is: Employers have a right to cease operations, but if that happens in the "prohibited period" when union negotiations are ongoing, that violates the right of association, and the employees can be entitled to damages.
I don't know how the facts of this case will line up with NS law, but I would think that given that there's a Charter right underpinning these ideas that they probably have some kind of case here. The burden of proof will possibly be on Ubisoft to show that it was a "normal" decision, based on my quick reading of some of the precedent.
That sucks, those big companies really don't want people to unionize... Just like Amazon did with their warehouses in Québec. We should really stick together and unionize everything we can, the government apparently doesn't care enough about us.
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