Video game maker Ubisoft Entertainment has closed its production studio in Halifax, eliminating 71 jobs three weeks after most staff members voted to unionize.
The Paris-based company — best known for its Assassin’s Creed franchise — issued a statement Wednesday saying the move had nothing to do with a union drive that resulted in 60 employees joining the Canadian branch of the Communications Workers of America.
The office was Ubisoft’s first to unionize in North America.
“The closure is linked to Ubisoft’s need for … cost-optimization,” the company’s statement said. “Ubisoft fully respects employees’ right to unionize and has unionized teams globally.”
The company said it has been trimming its operations for the past two years, well before the union announced in June that a majority of Ubisoft Halifax staff had agreed to file for union certification. On Dec. 18, the Nova Scotia Labour Board certified the new local after 74 per cent of the staff voted in favour of the move.
As part of CWA Canada Local 30111, they joined a unit that represents nearly 120 game workers at Bethesda Game Studios in Montreal, and staff at the Montreal Gazette newspaper.
At the time, the newly unionized workers issued a statement saying the union drive was in response to “industry-wide uncertainty, studio closures, layoffs and increasing instability.”
The publicly traded company’s stock price in Paris has fallen from more than 100 euros in 2018 to 6.10 euros on Wednesday.
CWA Canada issued a statement Wednesday saying the timing of the Halifax shutdown raises tough questions for Ubisoft, noting that it is unlawful in Canada for a business to close because its workers decide to unionize.
“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,” the union’s statement said.
CWA Canada describes itself as the country’s only all-media union, representing 6,000 workers at the CBC, The Canadian Press, and newspapers, tech, digital media, video gaming and other companies coast to coast.
Among those who lost their jobs in Halifax were producers, programmers, designers, artists, researchers and development testers.
No one was available for an interview at Ubisoft’s office in downtown Halifax, but a company spokesperson confirmed that in the past two years, the company has either closed or downsized several studios around the world, including those in London, San Francisco, Osaka in central Japan and Leamington, U.K.
The spokesperson said the company, which employed more than 17,000 people as of September, had cut more than 1,500 jobs in the previous year.
Founded in 2010, the video games studio in Halifax became Ubisoft Halifax in 2015. Its staff were the first in Canada to specialize in mobile, free-to-play games. Most them supported a mobile game known as Assassin’s Creed Rebellion, which launched in 2018.
The company’s largest production studio is in Montreal, but it also has studios in Toronto, Winnipeg, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Que., and Saguenay, Que., the spokesperson said, adding that other Canadian offices have been affected by company cutbacks during the past two years.
In May 2024, a Ubisoft Quebec manager said the Montreal studio employed about 4,000 people.
