Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced devs strike following layoffs days after hit remake’s launch

The developers at Ubisoft Barcelona have begun striking against the studio after it announced plans to cut 51 jobs just days after the team’s work on the Black Flag remake was released to widespread praise.

Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced has quickly become one of Ubisoft’s biggest success stories, with the remake launching to strong review scores and selling more than 2 million copies on its first day. Both critics and fans alike were quick to praise its overhauled visuals, new underwater exploration, and expanded gameplay systems.

Despite that success, however, Ubisoft confirmed that 51 developers at Ubisoft Barcelona would be affected by layoffs alongside reductions at the company’s studios in Winnipeg and Belgrade, causing the Barcelona team to strike against the company.

Ubisoft Barcelona developers strike over planned layoffs

The restructuring was first announced in June, when Ubisoft revealed it had decided to transform Ubisoft Barcelona into a Rainbow Six-focused studio.

Before that shift, they’d spent years working on Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced and were responsible for all of the game’s underwater content, one of the remake’s most praised additions. Insider Gaming also reported that their contribution extended far beyond those underwater sequences.

According to the outlet and the game’s developers, the studio developed all swimming systems, underwater mechanics, biomes and animal behavior, underwater wrecks, smuggler dens, three main naval quests, 15 naval side contracts, four Assassin Contracts, the entire Gibara region including Crooked Island, Salt Lagoon and Mariguana Island, along with all bosses and combat enemy AI until Ubisoft Quebec joined the project.

Despite those contributions, the entire Assassin’s Creed team at the studio is now at risk of losing their jobs.

The timing has left many of the developers frustrated, with quality assurance lead Isabel Codina García describing the situation as “bittersweet” after “the whole AC team at Ubisoft Barcelona was informed of a collective redundancy plan” in a post on social media.

Well, the planned layoffs have now sparked industrial action as Spanish union La Confederación General del Trabajo has called for a three-day strike in protest of the cuts.

In a flyer shared by the union, it said: “After an intense production, the company claims a ‘strategic shift’ to justify these layoffs. After years of dedication to our team, the company has turned its back on us. We will never see the fruits of our labour, and the reward for our hard work will be the loss of our jobs.”

As a result, Ubisoft Barcelona staff are holding a three-day strike on July 14, 15 and 16 as protests continue over the planned redundancies.