A hot potato: Following the disappointing Shadows, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has become a much-needed smash hit for Ubisoft. So, what does the company do to thank those who worked on the game? For those at Ubisoft Barcelona, it's a round of layoffs.
It was revealed last month that Ubisoft was laying off more than 380 people at offices in Winnipeg, Belgrade, and in the company's global publishing division. It was also reported that 51 people would be let go at Ubisoft Barcelona.
That was before Black Flag Resynced was released. The remake has been hailed as Ubisoft's best Assassin's Creed in years: 2 million copies sold in a day, the series' concurrent Steam player record smashed by almost 40,000, and generally good reviews from players and critics.
But amid those celebrations is a reminder of Ubisoft's decision to let go of so many workers. Insider Gaming reports that, according to workers, the 51 layoffs at Barcelona felt premeditated and were going to happen no matter how successful Black Flag Resynced proved.
Those fears stemmed from Ubisoft's habit of assigning new projects to teams far in advance, before they complete work on the game they're currently working on. But the Barcelona team had not been given a new project since summer 2025.
Ubisoft Barcelona worked on all of Black Flag's diving activities, continuing its tradition of supporting larger Ubisoft studios in creating the company's games.
"Ubisoft Barcelona did all the underwater levels," Manel Cota, a tech and gameplay animator at the studio, wrote in X post. "And that same team is being fired right now because Ubisoft thinks that's what we deserve :)"
– Manel Cota (@MaNeo_O) July 13, 2026
Quality assurance lead Codina García wrote on LinkedIn that "Today is a bittersweet day." After working on Black Flag Resynced for the past two and a half years, García learned that the entire Assassin's Creed team at Ubisoft Barcelona had been placed under a collective redundancy plan. She had spent seven years at the Barcelona studio.
Another employee who was laid off told Insider Gaming, "These layoffs coincide with the broader context of ongoing workplace issues. This is not an isolated event; it reflects a pattern of constant mistreatment, loss of talent, forced departures resulting from the erosion of workers' rights, and an increasingly top-down management culture that leaves employees with little voice in decisions affecting their work."
The studio's launch event for the game was also canceled, replaced by a small catering get-together.
Ubisoft Barcelona employees had already begun a series of six partial walkouts, organized by CGT's Video Game Union Coordinating Committee, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons between June 30 and July 16.
The action has now escalated into a full three-day strike from July 14 to 16 in protest against the planned cuts, with the company's works council and the CCOO union also backing the walkout.
"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," a union flyer reads.
Black Flag Resynced's success comes despite a shaky early start that saw its Steam rating fall to Mostly Negative, though that was primarily due to review-bombings over the $85 worth of day-one DLC. There has also been controversy over its always-online requirement.