Ubisoft has introduced but extra layoffs as a part of its ongoing price slicing program, with 105 workers now set to depart veteran Tom Clancy recreation studio Pink Storm Leisure.
Based in 1996, the North Carolina-based crew beforehand labored on quite a few Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six titles. Extra lately the crew had developed a number of VR video games, contributed to the failed live-service shooter XDefiant, and spent years engaged on the now-cancelled free-to-play spinoff The Division Heartland.
Pink Storm Leisure is now being downsized completely, IGN understands, and recreation improvement formally ended on the studio. The developer, which is ready to have fun its thirtieth anniversary later this 12 months, will stay open — although merely centered on behind-the-scenes technical work.
That is the third spherical of layoffs at Pink Storm in as a few years, following the lack of 19 jobs final 12 months, and 45 positions throughout Pink Storm and San Francisco again in 2024. Earlier than these, and right this moment’s additional 105 job losses, the corporate employed 180 individuals in 2022 — a determine the corporate has now decimated.
Ubisoft has minimize a whole lot of workers and totally closed quite a few studios in earlier years, with 2026 already off to a brutal begin. In January, the corporate canceled six video games together with its Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake and closed two Ubisoft studios utterly (Ubisoft Stockholm and Ubisoft Halifax), whereas making layoffs at its workplace in Abu Dhabi, at Trials studio RedLynx and at Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora outfit Huge Leisure.
Only a week after that, Ubisoft introduced plans to ditch 200 jobs at its firm headquarters in Paris, resulting in protests throughout the French capital. Subsequent, in February, Ubisoft was pressured to reassure followers that its long-awaited Splinter Cell remake remained in improvement after 40 jobs have been eradicated at its studio Ubisoft Toronto.
Throughout three a long time, Pink Storm Leisure has labored on greater than 30 recreation tasks, together with the unique Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six launched in 1998 for the unique PlayStation and N64. The studio then developed the 2001 Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon for PS2, GameCube and Xbox, earlier than contributing to quite a few additional spinoffs and sequels.
Latest years noticed the studio grow to be Ubisoft’s VR recreation specialist, with the corporate growing 2016 social deduction recreation Werewolves Inside, 2017’s well-received Star Trek: Bridge Crew, and 2023’s Murderer’s Creed Nexus VR — a recreation that can now be Pink Storm’s closing ever launch.
The previous couple of years have seen Ubisoft ditch a number of of Pink Storm Leisure’s work-in-progress tasks regardless of years of labor: a Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell VR recreation, and The Division Heartland, which was introduced in 2021 and confirmed to be canned in 2024.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s Information Editor. You’ll be able to attain Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or discover him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social