When it rains, it pours. Nowhere is this saying truer than in the woes of Ubisoft. The French game development company has had a rotten start to 2026 so far, in keeping with a bad streak that has extended for a few years now. In the wake of record losses posted in its recent financial report, it now looks like the reaper has come for yet another Ubisoft subsidiary.
As reported by Insider Gaming, the latest victim is Ubisoft Winnipeg. The studio appears to have been shuttered in full, and the source estimates approximately 85 employees have lost their jobs in the process.
Beyond the human cost of this move, it is expected that the closure will adversely affect other Ubisoft studios due to the nature of the work at the Winnipeg branch.
The Engine Ran Dry
As is frequently the case with major corporations and conglomerates, work is fairly decentralised. In the case of Ubisoft, work is often divided between creative teams and technical ones, with Ubisoft Winnipeg being the latter for the most part.
Ubisoft Winnipeg was responsible for maintenance and development of Ubisoft’s two main proprietary engines, Snowdrop and Anvil. These engines have been the backbone of all major Ubisoft releases in over a decade, and are also set to power releases in the near-future, such as the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag remake.
The source estimates approximately 85 employees have lost their jobs in the project.
It is hard to quantify the effects of this shuttering, especially as it is not clear how many of the Winnipeg employees have been transferred to other Ubisoft projects, if any at all.
Even if there is some carry over, however, a layoff this significant in a team primarily focused on technical affairs is bound to harm Ubisoft regardless. Institutional experience is hard to build, and most of the time documentation does not cover the finer details that only someone experienced with a tool knows.
While we wait for a statement from Ubisoft, it’s easy to speculate that this closure may be part of the company’s attempt to move to third-party engines for some projects. Following Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced, the next big ticket Ubisoft release is likely to be the yet-unnamed Ghost Recon sequel, codenamed Project Over, which is being developed for Unreal Engine 5.
