Many times, when games get canceled, a number of employees face layoffs as a coincidence of the cancellation. However, this doesn’t appear to be the case with a game canceled by Ubisoft, according to Louis de Carufel, who works at Ubisoft Montreal.
In a tweet from Carufel, who works as a graphics programmer at Ubisoft Montreal, the company was forced to cancel a game that had been in the works for about three years. He elaborates in the tweet that the cancellation has been difficult for him since he’s been working with the same team for the past seven years. In this period, the team has released both Watch_Dogs titles.
However, the silver lining for the cancellation is that nobody is being laid off from Ubisoft Montreal either as a result or as it coincides with the cancellation. There had apparently been over 200 people working on the scrapped project, though despite that, all of them will be given an existing project from the studio to work on. Carufel expresses excitement over the fact that the employees will be able to work on the projects of their preference.
For being that layoffs have seemingly become more common in the gaming industry, it will likely be fairly uplifting for many gamers, and especially Ubisoft fans, to hear of the lack of layoffs following the mystery game’s cancellation. While Ubisoft may not have been forced to lay off employees, companies in the industry like Payday developer Starbreeze and Activision Blizzard, as well as related companies like Twitch and Game Informer. Each case is often more uniquely complicated than it appears, but it’s always jarring to hear of a company’s decision to lay off dozens of employees.
As for what the canceled project in question was, nobody can truly say. While Carufel mentioned that the team had released both Watch_Dogs games, it is Ubisoft Toronto who is currently working on Watch Dogs: Legion, which means that it had been a different game in the works.
