Submitted 2 days ago by carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone to games@lemmy.world
https://www.dualshockers.com/ubisoft-closes-canadian-studio-after-it-unionizes/
cross-posted from: lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/36712639
Ubisoft’s first North American union, located at their Halifax, Nova Scotia studio, was certified on December 18th, 2025. Now, not even a full 30 days later, Ubisoft Halifax is closing.
B-b-but I thought it wasn’t about unions…
It’s about sensitive company knowledge!! such as uh…, the fact that we’re union busters
Stopped buying Ubisoft games for years. Don’t even play the ones I already have. It’s been a crappy company since at least Assassin’s Creed 2 single player always online pioneering
I have this rule; if a game requires 8 GB as minimum requirements, then DO NOT BUY IT EVER
… What?
I trust this rule is from 1998 and hasn’t budged since.
Basically Ubisoft makes games that are so not optimized & require you to have a monster of a PC to run. And the last time I checked it’s also most AAA games. Anyone that doesn’t put in the effort of optimizing games is someone who doesn’t care about good industry practices & is probably a money-hungry asshole who likes to use & toss people aside.
This rule has not led me astray yet.
I hate Ubisoft, but I actually do think this was decided to happen before they unionized and is just bad timing.
Decisions to close studios like this never happen so quickly and usually take multiple months between the time the decision is made to the time the actual closure takes place.
It is possible that the studio caught wind that they were being closed and decided to unionize in order to capitalize on the bad PR. But this is all speculation since we don’t know every detail, and both sides will leave out various details to give themselves an advantageous position in the conversation.
It’s possible but imo unlikely. I know its very different in a lot of ways but Starbucks at least will close a location to “save money” practically day of a successful unionizing vote. A union gets harder to squash the longer they’re around, and more likely to spread to other locations, so companies get pretty trigger happy about shuttering places.
It’s not as though unionization was a surprise for Ubisoft. They probably had plenty of time to prepare.
Carfule question: Could it be that the reason the workes unionised is the same reason as to why Ubisoft closed it down?
If things were looking bad, it makes sense to unionise. if Ubisoft was going to shut down sooner or later anyway, might as well do it when the studio votes to unionise, as closing it down later would only become more difficult.
Tbf ubisoft is closing itself off quite fast lol this industry is so fucked
At least they have a union to argue about severance packages for them
Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Could workers not form a ‘dark union’, gathering members from as man different companies as possible without informing the employers up-front – gathering a strike-pay war chest before announcing any unionized shops? Then the next time they pull this, everyone everywhere quits out of solidarity. Draw from the war-chest to pay workers while the companies panic, and then dictate fair terms to return to work.