Major Video Game Company Ubisoft Closes Game Studio While Keeping the Office Open

Ubisoft announced in 2024 that it would shut down game development at Red Storm Entertainment, a studio it owns in North Carolina, and lay off 105 employees. This is unusual: instead of closing the office entirely, Ubisoft is keeping Red Storm open but no longer letting it make games. What the remaining staff will do has not been explained publicly.

Red Storm is best known for making games in the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series — popular tactical shooter games where players work in teams and use cover to fight enemies.

Why This Happened

Red Storm Entertainment was created in 1996 by author Tom Clancy and others. Ubisoft bought it in 2000. For over 20 years, the studio was a major part of making Ubisoft's most successful games.

This layoff is part of a much larger cost-cutting effort at Ubisoft. Between 2022 and early 2024, the company laid off more than 1,700 employees across all its offices, according to Game Developer. The Red Storm cuts are part of that larger number.

The Money Side

What is interesting about this decision is that Ubisoft was doing well financially at the same time it was laying off workers. The company's revenue grew by about 33.5 percent between 2023 and 2024, per Game Developer.

Think of it like this: imagine a restaurant that is making more money than ever but decides to smaller its kitchen staff anyway. The company is not in trouble — it is choosing to make more money with fewer people by focusing on its most popular menu items. Ubisoft is doing the same thing, putting resources into its biggest games while cutting costs everywhere else.

Similar layoffs have happened across the video game industry. During the coronavirus pandemic, companies hired a lot of extra workers. Now they are letting those people go because they do not need as many staff. Ubisoft, with offices in Montreal, Paris, Tokyo, Toronto, and several smaller cities, had more workers to cut than most.

Why Keep the Studio Open If They Will Not Make Games

Ubisoft is keeping Red Storm open but not letting it develop games anymore. This is a middle ground between fully closing the studio and keeping it as it was.

One reason to do this is public relations. Shutting a studio down completely gets bad press. Keeping the office open — even if it does not make games — sounds less harsh. But this approach also lets Ubisoft avoid paying for a full game development operation, which is very expensive.

Whether this is actually useful long-term or just a slow way of closing the studio later is something Ubisoft has not explained. We have seen this pattern before in the game industry. In the 2000s, big publishing companies did this regularly — kept studios open on paper but removed their development work, and then closed them a few years later once the remaining staff had moved on. Whether the same thing happens at Red Storm is too early to say.

What Happens to the Games

The Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games are not going away. Another Ubisoft studio in Montreal already handles Rainbow Six Siege, one of the company's most profitable online games. That work will continue.

Ghost Recon's future is less certain. The last major Ghost Recon game came out in 2019 and did not perform as well as hoped. No new Ghost Recon game has been announced.

The Human Cost

The 105 people losing their jobs at Red Storm are game developers — they design games, write the code that runs them, create the artwork, manage projects, and test for problems.

North Carolina, where Red Storm is located, does not have a large video game industry. Cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, and Montreal have many more game studios, which makes it easier for laid-off workers to find a new job. Many Red Storm employees will have to move to another city or find work outside the video game industry entirely.

Across the entire game industry, thousands of people have lost jobs since 2022. Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts (which makes sports games), Sony, Microsoft, and many smaller studios have all done major layoffs at the same time. This means the job market for game developers is tight right now — there are more skilled workers looking for jobs than there are available positions.

These are all skilled professionals with years of experience in a difficult field, facing a job market that none of them created. That part of the story does not always get attention when news outlets focus on company profits and restructuring plans.

What Comes Next

Ubisoft now has a smaller staff and is focusing its money on fewer games. The company's strong profits so far suggest this strategy is working for the business.

But there is a longer question worth thinking about: if a company keeps cutting its creative staff, can it keep making the variety of games that built its reputation in the first place. Ubisoft used to be known for creating many different kinds of games. Now it is betting on a smaller number of blockbuster titles. The numbers today look good, but whether that works over the next five or ten years is something no one can yet know.