A major game publisher is shutting studios and killing six titles — here’s why

One of the giants of the gaming business has tumbled off a cliff.

Ubisoft, the French game publisher best known for the Assassin’s Creed series, just announced plans to dramatically reorganize its business. In the process, the company will kill six games it had in the works, including a long-awaited Prince of Persia title that was expected this month. Ubisoft shares dropped by more than 30% following the news.

The game publisher said the changes are designed to make it more agile in order to drive a “sharp rebound” for the company, which has seen its stock tank over the last five years.  To chart that course, Ubisoft said it will selectively close the game studios it operates in Halifax and Stockholm, while restructuring other studios based in Abu Dhabi, Malmö, and Helsinki. 

The company will consolidate its studios into five genre-specific “creative houses” that combine game production and publishing. The company described the desperate measures as a “major reset” to set itself on a path to sustainable growth. For the year, Ubisoft now expects net bookings of roughly $1.5 billion euros, down by $330 million from its previous guidance.

“It is a radical move, relying on a more decentralized creative organization with faster decision making and best-in-class cross functional core services supporting and serving each Creative House,” Ubisoft Founder and CEO Yves Guillemo wrote in press release, emphasizing that the changes would provide deep cost reduction designed to “rightsize” the 17,000-person company.

Beyond the now-axed remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which Ubisoft said did not meet its new “enhanced” quality criteria, the publisher will abandon four unannounced games, including three new IPs and a mobile title. 

A dramatic decline for a AAA heavyweight

The changes afoot at Ubisoft demonstrate a stunning fall from grace for a company synonymous with the gaming industry. The French gaming giant publishes many hit titles beyond its long-running Assassin’s Creed franchise, including the Tom Clancy series, Far Cry, Rayman, Just Dance, and Watch Dogs. 

Ubisoft’s retreat symbolizes bigger shifts in the gaming industry, but also avoidable failures. 

The pandemic-era game industry boom times that saw many gamers holed up at home, desperate for entertainment are now over. Persistent inflation means gamers have less cash on hand to spend, particularly after the cost of many new releases jumped up to $70. Meanwhile, big AAA studios like Ubisoft are looking to trim back budgets as the cost of making games goes up. Many people working in the gaming industry are hanging onto their jobs by a thread in the face of mass layoffs, if they haven’t decamped for another field altogether. 

Ubisoft has also made many of its own missteps. The publisher was forced to face its own demons during the gaming industry’s recent cultural reckoning, which revealed patterns of pervasive sexual harassment and workplace discrimination at some game companies. Last year, three former Ubisoft executives were found guilty of fostering a culture of psychological and sexual harassment by a French court.

The French game maker has also suffered from a few high profile game failures, including the 2024 release of Star Wars Outlaws –- a release Ubisoft expected to be a major money maker. That game’s problems cascaded into Ubisoft’s next major release, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which the company delayed in light of the “softer than expected” reception for the prior game. 

Ubisoft’s role in shaping the gaming trends of the last decade is hard to overstate. At its best, the company’s games are praised for their sprawling, meticulously-detailed open worlds. But after many releases and many iterations, that formula may have overstayed its welcome. 

The game publisher has faced widespread criticism in recent years for churning out cookie-cutter open world games bloated by too much filler content. Gamers have more choice than ever in 2026, and they’re not afraid to opt for innovative indie titles handcrafted by small teams over AAA stalwarts that are growing stale.

“On the one hand, the AAA industry has become persistently more selective and competitive with rising development costs and greater challenges in creating brands,” Guillemo said in Ubisoft’s announcement. “On the other hand, exceptional AAA games, when successful, have more financial potential than ever.”

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