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Canada Courted Ubisoft with Tax Breaks for Years. Then Came the Layoffs

The video game titan has received as much as $2 billion in incentives. Maybe we should change where we put our money

Chris came back from his winter break feeling energized. Ubisoft’s Halifax studio, where he worked, had recently unionized with 74 percent support, joining CWA Canada. On January 5, employees returned from vacation eager to prove that unionization would make them stronger workers. But two days later, it all came crashing down.

Video game publisher Ubisoft shrank from 21,000 to 17,000 employees globally between 2022 and 2026

Ubisoft has received as much as $2 billion in tax incentives since starting work in Canada in the 1990s

The government is investing in tech industries without guaranteed returns or safeguards for workers’ rights

Jean-Michel Detoc, chief mobile officer from the company’s France office, walked through the front door, unannounced. Dread descended upon the staff. By 10 a.m., all seventy-one employees were laid off. Some started crying. Others were furious. “You lose your job like that—it sounds dramatic, but it’s a traumatic experience,” says Chris (whose name has been changed to avoid professional repercussions).

A company-wide announcement later that afternoon spelled out the reasons: a “shortage of viable work both immediately and in the forecasted future” meant that the Halifax office no longer had a “justifiable mandate” to continue. “I’m thinking this is really confusing, because we’re all super busy,” says Chris.

Chris is now looking for a job and fears speaking out, because in the video game industry, talking to the press can be a death sentence for your career. I contacted five other employees, none of whom were willing to go on the record.

Ubisoft, the video game publisher behind massively popular franchises, like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, shrank from 21,000 employees globally to 17,000 between 2022 and 2026. In 2024/25, they cut as many as 500 jobs in Montreal as well as seventy-one in Halifax. Before the layoffs, the company had 5,000 employees in Canada, with around 4,000 in Montreal and the rest spread across Quebec City, Winnipeg, Toronto, Chicoutimi, and Sherbrooke. It’s been reported that Ubisoft plans to lay off another 200 to 400 people internationally this year (a company spokesperson declined to comment on the matter in a response to The Walrus).

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The Halifax office closure was widely seen as union busting. Employees said there was no correspondence with them or the union before the layoffs. (“All impacted employees in Halifax were informed of the closure at the same time on January 7, 2026. Ubisoft immediately contacted the union on Jan. 7 to begin discussions, including negotiations regarding additional severance,” the Ubisoft spokesperson said in the response.)

Soon after the Halifax operations were shut down, the union filed an unfair labour practice complaint with the Nova Scotia Labour Board. “All the tech places are trying to fight (unionization),”........

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