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Up to 19 staff at Newcastle-based Ubisoft Reflections – the studio currently working on the delayed Driver: San Francisco – could be let go as part of wider restructuring at the publisher.
According to a Develop source at Reflections, staff were informed of the situation last Tuesday. Several senior members of the studio are said to be facing the axe.
“We weren’t given names, but they took some people into a separate office afterwards, gave them a letter and took them out of the building. That was it,” the source said.
Ubisoft confirmed that staff at Ubisoft Montreal will continue to assist development of Driver: San Francisco.
“There was a meeting to propose reorganisations to the team that may result in redundancies of up to a dozen studio members,” a Ubisoft rep told Develop.
“This is a proposal for reorganisation, and it isn’t the people who are made redundant, but the jobs themselves. The people get to have their say about the reorganisation.”
The studio source added: “There were people from all levels. Some were high up, people who have been at the company for a very long time. Craig Lawson [creative director, at Reflections since 1998] and Jack Couvela [art director, at Reflections since 1997] haven’t come back into work since.”
Moral isn’t good at the studio, added the source, who suggested that the studio may be collapsed upon completion of Driver.
“People think that when we have finished this game we will all be told ‘off you go now’.”
However, Ubisoft denied the studio will be closed.
“What’s key at Reflections is that we are working on a small reorganisation, we need to ensure that we have the right skills mix for the Driver brand. The brand is very important to us, and Reflections is crucial as a studio. They have an expertise that none of our other studios have.”
The rep concluded: “It will absolutely keep going after Driver.”
