Ubisoft Ending Game Development At Ghost Recon Studio Red Storm Entertainment, Over 100 Employees Laid Off

Ubisoft has announced it is ceasing game development operations at Red Storm Entertainment, the studio behind various Ghost Recon games and other Tom Clancy titles. Although the studio will remain operational, its duties have shifted, resulting in over 100 layoffs.

GameIndustry.biz reports that Ubisoft will permanently shift the North Carolina studio to behind-the-scenes support work, such as working on the Snowdrop Engine and other duties like IT and customer relations. This downsizing will result in the loss of 105 jobs.

Red Storm was founded in 1996 and became one of the most prolific developers of Tom Clancy games, namely Ghost Recon. It made the first Ghost Recon and many sequels throughout the 2000s; the last entry it developed was 2012’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Red Storm also developed the original Rainbow Six and created the VR games Werewolves Within (later adapted into a 2021 comedy horror film) and Star Trek: Bridge Crew. Its final shipped game was Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR in 2023. 

However, Red Storm’s last two projects were cancelled during development. First was an untitled Splinter Cell VR game, which was canned in 2022. Most recently, Red Storm worked on The Division Heartland, a free-to-play version of the popular loot shooter that was cancelled in 2024.

This downsizing comes after Ubisoft announced a massive organizational restructure in January. This kicked off an ongoing cost-cutting program that has led to several other layoffs and project cancellations, including its long-awaited remake of The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. In an effort to bounce back after a rough last few years,  Ubisoft has formed a new operating model around five “creative houses”, each responsible for developing titles for Ubisoft properties; Tom Clancy IPs like Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, and The Division fall under “Creative House 2”, for example. According to the publisher, the structure was created to facilitate an increased focus on open-world games and games-as-a-service, while accelerating its investment in “player-facing generative AI.”