Ubisoft Cuts 70 Singapore Roles; RedLynx Set to Close

Ubisoft is reducing its workforce again, with 70 roles being cut at Ubisoft Singapore and Finnish studio RedLynx set to close. Up to 52 people could lose their jobs in the RedLynx closure, ending the run of the team best known for the Trials series of demanding, physics-driven motorcycle games.

The two developments affect studios with very different recent roles inside Ubisoft. Singapore remains the developer associated with Skull and Bones, the pirate game that finally launched in early 2024 after a prolonged and difficult development. RedLynx, meanwhile, had become a support studio after the 2019 release of Trials Rising, following years in which it was a prominent creator of tightly focused bike-racing games.

Ubisoft Singapore will remain part of the company’s global production organization despite the reduction. The 70 roles represent roughly one-fifth of the studio’s reported workforce, which implies a remaining headcount of around 280 people if that proportion is accurate. That is still a substantial team, but it also makes the scale of the reduction clear: this is not a minor adjustment around the edges of a studio.

What the changes mean at Ubisoft Singapore

Ubisoft Singapore is closely tied to Skull and Bones, a game whose route to release was marked by repeated delays. When it arrived in early 2024, it carried a $70 price tag. Ubisoft chief executive Yves Guillemot had characterized the game as a “quadruple-A” production, language intended to convey an ambition beyond the already familiar AAA label.

“AAA” is an informal industry term, not a standardized rating. It generally refers to a game made with a large budget, significant staff, major marketing, or all three. “Quadruple-A” has even less fixed meaning. In this case, it was a statement about scale and production expectations rather than a defined tier consumers could independently measure.

For players of Skull and Bones, the immediate practical point is that the studio is continuing to operate. The game’s Year 3 Season 2, Crimson Waters, launched in August, demonstrating that work on the title had continued into its post-launch period. However, the supplied information does not specify how the 70 eliminated roles are distributed, whether they affect a particular discipline, or what impact, if any, they will have on future game support. It would be premature to infer changes to specific updates or plans from the headcount figure alone.

There is a larger distinction worth keeping in mind. A studio’s identity as the developer of a game does not mean every employee works only on that one project, and a reduction at a studio does not itself confirm that a live game will stop receiving support. Ubisoft’s statement that Singapore remains important to its production organization points toward a continuing role for the team, but it does not provide a detailed roadmap.

RedLynx’s closure ends a distinctive Trials legacy

The proposed RedLynx closure is the more final change. The Finnish studio joined Ubisoft in 2011 after finding major success with Trials 2, Trials HD, and Trials Evolution. Those games built their appeal around side-scrolling courses, bikes, precise inputs, and a cycle of rapid failure followed by one-more-attempt determination.

The series’ simple-looking presentation concealed a demanding physics challenge. Players needed to manage acceleration, braking, landing angles, and the rider’s balance while navigating obstacles that became increasingly elaborate and unforgiving. That combination made Trials easy to understand at a glance but difficult to master, especially on later tracks where a slight mistake could overturn a run.

Trials HD and Trials Evolution were especially visible in the Xbox Live Arcade era. That digital storefront gave smaller, downloadable games a prominent place on console platforms, and RedLynx’s work stood out because it could be both a solitary score-chasing challenge and a lively local multiplayer game. Competitive modes turned crashes and improbable recoveries into part of the entertainment rather than merely a punishment for losing.

After Trials Rising launched in 2019, RedLynx shifted into a support-studio role within Ubisoft. A support studio is a development team that contributes expertise, assets, technology, or production work to projects led elsewhere, rather than necessarily leading its own games from concept through launch. Such work can be vital to a publisher’s output, but it can also be less visible to players than a studio’s own named series.

The closure therefore carries two meanings at once. It concerns the people whose jobs are at risk, first and foremost. It also closes the chapter on a team associated with a particularly recognizable style of game design: immediate to pick up, relentlessly challenging in execution, and built around the comic spectacle of trying to negotiate an obstacle course on two wheels.

A narrower organizational focus

These moves sit within Ubisoft’s broader effort to cut costs and reorganize around fewer games. The company has already seen studio closures, layoffs, and canceled projects in recent years. The stated direction is a leaner operation, a phrase that usually means fewer teams or roles, tighter spending, and a more selective project portfolio.

For the people affected, corporate language about efficiency does not soften the disruption of lost work. For audiences, the consequences are often less immediately legible. A closure can end the possibility of a studio leading another entry in its signature series, while a smaller but continuing studio may retain responsibility for multiple projects or services. The available details establish the employment actions, but not a complete accounting of every project-level effect.

Ubisoft is also continuing to place leadership and operational responsibility across its wider network. Natalie Francis was recently appointed Studio Managing Director at Massive Entertainment. Thomas Andrén became General Manager for Ubisoft’s Creative Network. Massive, based in Malmö, Sweden, is leading development on The Division 2 and The Division 3, operates development on the Snowdrop engine, and works on Ubisoft Connect.

That list illustrates why publisher restructuring can be hard to reduce to a single game or studio. A game engine is shared technology used to build and run games; Snowdrop is the engine named here. Ubisoft Connect is part of the company’s broader player-facing and production ecosystem. Teams working on those foundations can support work beyond one release, while the decisions to close or reduce individual studios still reshape where expertise and capacity sit inside the company.

What is known, and what remains unclear

Several facts are clear: up to 52 jobs are at risk as RedLynx closes; Ubisoft Singapore is losing 70 staff; and Singapore remains in Ubisoft’s production organization. It is also clear that these developments follow a period in which Ubisoft has been reducing costs, closing studios, canceling games, and concentrating on fewer projects.

What has not been detailed is equally important. There is no supplied breakdown of the Singapore roles, no specific explanation of which workstreams will be affected, and no project-by-project account of what RedLynx staff had been supporting. There is likewise no stated change to the current status of Skull and Bones beyond the fact that Crimson Waters launched in August.

That uncertainty matters because layoffs are frequently discussed only in terms of studios, franchises, or corporate strategy. Behind those labels are individual developers, support staff, and specialists whose work may not be publicly credited in a trailer or a release announcement. RedLynx’s legacy is inseparable from the games players remember, but the closure is fundamentally an employment story as well as a story about a beloved series.

For more context on the industry pressures surrounding major game development, see our coverage of the discussion around GTA 6’s reported budget and scale.