Ubisoft Closes Trials Studio RedLynx and Cuts 70 Jobs at Black Flag Resynced Developer

A Hit Game Didn't Save Them: Ubisoft Proposes Closing Trials Developer RedLynx, Cuts 70 Jobs at Black Flag Resynced Studio

Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced sold 3.5 million copies in its first two weeks and beat Ubisoft's own annual expectations. Weeks later, roughly a fifth of the studio that made it were told their jobs were gone. In Finland, the 25-year-old team behind Trials is staring down closure. In Ubisoft's current restructuring, a hit game is not a shield.

Both moves belong to the same cost-cutting campaign. They are not isolated corrections at two underperforming teams, but the latest entries in a reorganisation that has been running all year. One important caveat up front: the RedLynx closure is a proposal under Finland's mandatory change negotiations, not a finalized shutdown.

What Ubisoft Actually Announced

At RedLynx, the Helsinki studio behind Trials, Ubisoft says it has proposed closing the studio entirely, affecting up to 52 positions. The wording matters. Under Finnish law, employers must consult staff through co-operation negotiations before large-scale layoffs, so the language is "proposal" rather than "closure" until that process concludes.

At Ubisoft Singapore, 70 positions have been impacted. The publisher frames the cuts as aligning the studio with "upcoming production needs," while stressing that Singapore remains "an important part of Ubisoft's global production organisation."

Combined, up to 122 jobs are affected. The Singapore figure represents roughly a fifth of that studio's headcount, leaving around 280 staff in place. The legal nuance in Finland is not a technicality: it means the RedLynx outcome is still genuinely open, and any reporting that treats the studio as already shuttered is getting ahead of the process.

A Hit Game Didn't Save the Studio

The timing is difficult to ignore. Black Flag Resynced launched on July 9, 2026, and Ubisoft officially reported 2 million copies sold at launch, then 3 million within a week. According to Eurogamer, sales later passed 3.5 million in the game's first two weeks, exceeding the publisher's annual expectations.

The cuts came anyway.

That is the crux of it. This was Ubisoft Singapore's biggest success. Founded in 2008 as a support studio, it built the naval combat systems that came to define a generation of Assassin's Creed titles before stepping up as a lead developer. Its first major outing in that role, Skull and Bones, arrived in 2024 after years of delays to a mixed reception. Black Flag Resynced was the studio proving it could deliver a commercial triumph.

The broader financial picture helps explain why. According to Ubisoft's Q1 FY2026-27 financial report, net bookings fell 13.7% year over year to $305 million, slightly above the company's own guidance, while the prior fiscal year closed with a €1.516 billion net loss as reported in the company's full-year results. In that context, a chart-topping remake looks less like a reprieve and more like a line item.

RedLynx: 25 Years of Trials, and a Slow Deflation

RedLynx was founded in Helsinki in 2000 by brothers Atte and Antti Ilvessuo. The studio made its name with the Trials series, a motorcycle platformer built on the small joy of physics-driven failure: Trials HD, Evolution, Fusion, and Rising. Ubisoft acquired the team in 2011 on the strength of Trials HD.

The series defined the studio's identity, but its last major standalone release was Trials Rising in 2019. After that, RedLynx shifted into a support role, contributing to projects including Star Wars Outlaws.

This is not the first round of cuts. In October 2025, Ubisoft announced reductions of up to 60 positions at RedLynx and refocused the studio on mobile, or "small screens" as the company put it, with two unannounced mobile titles in development. The 2026 closure proposal, affecting up to 52 positions, is a separate and later event. Together, they trace a slow deflation rather than a sudden collapse.

Antti Ilvessuo offered a measured response to the news: "I'm proud of what we built at RedLynx, but my part in that story ended years ago."

This Is Bigger Than Two Studios

Zoom out and the pattern is unmistakable. This year alone, Ubisoft has closed studios in Stockholm, Halifax, Winnipeg, and Belgrade, and cancelled six games, a sequence of cuts that has followed a consistent logic: reduce headcount across the portfolio regardless of any individual studio's recent output. In January 2026, the company reorganised into "Creative Houses," a structure backed by a larger Tencent investment. Both RedLynx and Ubisoft Singapore had been placed inside the Creative Network, and Vantage Studios now oversees Assassin's Creed.

That last detail is telling. When a studio's output is reorganised under a centralised brand structure, individual teams become easier to resize without disrupting the overall portfolio. The cuts are being driven by strategy and cost structure, not by the performance of any single title.

The human scale is significant. Ubisoft employs roughly 16,590 people company-wide, and this is the latest step in a multi-year contraction. Studios that shipped beloved games and studios that shipped troubled ones are being treated the same way.

What Happens Next

For RedLynx, the change negotiations must play out before any closure is final. The outcome of that process, and the fate of the two unannounced mobile projects, will be the first real signal of whether the studio survives in any form.

For Ubisoft Singapore, the question is what "upcoming production needs" actually means for its pipeline. Will the studio continue leading Assassin's Creed projects, or does this mark a return toward support work despite its recent success?

The Trials franchise itself is currently dark, with no announced future.

And then there is the wider read. When a launch that clears 3.5 million copies does not protect the team behind it, the message travels well beyond Ubisoft. For developers across the industry, the lesson is uncomfortable: commercial performance and job security are no longer reliably linked.

A Quarter-Century Legacy, a Question Still Open

The irony sits at the center of this story. Ubisoft Singapore delivered the publisher's best commercial result in years. RedLynx built a quarter-century of goodwill with one of gaming's most distinctive series. Neither proved sufficient against a restructuring driven by forces larger than any single game.

But the RedLynx chapter is not closed. Finland's change negotiations will determine what, if anything, remains of the studio, and the answer may take weeks or months to arrive. What is clearer is the direction of travel: Ubisoft's Creative Houses model is reshaping which studios lead, which support, and which disappear.

The question that lingers is not whether these two studios will survive in their current form, that much already seems decided, but what happens to the next team that ships a hit. If a 3.5-million-selling launch cannot insulate a studio from a cost-cutting campaign, what can? For the roughly 280 developers still at Ubisoft Singapore, and for every studio now operating under the Creative Houses umbrella, the answer to that question will define the next several years.