Following yesterday’s news that Ubisoft intends to close down Finland’s Ubisoft Redlynx, as well has laying off 70 staff from Ubisoft Singapore, Game File brings us more horrible news: the publisher is aiming to reduce its German workforce by 100 employees. Aiming for voluntary redundancies with buyouts, rather than layoffs, it’s yet more carnage within the once super-successful French company.

Game File spoke to an Ubisoft representative who said, “In Germany, we initiated discussions with the Works Council last week regarding a proposed voluntary departure plan across Ubisoft Düsseldorf, Ubisoft Berlin and Ubisoft Mainz.” The goal is to encourage around 100 of the 600 or so employees across the three studios to offer to resign, in return for a buyout. Game File‘s sources said this figure would be based on a person’s monthly salary multiplied by 1.5, and then multiplied by the number of years they’d worked with the company.

A German works council, or a Betriebsrat, is an elected group of employees from within a company that then work with management to negotiate working conditions, voice employee views, and improve bargaining power. It’s like a union in some ways, but German unions represent an entire industry, whereas a works council operates at a company level. It seems this financial offer has yet to be finalized with this group.

The mess of studios across Ubisoft’s network gets extremely confusing when you try to unpick it all. Düsseldorf, Berlin and Mainz are still technically grouped under the brand of Blue Byte, the company formed in 1988 and responsible for legendary 1990s series like Battle Isle and Settlers.

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