A few weeks ago, Ubisoft's Halifax studio in Canada announced that it had unionised in an effort to protect its various employees from the increasingly concerning trends taken by the massive publisher against many of its studios and staff worldwide. This decision was thought to be enough to protect the 71 employees of the studio, but evidently it wasn't.
Insider Gaming reports that Ubisoft has closed down the Halifax studio and laid off all 71 employees. According to Ubisoft itself, this was part of "company-wide actions to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and reduce costs," actions that have been made over the past two years.
However, the immediacy to make this decision following the unionisation is hard to miss, something Ubisoft claims never came into the equation as it made the call to shut down the developer "well before" the unionisation.
However, CWA Canada (a worker's union in the country) has now issued a statement about this studio closure, with it expressing that it's "unlawful for a business to close because its workers decide to unionize" and that "while we are not saying that this is what happened here, we will be demanding information from Ubisoft about the reason for the sudden decision to close."
This has led CWA Canada to announce that it will "pursue every legal recourse" to make sure the employees of the studio were not infringed upon and that "this had nothing to do with the employees joining a union."