Ubisoft cuts again while Epic and Sega lean on AI

Aftermath's Nathan Grayson treats the latest round of Ubisoft cuts as a constant of the company's year. Ubisoft told PC Gamer it will eliminate 70 roles at Ubisoft Singapore, the studio behind Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, which sold three million copies in a week. It also proposes closing RedLynx, maker of the Trials series, in Finland, affecting up to 52 positions pending local change negotiations. VGC reports the reason was that RedLynx had no new project and resizing alone would not make it sustainable. Game File separately reports a planned reduction of 100 roles across Ubisoft Mainz, Dusseldorf and Berlin, ideally through buyouts.

Grayson ties this to a restructuring into genre-focused "creative houses", a $1.25 billion Tencent investment and a target of €200 million in cost cuts before March 2028. Headcount fell from 20,729 in September 2022 to 16,590 in March 2026, and he expects it to keep falling. Strikes by workers have slowed the cuts but not stopped them, in his telling.

CounterpointUbisoft's position, as reported by VGC, is that the cuts are needed to simplify and cut costs, and that a studio with no active project cannot be kept sustainable by shrinking it. Supporters of the plan would say a publisher that has lost this much ground has to cut regardless of how one title sells.

Aftermath's Chris Person covers two Epic announcements. The first is a preview of a new Epic Games Launcher that Epic says it vibe coded, calling it faster and lighter on features, "a speedboat and not a yacht". Person tried it on Bazzite and found it quick to start but buggy. He calls the boast tacky for a company valued in the billions.

The second is EAC Linux v2, a rebuild of Easy Anti-Cheat's Linux support meant to bring protection closer to Windows without a kernel driver. It relies on signed kernels, signed kernel modules and secure boot with attestation, and Epic is working with Fedora's project lead Jet Spaleta. Epic's FAQ says the Steam Deck lacks the required features and that it is talking to Valve. Person calls this the work Epic should be doing, and argues Valve earns goodwill by quietly shipping open source improvements instead of boasting.

CounterpointEpic would say that it released the launcher as an openly labelled preview, and that faster development is the point. Defenders of AI-assisted coding would add that tools are now routine at large studios, so disclosing it is honesty rather than gloating.

Previously: Aftermath and Respec responded to Epic's AI pivot, with Sweeney's X post, a Star Wars game delay and GDC survey figures. — Wednesday October 14 edition.

Aftermath's Luke Plunkett calls the new Total War: Shogun 2 "enhanced" edition a letdown for a game many regard as the series' best. He lists four problems. There are new and carried-over bugs. Old mods no longer work because Steam Workshop was swapped for Mod.io, though modders had fixed many of the old bugs. Sega delisted the original from Steam on release, though existing owners keep it. And some art, including flags and faces, appears to have been AI-upscaled without human review, turning them into unrecognisable blobs.

Plunkett notes that credited developer Mataboo was also accused of using AI imagery in its STALKER work. He sees no need for a second pass at a 2011 game that still looked and played well.

CounterpointA publisher-side view would likely hold that a single supported version and a unified modding platform are easier to maintain, and that bugs and art problems can be patched after release. Sega is not quoted in the piece.

Previously: Aftermath and Respec responded to Epic's AI pivot, with Sweeney's X post, a Star Wars game delay and GDC survey figures. — Wednesday October 14 edition.

Eurogamer's Sherif Saed frames Xbox Labs as an unusually quick reaction to the wave of vibe-coded game ports, decompiles and recompiles circulating online. His reading is that the initiative looks designed to explore that phenomenon even though the announcement avoids the word AI. The article text supplied for this edition was not retrievable, so only that framing is available.

CounterpointXbox's own account is that Xbox Labs centralises existing initiatives and carries no AI mandate.

Previously: Sharma launched Xbox Labs, which Xbox says is a centralisation of existing initiatives with no AI mandate. — Wednesday October 14 edition.

EFF, writing through legal intern Gabrielle Ladun and Sophia Cope, summarises a DHS Office of Inspector General audit of TSA's facial comparison technology. The detailed findings are classified, but the summary cites a "significant weakness". The vendor for TSA's Credential Authentication Technology 2 could access and extract passenger data, including driver's licence and passport images, during troubleshooting without TSA's knowledge. TSA had no clear policies, did not track extractions, could not verify deletion and did not tell passengers their data might be stored. The OIG made one finding and three recommendations, and TSA concurred with all three, though one remains open and unresolved.

EFF uses the audit to restate its opposition to government facial recognition. It cites the risks of data breaches, warrantless biometric records and misidentification leading to wrongful arrests. It reminds travellers that opting out of the photo is possible without delay.

CounterpointTSA says it is committed to traveller privacy, and the OIG itself found data was generally protected in routine operations, with the risk coming from vendor oversight. Proponents of the technology argue that facial comparison speeds and strengthens identity checks, and that the fix is tighter vendor controls rather than abandoning it. EFF is an advocacy group that opposes the technology on principle.