Ubisoft announced plans to expand its Quebec City studio, Ubisoft Quebec, earlier in the year. Today, the company unveiled its plans for that studio: a $4 million CAD ($3.75 million USD) investment in a new studio space, which it calls “a state-of-the-art studio completely redesigned to support triple-A game development” in a new official blog post. Quebec City is kicking in $500,000 CAD for the studio’s construction — or about $469,000 USD. In the end, Ubisoft has plans to invest $28 million CAD ($26.3 million USD) in Ubisoft Quebec, as part of an overall investment in bolstering its studios across the Canadian province to the tune of $370 million. The expanded studio is leading development of a new game in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and to do so began to hire 100 new staff in January, a process that is ongoing as development ramps up. Its managing director, Nicolas Rioux, compares this expansion to the early days of Ubisoft Montreal: “I was in Montreal in the beginning, too. It was the same story. We started to work on some projects, and each year we were building confidence in ourselves while working toward delivering bigger and bigger projects.” This move comes despite the publisher’s outcry against recent changes to the Quebec tax credit scheme — comments echoed by other prominent studios in the region.
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2014