Cary video game studio to stop developing games, lay off more than 100 in Triangle
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Ubisoft ends game development at Red Storm, cutting 105 Triangle jobs.
- Studio keeps 70 employees to support Snowdrop engine and tech operations.
- Move stems from Ubisoft revenue decline, stock plunge and cost cuts.
After 20 years and a blockbuster series, Cary’s Red Storm Entertainment will stop developing video games, a move its parent company Ubisoft expects to affect 105 local employees.
Red Storm will retain 70 workers at its Triangle headquarters, a person with direct knowledge of the job cuts told The News & Observer, where the company will continue to operate technology support, a game engine, customer relations, and publishing. Ending game development comes as Ubisoft seeks to save costs amid its plunging stock and declining revenues.
Ending its game development is a major step for Red Storm, which launched in 1996, a few years before its eventual larger Cary neighbor, Epic Games, arrived.
Spun out of pioneering virtual reality software provider Virtus Corporation, Red Storm focused on multiplayer games. Its trajectory was shaped by a relationship Virtus founder David Smith formed with best-selling author Tom Clancy, who is considered a Red Storm founder and once owned as much as 50% of the company. Clancy was also the inspiration for Red Storm’s most successful brand, a series of tactical shooter games based on the author’s thriller novels.
“Tom and I basically hatched this idea of what we thought would be kind of a new game company,” Smith, a North Carolina native, told The News & Observer in a phone interview Thursday.
Red Storm was acquired by the French gaming publisher Ubisoft in 2000. It went on to specialize in virtual reality experience games like “Star Trek Bridge Crew” that required players to don headsets. Like Epic Games and other publishers, Ubisoft also maintains engine platforms that enable others to design games and visualizations. Some of Red Storm’s remaining staff in Cary will continue to support the Snowdrop engine.
Since early 2021, Ubisoft’s share price has fallen from $20 to under a $1. The studio behind the hit franchise Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft in January announced it would cancel six games and undergo a major restructuring to contain expenses and turn around its trend of poor-performing releases.
This story was originally published March 19, 2026 at 1:27 PM.
