Established for more than two decades in Quebec where it receives provincial aid via, in particular, tax credits on payroll taxes, Ubisoft claims to want to invest in the French-speaking province "nearly 950 million Canadian dollars" (approximately 666 million euros ) by 2030.
"With the Sherbrooke studio, Ubisoft is pursuing its mission of not only being an important economic engine for all regions of Quebec, but also of continuing to invest in the talents and ecosystems that surround them," said Yves Guillemot , CEO of Ubisoft, quoted in a press release.
The Sherbrooke studio, made up of a multidisciplinary team (production management, programming, graphic design, modeling, animation and game level design), will be in particular in charge of the co-development "of the group's main franchises", indicated the French company.
Ubisoft also announced a program of targeted investments of 17 million Canadian dollars (approximately 11.9 million euros) in the service of youth training, entrepreneurship and innovation.
Since the installation in 1997 of its studio in Montreal, which Ubisoft presents as "the largest in the world", the French publisher had also established itself in the cities of Quebec in 2005 and Saguenay in 2017.
Of the group's 20,000 employees, nearly 5,000 work in the French-speaking Canadian province, which has established itself as a hotbed of the global video game industry.
Ubisoft also owns several other studios in Canada, in Toronto, Halifax and Winnipeg.
In 2017, more than 11,000 people had a job in the video game industry in Quebec, spread across more than 140 companies, according to the provincial government.
© 2021 AFP