Ubisoft has rebranded two German studios, hitherto both known as Ubisoft Blue Byte, to Ubisoft Düsseldorf and Ubisoft Mainz. Blue Byte will be retained as the legal name of the company’s operations in Germany, including third site Ubisoft Berlin.
Blue Byte was founded in 1988 with the release of tennis sim Great Courts. Since then, however, the studios have primarily focussed on The Settlers, and were acquired by Ubisoft in 2001.
“We want our three studios in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Mainz to forge and further grow their own local identities as our overall workforce in Germany could soon double in size,” said Benedikt Grindel, Ubisoft German studios managing director (thanks, GI.biz). “We see the potential to grow our talent pool to more than 1,000 by the end of 2023. We have very ambitious plans for our existing and future projects and are looking for creative minds from all areas of game development.”
In related news, Ubisoft revealed yesterday that its reboot of the Settlers franchise will launch in 2020 on PC, via the Ubisoft store and the Epic Games Store, as well as day-and-date on the publisher’s new subscription service, Uplay+.
Simply called The Settlers, the new iteration is being developed by the studios formerly known as Ubisoft Blue Byte, with Grindel saying that he wants the new title to become a “must-play game for the strategy fans of today.”
He continued: “We want to establish The Settlers as a global franchise. With its unique systemic gameplay, it has fans around the globe, and we want to reach them by offering the classic The Settlers formula combined with modern elements and state-of-the-art visuals.”
It’s the first we hear about the project in a year, after an original announcement for a reboot was made at gamescom last year with a release that was first planned for 2019. The last original release in the Settlers’ series was 2010’s Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom, to mixed success, then followed by mobile and free-to-play launches.
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