Ubisoft expands in Eastern Europe with Serbian studio

Ubisoft has announced that it's bolstering its presence in Eastern Europe by opening a production studio in Belgrade, Serbia. The 15-person team has already been collaborating on the PC version of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, and the French publisher noted that it intends to expand to about 40 team members in 2017.

Serbia marks the fourth production studio for Ubisoft in Eastern Europe, joining locations in Bucharest, Sofia and Kiev, and it brings Ubisoft's employee count in the region up to 2,000.

"Serbia has a lot to offer in terms of talent, in particular tech professionals. We're always on the lookout for high potential markets with the passion, skills and expertise to create the very best games, and Serbia's reputation in several key fields makes this investment the perfect match," said Sebastien Delen, Managing Director, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Kiev and Ubisoft Belgrade. "We are bringing years of expertise to the Serbian market and want to contribute to the development of the local gaming industry, as we did for the other countries in the region."

Ubisoft boasted that it's been a "pioneer in the region, setting up one of the first development studios in Bucharest, Romania, 25 years ago, followed by Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2006 and Kiev, Ukraine, in 2008." The team in Belgrade will collaborate with the other studios in Eastern Europe and will ultimately collaborate with other experienced Ubisoft studios on high profile IP going forward.

While the Serbian team is mostly programmers at this point, Ubisoft said it's expecting to widen the job roles into other areas, and the studio in Belgrade is also located near the center of the city and deliberately close to the university campus, which the publisher hopes will entice students to pursue video game development careers.