How Did P4 Benefit Ubisoft?
- More than 2,000 developers across locations (1,200 in Montreal) versioned 5 TB of files over 166.6+ million changes during the reporting period.
- The P4 branching mechanism allows the same codebase to power multiple target game platforms simultaneously.
- P4’s Perl, C#, and C++ APIs allowed Ubisoft to embed version control directly into their own in-house tools—turning a cumbersome step into a workflow default.
- P4 changelists gave programmers an organized, structured approach to managing parallel tasks without losing context or progress.
- The P4 Plug-in for Graphical Tools allowed artists and modelers to work directly inside Photoshop and Autodesk 3ds Max with minimal context-switching or friction.
- The P4 Visual Client’s graphical interface kept non-technical team members tracking changes confidently, with no CLI required.
Ubisoft needed only two P4 administrators to manage over 1,200 users in Montreal—freeing technical staff to focus on what matters.
"[P4] has become the central and critical tool to store everybody's work. Our teams are getting bigger and bigger. The speed, reliability, and scalability of [P4] are crucial to Ubisoft, with more than 1,000 users depending on it."
- Nicolas Beaufils, Technical Architect, Ubisoft
Development Environment
| Number of Perforce P4 Users: Over 2,000 (over 1,200 in Montreal alone) | Target Platforms: Consoles and PCs |
| Number of Managed Files: 24,070,195 (5 TB) | Host Platform: Windows |
| Number of Changes: 166,642,479 revisions (337 GB of metadata) | Connectivity: Multi-gigabit links between sites |
| Development Sites: Montreal, Canada. Other sites include Paris, Montpelier, and Shanghai. |
Introducing Ubisoft
Ubisoft is one of the most recognizable names in interactive entertainment. As a leading producer, publisher, and distributor of video games worldwide, the company has a catalog of more than 1,000 titles sold across over 50 countries.
Behind that catalog are some of gaming's most beloved franchises: Prince of Persia®, Assassin's Creed™, Rayman®, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell®, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six®. Each one has shaped the industry, and each one demanded production infrastructure capable of supporting massive, multi-discipline teams under serious creative and deadline pressures.
At the time of this case study, Ubisoft operated 15 in-house production studios across 11 countries. Its Montreal studio—one of the world's largest creative hubs—employed 1,600 staff members, with plans to grow to more than 3,000.
That growth required the development infrastructure to back it up, and at the center of it was Perforce P4.
The Challenge: Scaling Version Control Without Breaking Workflows
From its inception, Ubisoft followed a strategic priority to keep all creative and game development in house. Two decades later, that decision still paid off, supporting Ubisoft’s transition across console generations without losing momentum—and building a culture of ownership that defines how they ship.
Each game is run as its own production entity, with dedicated teams ranging from 15 to more than 150 developers responsible for their own tools and engine. The target platforms included Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and Nintendo, each requiring its own target-specific data and release build.
Ubisoft’s multi-studio, multi-platform operation demanded simultaneous coordination across every project. They needed a scalable version control system that could let teams share tools and game engines across platforms while minimizing platform-specific rework. More than that, they needed to improve cross-team productivity without adding administrative overhead.
The Solution: Perforce P4 As Ubisoft’s Version Control Backbone
Ubisoft chose Perforce P4—the industry standard version control platform for game development, media & entertainment, semiconductor, and automotive—and they haven't looked back since.
Perforce P4 became the main version control tool at Ubisoft, used by programmers and artists on many game projects. More than 2,000 developers used P4 daily to store everything that makes a game: source code, 3D assets, animation files, models, textures, sound, and video footage.
“One of my first mandates was to integrate Perforce [P4] into the game engine we've been using for all of the Assassin's Creed games. We’re dealing with millions of files and Perforce really scaled with us. Everything is really robust and you can integrate with confidence.”
- Marc Desfosses, Lead Programmer, Ubisoft
Benefits To Artists And Modelers
Artists and modelers found the P4 experience intuitive. The P4 Visual Client (P4V) and its graphical tools let creators track even the smallest of daily changes without ever touching a command line. The P4 Plug-in for Graphical Tools (P4GT) brought version control directly into Adobe Photoshop and Autodesk 3ds Max, keeping creators in their tools and in flow.
"The easy and flexible APIs in Perl, C#, and C++ have enabled us to integrate source-control functionality in most of our in-house tools, simplifying the workflow of our artists and modelers," said Nicolas Beaufils, Technical Architect at Ubisoft.
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Benefits To Game Developers
Game developers found multiple benefits through P4’s version control architecture and features:
P4 Changelists
P4 changelists helped group code changes into logical units before submission, helping developers stay organized, switch contexts fast, and manage parallel workstreams without losing track.
"Perforce changelists are very much appreciated, as they enable programmers to organize their work as they see fit."
- Nicolas Beaufils, Technical Architect, Ubisoft
P4 Branching and Merging
Sharing the same codebase across Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and other platforms—without losing control or creating conflicts—required a branching model built for that kind of complexity. P4's branching and merging mechanisms proved to be the right fit for multi-platform development.
Fast File Access
For Ubisoft’s distributed teams, P4's proxy and edge servers delivered fast, reliable access anywhere. Using Perforce P4 Proxy Server, developers could maintain a local cache of frequently used files that cut synchronization times and kept momentum even when connecting to a central server in different regions.
The P4 Proxy Server allowed remote studios in Paris, Montpellier, and Shanghai to stay in sync with Montreal, and propagate every change across all projects quickly and reliably.
"The tight integration of our tools with [Perforce P4] has led to great improvements in productivity."
- Nicolas Beaufils, Technical Architect, Ubisoft
Less Administrative Overhead
Beaufils found Perforce P4 offered a significant improvement over its predecessor, Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS). "Perforce requires less administration than VSS, with only one dedicated administrator for 1,200 users. Perforce is easy to back up and is more stable than VSS. It is also easy to scale compared to other tools."
“Their support team is really smart and efficient—we know we’re dealing with engineers and not people just trying to find workarounds.”
- Marc Desfosses, Lead Programmer, Ubisoft
Conclusion
Ubisoft's story is one of disciplined, long-term scale driven by purpose-built tools. By keeping development in house and choosing a scalable version control platform that grew with them, they've built an operation that ships AAA titles across multiple platforms—without the bottlenecks that break other studios.
As Ubisoft continues to grow, more developers will migrate to P4. "The speed, reliability, and scalability of [Perforce P4] are crucial to Ubisoft, with more than 1,000 users depending on it," said Beaufils. "Our teams are getting bigger and bigger and P4 has become the central and critical tool to store everybody's work."