As Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced's underwater levels draw prai…

An Ubisoft Barcelona developer who worked on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has responded to praise for their team's work as Ubisoft looks to lay off 51 developers from the studio.

Ahead of the remake's launch earlier this month, news broke that Ubisoft Barcelona developers are going on strike after Vantage Studios – the Ubisoft-Tencent conglomerate established last year – informed the studio that the Assassin's Creed team at Ubisoft Barcelona will be let go at the end of July, according to a former developer. Resynced is the fourth-highest-rated game in the series, has seen the biggest Steam launch in the series' history, and is receiving praise from fans of the series.

Over on Twitter, Assassin's Creed fan account TheRealZephryss made a post praising the game's underwater tech and exploration segments, which was reposted by Manel Cota, tech and gameplay animator at Ubisoft Barcelona, as part of Black Flag Resynced's development. Cota responded to the praise, saying, "Thanks! Ubisoft Barcelona did all the underwater levels. And that same team is being fired right now because Ubisoft thinks that's what we deserve."

Ubisoft Barcelona are striking today, tomorrow and Thursday in response to Ubisoft's planned layoffs, with Spanish union La Confederación General del Trabajo's bulletin confirming the strike aims are to ensure that the 51 staff who are set to be laid off are retained, to prevent more mass layoffs for "a minimum of five years" by requesting job protections, offering staff the option to work from home, a demand that already-agreed promotions be given.

Ubisoft says it's going a little quiet after Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced ahead of "significantly bigger" years with more games.

Say what you want about Windows—I've certainly said my fair share—but recent months have shown at least that Microsoft is willing to make some positive changes. Now, at least some of these are coming to fruition, as the company is releasing an improved Windows start menu search box for Insiders.

The changes are ones that do look genuinely substantial for, well, probably anyone who regularly uses a Windows PC. They include:

• A calmer home screen
• Clearer results
• No promotional content in web results
• Choice over whether web and MS store suggestions appear
• Local results prioritised when they're a better match
• Tuning to which Windows settings appear highest in results
• Improvements to surfacing the correct files
• General reliability improvements (reduced issues/crashes)

Obviously, a lot of the proof will be in the eating of the pudding. The improvements to reliability and search surfacing the correct files, for instance, aren't something to gather from screenshots alone. But the screenshots that Microsoft does provide for some of the other changes are promising.

In particular, I like the simplified and cleaner menu when searching, showing only a list of recent searches. I also like the preview pane for files and the fact that file extensions aren't hidden.

Probably the best thing, though, is the ability to disable web and app store results. I can't remember the last time I wanted to search for something online via the Start menu. I can, however, remember the number of times I've been bombarded by web results when I only wanted to search locally. I'm sure many can relate. Previously, you couldn't disable this without messing with the registry.

At any rate, changes are most certainly afoot, and I'm excited for this Insider build to roll out in a standard release. It's these 'little' quality of life improvements that could make Windows enjoyable to use once again, if Microsoft keeps in this direction.