As a side note to my post above, I wanted to mention that California isn't at all "special", with regards to taxes pertaining to video games, etc.
Montreal, on the other hand, is. Ubisoft Montreal (and every game studio in Quebec) has about half of their employee salary costs paid by the government. No joke.
This is one of the reasons the number of people working on Ubisoft games always seems so high. They are an unusual developer, with some unusual strategies. They favor the "more people" approach over the "more time" approach, thanks to their situation, but it doesn't really have to be that way for them. They could benefit from the unique advantages Quebec offers them via traditional means, but they have chosen the "throw more people at it" approach. I think the diminishing returns of that approach bites them, in the end, but... they do make some good games (at least on the HD platforms).
