Ubisoft workers have officially gone on strike across France.
As reported by French news outlet Le Monde, 700 employees have joined the strike, with 100 people picketing on their Paris location, and 50 people in Montpellier. Annecy and Lyon locations also have employees on strike.
Ubisoft workers in France are represented by a union organization called the STJV (Le Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo). They announced plans to hold this strike three weeks ago, in a press release last September 26.
Quoting STJV’s press release directly:
“Management just announced its decision to impose a return to offices for 3 days per week for all employees. This announcement was made without any tangible justification or any consultation with the workers’ representatives.
After more than five years of working efficiently in the current remote-work context, many of our colleagues have built or rebuilt their lives (family life, housing, parenthood, etc.) and simply cannot return to the previous working conditions. Our employer knows this perfectly well. The consequence of its decision will be the loss of our colleagues’ jobs, the disorganization of many game projects, and the drastic increase in psychosocial risks for those who remain.
This decision is announced immediately after the failure of the profit-sharing negotiations. Exactly like previous salary negociations: management’s proposals were innaceptable, the negociations’ timetable was appalling, and management was deaf to the proposals of the various Employee representatives.”
We are also sharing a picture from the pickets themselves, taken by the STVJ and shared on their Twitter.
This seems to be just another issue affecting Ubisoft management, who is already dealing with unhappy shareholders who want the Guillemots to leave the company. But we should remember that Ubisoft’s employees and shareholders are not necessarily on the same side.
It’s true that they may align on many points in this situation. Clearly, they are both unhappy with Ubisoft’s Guillemots and top management structure. They also feel that Ubisoft is not doing what they want them to do.
But the shareholders are ultimately looking out for themselves and their profits. While they say they want Ubisoft developers to be able to keep making good games, they have also recommended that Ubisoft go through reconsolidation, doublespeak for saying they thing Ubisoft should lay off developers too.
With all this said, it’s not entirely true that the game developers are always correct. There’s an unfortunate and well-known example of an ill-advised video game project that released this year, but should have been cancelled instead.
Ultimately, we do know none of these parties want to lose Ubisoft. An Ubisoft that successfully makes popular and high selling games is what the industry used to know, and it’s what they all want to come back to. There is no consensus on how that will happen right now, but events seem to be converging to a solution that will be forced onto one of these parties, whether they like it or not.
