Ubisoft developers are striking outside the company’s Paris offices this week. Over 1,200 of them, according to union reps. They’re dancing, too, as they call on the Assassin’s Creed maker to reverse its controversial return-to-office policy and call for accountability from its top executives, including co-founder Yves Guillemot.
“At this stage, it seems clear to us that Yves Guillemot has no knowledge or understanding of his company or its employees,” Solidaires Informatique union representative at Ubisoft Paris Marc Rutschlé told Gamesindustry.biz. “The company is continuing its cost reduction and layoff plan. Our teams are already working under pressure, often understaffed. After several years without pay rises (or very small increases), we understand that once again, employees will not receive a raise this year.”
On February 10, the first day of the this week’s strike, speakers were blaring the 2014 Game Boy chiptune banger “Disco Sanwa” by Kenobit. Developers danced even in the rain while protesting the direction of the company.
The three-day strike this week includes developers at Ubisoft Milan as well and comes after the French publisher announced a new emergency pivot that included delaying some big games and cancelling many others. In addition to a fresh cost-cutting program that amounts to another 200 layoffs, and annual raises that have shrunk during hard times, Ubisoft is calling for employees to go back to being in the office full-time by the end of 2026.
That message, delivered by CEO Yves Guillemot in an internal email and recent townhall meetings, has gone over like a lead balloon, not least of all because of the person who’s delivering it. Despite saying the company needs to change and evolve, Guillemot and his brothers, who founded it back in the 1980s, remain in charge thanks in part to a $1 billion bailout by Tencent.
One employee in Canada was fired for the way he criticized the new policies in work channels, which Ubisoft said violated the company’s code of conduct. Unlike France, Ubisoft’s major Canadian studios in Montreal, Quebec, and Toronto are not unionized. Ubisoft’s smaller mobile gaming team in Canada briefly unionized earlier this year but was subsequently shut down. The company said the closure had nothing to do with the labor organizing.
Unions blamed this week’s walkout on the “arbitrary decision of the CEO who doesn’t even dare talking to employees anymore.”