Ubisoft (photo: official website, Ubisoft)
Last week, Ubisoft reported the postponement of the Skull & Bones game for the sixth time (after almost a decade of development) and the cancellation of three more that have yet to be announced.
The company's CEO,
Yves Gilmont
,
indicated that they are expected to experience a wave of layoffs and layoffs, and in an open letter to the employees, he claimed that "the ball is in their hands" to help the company get back on track.
Harifa and the workers' committee representing the French branch in Paris called for a strike at the end of the coming month and answered the CEO in response: "The ball is in our hands, but the money stays with him."
The workers' committee claims that Yves Gilmont actually blames the precarious situation that Ubisoft is in in recent years on the workers, and not on the management that makes the actual decisions.
In the CEO's letter, he demanded that the employees "give their all and be as efficient as possible". The committee claims that these requests will not lead to results in the field beyond employee burnout, overtime, and administrative problems.
The committee also claimed that the expected "wave of cuts and restructuring" only It will be difficult for the workers and they cannot be expected to provide more output with fewer resources. They turn to the CEO with a list of demands: a 10% increase in salary for all employees in order to compensate for the rising inflation, improvement of employment conditions and a transition to a four-day work week format, and transparency and a commitment on the part of the management to stop with a policy that causes employees to resign.
If their demands are not met, they will shut down the Paris branch for several hours on January 27.
This incident joins a series of strikes, protests, and committees that fight for the rights of workers in the gaming industry that began to emerge in recent years, about which we wrote extensively here.
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There is no doubt that Ubisoft has seen better days, in every possible aspect.
The last two years haven't been very fruitful, and the only big games it released were Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Far Cry 6, and they didn't live up to the past glory of their predecessors either.
Ubisoft has also known serious scandals this year, and company executives have been accused of covering up sexual harassment complaints made by female employees of the company.
With all the sales blitz of 2022, there have also been quite a few rumors that Ubisoft will be the next distributor to be acquired in the industry.
Among the potential buyers, the name of the Chinese gaming giant Tencent has surfaced, but Guilmont stated that they have no intention of selling the business.
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