Ubisoft hasn’t been having a good time, with canceled games, and more delays. The last thing they would want is any form of internal conflict. Unfortunately, that’s cooking up in their backyard as the Solidaires Informatique union has called for a strike at Ubisoft Paris on January 27.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, who said in last week’s update that the company is looking to cut €200 million ($215 million) in expenses over the next two years through “targeted restructuring, divesting some non-core assets, and usual natural attrition.”
The studio said salaries at Ubisoft have failed to keep up with inflation, that the company has not implemented a four-day work week (Ubisoft reportedly experimented with a 36-hour work week in 2021 but declined to carry on with it), and that there are no protections in place for “exhausted” dev teams after their projects are completed. And with that, it’s no wonder why Ubisoft employees did not sit well with those comments. Guillemot just pushed his luck by blaming employees for not being productive at work, cutting their pays and ultimately, disguised layoffs.
The union is calling the strike to not only protest Guillemot’s dismissive comments, but to also call for better pay and conditions at the company, in particular a 10% payrise to account for the inflation crisis and the implementation of a four-day working week.
The call for a strike is limited to Ubisoft Paris, rather than the company as a whole, because Solidaires Informatique is a French trade union with a chapter at the Paris studio (and numerous other tech companies in France) but not others. This isn’t the first time it’s taken action against Ubisoft: In 2021, the union filed legal action against Ubisoft over allegations of “institutional sexual harassment,” and later that year it criticized Ubisoft’s plans to move into NFTs as “useless, costly, [and] ecologically mortifying.”
If you have followed our blog closely, you know we have reviewed a few instances of Ubisoft services, and safe to say we are not really big fans of their platforms. In any case Ubisoft has to pick up the pace to remain as glorious as the olden days where Assassin’s Creed was actually about assassins. Please, let AC Mirage be something good.
