A major player in the video game industry, with a rich history of captivating titles and global influence, Ubisoft was founded in 1986 by the Guillemot brothers, five Bretons seeking to renew the family agricultural supplies business. Known for its world-famous franchises (Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs, Rainbow Six Siege, Rayman, etc.) and sold with millions of copies, Ubisoft was built in the 1980s and 1990s, in the midst of an explosion in the gaming market. video, making it possible to create a form of “French-style” video game know-how.
If the episodes of destabilization of the company have however multiplied since the 2000s, the post-pandemic period seems particularly difficult for Ubisoft: employees of several studios will be on strike on October 15, 16 and 17 to demand better conditions of work and salary, in a context where the video game industry has laid off more than 11,000 employees in France since the start of 2024. Are Ubisoft’s difficulties representative of those of the video game industry? video game as a whole, while it tends to become more and more dynamic? What does the history of Ubisoft say about that of the construction of the French video game industry?
The social crisis at Ubisoft is part of a difficult economic context for the sector, which has already seen more than 11,000 layoffs since the start of 2024. Julien Pillot states: “Today, the video game sector is in a phase of restructuring and consolidation – also with the strategies of major video game publishers which are increasingly financialized, and which are obviously putting pressure on a very unique player like Ubisoft which made the historic choice to adopt a less financialized strategy“. The company, which entered the stock market in 1996, does not in fact distribute any dividend to its shareholders. These multiple pressures are ultimately exerted on employees, underlines Alexis Blanchet who visited the strikers last February: “We feel that there is a real problem with the meaning of work at Ubisoft, and probably elsewhere. Employees are a little disoriented about their duties“. The researcher recalls that the first union movement at Ubisoft took place in the 1990s, but that it tends to become more structured with the appearance of unions like the STJV or Solidaires Informatique.
The family business, founded in 1986 by the Guillemot siblings, found its place on the French market following the 1983 crash in the video game market. “They entered this market in the mid-1980s, at a time when video games worldwide were still recovering from an initial crash which took place in the United States at the beginning of the 1980s, and in a context where video games in France is, if not embryonic, almost non-existent. We are just starting to see Japanese companies like Sega and Nintendo timidly trying to make a breakthrough in France by respectively launching the Master System and the Nintendo NES, which were ultra-niche products at the time.“, recalls Julien Pillot. From the start, Ubisoft’s strategy differed from that of comparable studios of the time: “one of the important markers of Ubisoft is that it is a family of tradersnoted Alexis Blanchet. Ubisoft is really starting with the idea of making video games on the one hand, and with that of hiring people who already have experience, therefore already recruiting developers who have one or two games under their belt. In addition, the company adopts an editorial positioning quite marked by a real influence of Hollywood genre cinema (cinema of Romero or Carpenter), video club cinema of the 1980s, and themes linked to fantasy and heroic fantasy“.
Sound references:
Musical references:
- Opening credits: “Catch me !”soundtrack of the game Chants of Senaar, winner of the Best Game of the Year award at the Pégases 2024
- Rayman Origins MedleyPixelophonia, Opéra Bastille in Paris, 09/22/2017
To go further:
Alexis Blanchet, Guillaume Compagnon (dirs.): A history of video games in France ed. Pix’n Love, 2020
