Ubisoft faced with the strike in France

(Paris) In France, several unions are calling on employees at Ubisoft for a three-day strike on Tuesday, the second this year, while the French video game giant is going through a difficult time with sluggish sales and the postponement of a game major, against a backdrop of rumors of a takeover of the company.

Several strike pickets will be held in front of the game publisher’s various studios, notably in Paris, Montpellier (south), Lyon and Annecy (east), after the group’s announcement in mid-September to impose at least three days presence in the office per week.

“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Clément Montigny, delegate of the Video Game Workers’ Union (STJV) at the Montpellier studio, explains to AFP.

In an email sent to its employees, management justified this decision by stating that “creativity is stimulated by interpersonal interactions, informal conversations and collaboration around the same table”.

“People were hired on the promise of three days of teleworking,” argues Mr. Montigny, “and that calls into question the entire organization of their lives. Potentially, these people must consider leaving the company, which is unacceptable.”

The unions are also asking management for “a real wage effort”, recalling that a first strike in February mobilized more than 700 employees out of 4,000 in France, a high level in this sector.

“We have not had a response from management,” laments Pierre-Etienne Marx, STVJ delegate at Ubisoft Paris. “We are going to increase [la pression] until there are real concessions,” he warned, hoping this time to reach the thousand strikers.

For its part, Ubisoft says it is examining “how to refine [son modèle] to better balance the benefits of remote and in-office work,” after a first meeting with the unions last Tuesday.

“Not the expected success”

This strike comes at a bad time for the French group which has had a series of disappointments for several months.

“Ubisoft suffers from a series of releases [de jeux] which do not achieve the expected success”, estimates Oscar Lemaire, of the specialized site Ludostrie, citing in particular Skull and Bones and the new episode of Prince of Persia.

At the end of September, its CEO, Yves Guillemot, also admitted that the first sales of Star Wars Outlawsreleased at the end of August, were “weaker than expected”, forcing Ubisoft to lower its financial objectives and postpone the release of the next part of its flagship series by three months, Assassin’s Creedto give its teams time to refine it.

A bad patch punished on the financial markets: Ubisoft shares have collapsed by more than 40% since the start of the year, reaching their lowest level in 10 years in September.

At the beginning of October, the Bloomberg agency also reported a potential share buyback by the Chinese tech giant Tencent, which already owns nearly 10% of the company, and the Guillemot family, main shareholder, to exit the Stock Exchange group.

« Ubi-bashing »

But it is not only in the markets that Ubisoft is attacked. On social networks, its games are regularly the target of criticism or mockery, a phenomenon now called “Ubi-bashing”.

“It’s hard to quantify, but the idea that Ubisoft always makes the same games is quite widespread,” notes Oscar Lemaire, for whom “centralized operation brings a form of standardization to all projects.”

Criticisms which sometimes turn into waves of harassment against certain developers, particularly when games highlight heroines (Kay Vess in Star Wars Outlaws) or characters like the black samurai Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

At the end of September, Yves Guillemot reacted to these “polarized comments” by affirming that Ubisoft remained “an entertainment company”, whose “objective is not to promote a particular agenda”.