700 Ubisoft employees in France stage a strike in response to the global order to return to offices issued by the publisher of Assassin’s Creed

In September, open world publisher Ubisoft issued a 3-day-a-week return to the office order for all staff worldwide – a decision made by the French Union of Video Game Workers (STJV) he said he was “made without any tangible justification or any consultation with employee representatives.” In response, STJV called on workers in France to organize a three-day strike that started yesterday, which, according to trade unionists, will involve more than 700 workers, via World.

“This decision is announced immediately after the failure of the profit-sharing negotiations,” STJV wrote at the time. “Exactly as previous salary negotiations: management’s proposals were unacceptable, the negotiation schedule was staggering, and management turned a deaf ear to the proposals of various employee representatives.”

“After more than five years of working effectively in the current remote working context, many of our colleagues have built or rebuilt their lives (family life, housing, parenting, etc.) and simply cannot return to their previous working conditions,” he added. The Union wrote. “Our employer knows this very well. The consequences of his decision will be the loss of our colleagues’ jobs, the disorganization of many gaming projects, and a drastic escalate in psychosocial risks for those who remain.”

The tactic STJV mentions here, sometimes called “soft layoffs”, is the argument that RTO mandates is a deliberate move by an employer to restructure its workforce without immediately laying off employees – an approach that disproportionately impacts clinically vulnerable people and others who cannot work in the office without appropriate adjustments. In July, Star Citizen Cloud developer Imperium was fined for discrimination after firing a senior autistic developer after refusing his request to work from home.

“Trade unions said they had not received a response to the complaints reported in February,” writes Le Monde. “September’s message was ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Clement Montigny of the STJV trade union told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the switch to in-person work has broken promises made to workers and “calls into question the way they organize their lives.”

STJV’s demands include a formal agreement on remote working (“this is not an arbitrary decision made months in advance”), an escalate in all wages “to compensate for the decline in living standards” and “actual listening to workers’ opinions.” “seems to actually confuse monologue with dialogue.”

Speaking to AFB and Le Monde during the strikes, a Ubisoft designer described the atmosphere as “bleak” and said employees were disappointed and felt they were not being listened to.

Earlier this month, a Bloomberg report suggested that Ubisoft’s owners, Tencent and the Guillemot family, were considering a buyout. On a somewhat inert note, Ubisoft has announced that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be coming to Steam on day one, following delays.