A French trade union has requested that the Ubisoft Paris developers strategically strike as a result of the comments recently made by the company CEO Yves Guillemot. The publisher is currently facing a series of mounting problems that may or may not be resolved over the course of the next couple of months, with concerns being raised over its treatment of the staff and its IPs.
After the Ubisoft CEO said 2023 is pivotal for the future of the company, he also told his staff that "the ball is in [their] court" to get Ubisoft out of its current slump. Guillemot's attempt at rousing the developers didn't pan out, however, and while he said that he needed his staff's "full energy and commitment" to get the company back on track, it would appear that at least one of Ubisoft's many studios may end up striking instead.
In response to Guillemot's commentary, the French trade union Solidaires Informatique has reached out to Ubisoft Paris employees, calling for them to hold a half-day strike on January 27. Notably, Solidaires Informatique has said that Guillemot's message to his staff was "ironic," given the company's direction over the past couple of years. Ubisoft has canceled seven games over the course of the past seven months, which is certainly part of what the trade union is referring to. Elsewhere, the announcement also stated that Guillemot is asking for a lot from his staff with no promise of proper compensation, and explained that Ubisoft devs should expect "staff reductions, discreet studio closures, salary cuts, disguised layoffs," and more.
Ubisoft's game release schedule for 2023 is rather interesting, but it does seem that the atmosphere at the studios isn't all that great. Solidaires Informatique has issued four major demands to help alleviate the problem. Broadly, it wants Guillemot to provide an immediate 10% salary increase along with general improvements to the devs' working conditions. The most notable of these, in particular, is that the trade union wants Ubisoft to move to a four-day workweek.
With Ubisoft's stock price plummeting, it's difficult to say how the company might react to such a comprehensive suite of demands. At the same time, it's worth pointing out that Solidaires Informatique is only asking the developers to strike, with no word yet on whether they will agree to do so. Even if they do, the strike itself would only take a few hours, which takes away from the otherwise biting letter.
In other, tangentially related news, Ubisoft was allegedly laughed at for proposing mergers. Sources have said that the company has been attempting to merge or even get acquired by a bigger corporate entity for some time now, only for it to get dismissed. The same sources claim that Ubisoft is currently too unwieldy of a company for anyone to be interested in it, which signals that Guillemot's problems could be even more complex than it seems at a glance.
Source: Solidaires Informatique (via VGC)