700 Ubisoft staff in France hold strikes in response to worldwide return to office mandate from Assassin’s Creed publisher

Back in September, open world publisher Ubisoft put out a 3-days-weekly return to office mandate for their entire staff worldwide - a decision that French Video Game Workers Union (STJV) said was "made without any tangible justification or any consultation with the workers’ representatives". In response, the STJV called on staff in France to hold a three-day strike beginning yesterday, which the union reports to be underway with the participation of more than 700 workers, via Le Monde.

"This decision is announced immediately after the failure of the profit-sharing negotiations," STJV wrote at the time. “Exactly like previous salary negociations: management’s proposals were inacceptable, the negotiations’ timetable was appalling, and management was deaf to the proposals of the various Employee representatives."

"After more than five years of working efficiently in the current remote-work context, many of our colleagues have built or rebuilt their lives (family life, housing, parenthood, etc.) and simply cannot return to the previous working conditions," the union wrote. "Our employer knows this perfectly well. The consequence of its decision will be the loss of our colleagues’ jobs, the disorganisation of many game projects, and the drastic increase in psychosocial risks for those who remain."

The tactic that the STJV refer to here, sometimes called ‘soft layoffs’, is the argument that RTO mandates are a deliberate ploy on the part of an employer to restructure a workforce without firing workers outright - an approach that disproportionately affects clinically vulnerable people and others who can't work in the office without reasonable adjustments. Back in July, Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium were fined for discrimination after dismissing an autistic senior programmer, following his requests to work from home being denied.

"Unions said they had received no response to the grievances aired in February," write Le Monde. "The September message was ‘the straw that broke the camel's back'". Clement Montigny of the STJV union told Agence France-Presse (AFP) the move to in-person working broke promises made to staff and "calls into question the way they organise their lives."

The STJV’s demands include a formal agreement on remote work ("not an arbitrary decision taken several months in advance"), an increase in all salaries "to compensate for the drop in our living standards,” and “actually listening to employees opinion. Management seems indeed to confuse monologue with dialogue."

Speaking to AFB and Le Monde at the strikes, a designer at Ubisoft described the atmosphere as "gloomy", and said staff were disillusioned and feeling as though they weren’t being listened to.

Earlier this month, a Bloomberg report suggested that Ubisoft owners Tencent and the Guillemot family were considering a buyout. Regarding affairs mildly stabtastic, Ubisoft announced that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be coming to Steam day one, following delays.