Ubisoft employees at its French offices in Annecy, Montpellier, and Paris went on strike after the failure of annual salary negotiations, writes GamesIndustry.biz.
The strike is initiated by the French gaming union STJV. The union announced its intention to strike on February 1.
“Despite the union’s efforts to find an acceptable compromise, negotiations hit a wall,” the union said in its statement. “In order to hit arbitrary cost reductions targets, management offered a budget dedicated to raises that would be lower than inflation for the second year in a row,” STJV representatives wrote in the announcement.
The company’s management aims to save €200 million over the next two years by cutting its game production budget. Employees and union members are protesting the decision.
In an interview with Gamekul, one of the employees of Ubisoft’s French office said the following:
“When you’re a game development studio, the right way to make money is to make video games in the best possible conditions so they can be of the right quality. It’s not by skimping on the workers who build them, or by saving on the tools they use, that you’re going to make money in a capitalist context. Workers want to be proud of what they ship. And overall it’s not by struggling to pay your rent or by working in poor conditions that you can work properly.”
Earlier, STJV also reported on poor working conditions at another French company, Don’t Nod Entertainment.
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