Indeed the surprising update on Q3 2023 earnings to be a somber one by Ubisoft and an aftermath message to employees, Ives Guillemot faces another challenge on the company he founded and it is his own employees.
Game Developer reported that Ubisoft Paris, mainly the Solidaires Informatique union worker, have created a vote of strike, protesting the message of Yves Guillemot gave to employ after UBisoft reported its investors that holidays season meant lower than expected sales of Mario + Rabbids: Sparks Of Hope and Just Dance 2023.
The original message read as follow:
"Today more than ever, I need your full energy and commitment to ensure we get back on the path to success... I am also asking that each of you be especially careful and strategic with your spending and initiatives, to ensure we’re being as efficient and lean as possible
The next fiscal year translates to the biggest pipeline in Ubisoft history.
[These games] delays have weighed on our costs and decreased our associated revenues.
The ball is in your court to deliver this line-up on time and at the expected level of quality, and show everyone what we are capable of achieving."
For Solidaires Informatique, the message was labeled as catastrophic communication and looks to blame development teams of the failures of sales and justifying obligatory overtime or most commonly known as Crunch Time without any compensation updates and unmet promises like 4 days shift implementation that hasn’t occurred yet.
The demands to avoid the strike effective by January 27th are:
- An immediate 10 percent salary increase for all staff to compensate for inflation, justified that Ubisoft can get the funds from the “millions of euros obtained from Tencent”.
- Improved working conditions and specifically the implementation of a four-day week.
- Transparency on how Ubisoft has been working to evolve its workforce locally and globally.
- Stronger condemnation of abusive managerial policies and disguised dismissals that push employees to resign.
As of the reporting and writing of this, Ubisoft has not responded to the Ubisoft Paris employees demands.
