Ubisoft workers go on strike, again (Patreon)

Note from PMG: We were contacted a couple of weeks ago about an upcoming strike taking place across two Ubisoft studios. This is a significant story centered around one of the largest employers in the video games industry, but we're currently juggling several big projects all at once and our capability to add any substantial video work into the mix right now is well, erm, non-existent. So I thought we'd try something a little different here and use our Patreon page as a platform to publish a shorter, written report instead. This post is accessible to anybody who'd like to read it, patron or no.

Strikes are underway at both Ubisoft Milan and Ubisoft Barcelona Mobile this week, as employees continue to push back against the company's new mandate that employees must return to the office five days per week. This policy was first announced by Ubisoft back in January, following a $1.25 billion investment from Tencent and was accompanied by layoffs, studio closures and game cancellations, as part of an effort to "reclaim creative leadership and restore sustainable growth".

This dispute over remote work predates that, however, and is just the latest in a series of industrial actions targeting Ubisoft's European offices over the last couple of years, as the company has sought to dismantle its work from home culture. Almost two years ago to the day, hundreds of French staff were striking as the company had initially demanded its employees return to the office for at least three days per week. They were soon joined by their Italian colleagues.

Further strikes took place across France and Italy in February of this year, with Ubisoft Barcelona Mobile Union having also begun its current action with a six-day strike last month as well.

There are other factors at play here as well, aside from just the frustrations surrounding this return to office decision. Ubisoft Barcelona (a separate team to Barcelona Mobile itself), saw 51 employees laid off in the wake of its launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, while specific salary and contractual concerns differ across each of Ubisoft's many studios. But this universal scrapping of remote work is something that will soon affect thousands of Ubisoft employees worldwide, together, in the coming months. As a result, the response from workers (both unionized and not) hasn't been limited to any one particular studio, region or country. While some have announced strikes, others are looking at alternative ways to apply pressure. The Ubisoft Workers of Montreal Union, for example, has been collecting hundreds of employee signatures over the last several days for its own petition calling for the preservation of hybrid work.

"We love working at Ubisoft," stressed Jacopo Ameli, a senior engine programmer and representative of the Ubisoft Milan Work Council, when I spoke to him following the first day of his studio's most recent strike. "There's a lot of good people here, especially in Ubisoft Milan. We wouldn't be fighting if we didn't want it to be a good place where we can work, like it was, for a long time."

Around 30 of Ubisoft Milan's roughly 100 employees joined the picket outside the studio on Tuesday, with a further 20 to 30 having taken part in the strike remotely, according to the work council.

The strike will be running for three days this week, with a further three planned for the following week as well, although employees are hoping the company could decide to reopen contract negotiations with workers before then. This mirrors a similar six days of action taking place in Barcelona, although the Spanish workers began their picket this morning, rather than Tuesday.

It's also worth noting that the Milan strike is taking place just two months ahead of the release of Rayman Legends Retold, which had originally been scheduled to launch at the beginning of October, but was then delayed in order to give the studio "extra time to make sure every detail gets the care it deserves". It's unclear whether this change in release date factored in the possibility of industrial action, although the vote to strike this week took place after the delay had already been announced.

In Italy, there isn't a union specifically centered around video game workers, or even ICT workers, meaning the Ubisoft Milan employees find themselves represented by the Italian Federation of Metalworkers (FIOM) instead, which itself is a part of the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL), one of Europe's largest and most influential trade union federations. Not everyone involved in this week's strike is a union member, although they all have employment contracts which have ultimately been shaped by FIOM's sector-wide bargaining. In this case, Ubisoft Milan categorizes its own workforce as part of the metalworking industry and so is subject to that sector's National Collective Labour Agreements, bargained by the FIOM in this case.

There are advantages to this arrangement for the Ubisoft employees based in Italy. They've benefited from the employment rights that metalworkers have already won at a national level, over decades of struggle. However, remote work isn't exactly at the top of the agenda for this particular industry and so on that front, the Ubisoft game devs haven't been able to rely on national bargaining in the same way they may have done for things like vacation days or severance pay, for example.

So what are the demands being made here, as the strike gets underway? In short, the work council wants Ubisoft back at the negotiating table, which had initially been the case when the latest RTO policy change was first announced back in February.

"We started working with our director at Ubisoft Milan to achieve at least some kind of agreement to get back at least some kind of remote working," said Riccardo Stincone, a senior rigger at the studio and member of the work council.

"Then everything stopped for some months because there was the internal restructuring of Ubisoft and they came back in August, when a lot of people were on vacation, and they basically said to us 'no, this is already what we can get, there is nothing else'. It was like talking to a wall."

This lack of progress appears to be an experience shared by Ubisoft Milan's colleagues in Barcelona as they've attempted their own negotiations with the games publisher.

"We informed the company of the planned strike action one month in advance, but they did not sit down with us to negotiate until the second week of strike action," a representative of Ubisoft Barcelona Mobile Union told me over email. "Despite this, the proposals they have put forward so far are not serious and do not address the core of our demands. They do not offer any real alternative to the five-day return to the office, which remains a red line. This is why we are continuing with collective action."

There are other parts of the employee contracts that striking workers would like to see discussed, including pay, travel cost compensation and flexible work hours, but it's this blanket return to office policy which has cemented itself as the single biggest sticking point. Ubisoft, it should be said, has a tendency to operate its games studios out of some of the most expensive cities in the world: Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, Montreal, Singapore, Toronto and yes, Milan.

These cities demand a higher cost of living for those who live and work there, especially when it comes to housing. That's a cost which the Milan work council argues is not being covered by appropriate salaries.

"We know that Ubisoft is in a tough spot financially," said Ameli. "At least based on what they tell investors. Having a higher salary, that's always the goal, that's always nice. Keeping your job, that's the goal. But we think, in a pragmatic way, in a practical way, having more flexibility helps us to reduce the pressure, to say we don't need as much money to pay our fuel, for rent, because we can live further away and work from home.

"There are so many costs—so many costs—associated with going five days a week in the office."

The work council argues that Ubisoft has already damaged its studios by pursuing these policy changes at the expense of internal morale.

"Since 2024, we've lost a ton of colleagues who were working at Ubisoft since forever," said Laura Mazzuca, a senior gameplay programmer and member of the work council. "The issue with Return To Office is also about the loss of knowledge, especially with a company like Ubisoft, which works with custom engines, custom pipelines and strives to be one of the biggest players in the video game industry.

"Since the first Return To Office policy was decided, that started this huge turnover where the knowledge was gone by people who did not want to leave Ubisoft, but felt like they needed to with the choices they'd made in their living arrangements."

At the start of this year, David Michaud-Cromp, a level design team lead at Ubisoft Montreal, was first suspended and then fired after publicly criticizing the company's decision to enforce its RTO policy. He'd posted on LinkedIn, saying "...we very well know why you want to go back to 5 days in the office" alongside a video titled 'Why Companies FORCE People Back In The Office', which suggested that companies have been introducing similar policies in order to encourage unwanted staff to quit, rather than needing to lay them off and then pay for their redundancy.

This tactic is sometimes referred to as a 'soft layoff' or 'quiet firing' and depending on the specific circumstances, can lead to former employees pursuing legal action over what they deem to be a constructive dismissal (i.e. when an employer has made working conditions so intolerable that an employee then feels forced to resign). Whether that's applicable in this case remains to be seen, although you may notice a sign pictured above from the Ubisoft Milan picket which reads "UBI-SOFT LAYOFF", so it's clearly on the mind of at least one striking worker this week.

"We respect the right of employees and employee representatives to express their views," Ubisoft told me in a statement this afternoon. "As announced earlier this year, Ubisoft’s intention is to move toward an in-office work model across its locations. The rollout of this model is taking place progressively and remains subject to applicable local legal requirements and, where relevant, employee representative consultations.

"The model includes annual remote working day allocations and accommodations for individual circumstances, providing employees with continued flexibility while supporting greater in-person collaboration. We believe spending time together helps strengthen teamwork, knowledge sharing, mentoring, learning and the day-to-day interactions that contribute to creativity and long-term team development.

"We understand that this evolution represents an adjustment for some employees and will continue supporting our teams throughout the process."

So far, I'm told negotiations have not been reopened with the striking workers at either Ubisoft Milan or Ubisoft Barcelona Mobile. As it stands then, they're set to continue their pickets into next week.