Ubisoft: Employees Want Guillemot's Resignation

Yves Guillemot founded the company Ubi Soft [later becoming Ubisoft] in the Year of Our Lord 1983 with his brothers and has served as CEO ever since. At the time, Yves was 23 years old; today he is 65, and many believe it's time for him to step aside.

This, at least, is what two union representatives from Ubisoft's Parisian headquarters, Marc Rutschlé and Chakib Mataoui from the firm Solidaires Informatique, recently asserted in an interview with Game Developer: the two stated that there is growing and palpable discontent within the company, coupled with an uncertainty about the company's future that borders on panic, and they blame management, especially the CEO, for this situation.

Ubisoft: Closures, Layoffs, and Nepotism

Since Ubisoft and Tencent signed a joint-venture agreement a year ago, the company has faced continuous downsizing and layoffs, leading to a veritable "company reset" that removed six titles from the agenda, including the highly anticipated Remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. And while in France, thanks to the strong presence of unions, the damage has so far been contained, in other parts of the world Ubisoft has cut important positions such as Marc-Alexis Côté or David Michaud-Cromp.

"The company is his, of course," explain the unionists, "but the people around him are just yes-men. There were also issues related to the sexual harassment scandal in 2020." The two spokespeople for the employee assembly also pointed out numerous inappropriate management choices, such as the appointment of Charlie Guillemot, Yves' son, to head the new Studio: a person whose previous experiences in the sector, in their opinion, were disappointing, and whose promotion would be a clear and blatant case of nepotism.

"If you keep putting your white male friends in those jobs, you don't promote any diversity or get any new opinions or ideas," the spokespeople continued, also complaining about an inclusivity problem. "We are in a creative job, we need new ideas to help us create great new games, but we don't have them. We don't have this mentality for creativity. Ubisoft's management does not understand its social responsibility towards employees. I would rather have a manager to whom I want to give my workforce than one I cannot trust. The current situation is that we do not trust these people."

Ubisoft and the Issue of On-Site Work

The two unionists also complained about Ubisoft's recent internal memo which, in effect, canceled all forms of remote work, obliging employees to report to their studio locations 5 days a week. "Many employees were very, very scared by the announcement because they started living very far from Paris and their studio, and now they are being asked to return, knowing full well that their salaries do not help them live in the Paris area."

"The entire return-to-office policy is very hard to accept. We asked for documentation or analyses that showed a link between productivity or creativity and returning to the offices. They have none." According to employees, the imposition would be some form of measure implemented to "make shareholders happy" in some way.

Rutschlé and Mataoui concluded by giving advice to all colleagues around the world, such as the many at the Montreal office: "Join a union, or at least organize within your workplace, because our bosses are talking to each other, and so should we."

At the moment, Yves Guillemot and Ubisoft's management have not commented on such statements...