French Ubisoft workers have voted to walk off the job in response to a fresh restructuring plan that could reshape the company’s presence in its home market. The strike call, driven by unions representing staff at the publisher’s French studios and offices, crystallizes years of frustration over stagnant pay, mounting workloads and a leadership strategy that many employees now see as a direct threat to their livelihoods.
The dispute centers on a proposal to cut hundreds of roles at Ubisoft’s Paris headquarters through a voluntary redundancy scheme, alongside broader cost cutting and a push back to mandatory office work. For a company that has long sold itself as a creative powerhouse, the confrontation with its own workforce is a stark reminder that the battle for the future of game development is as much about labor conditions as it is about technology or hit franchises.
The redundancy plan that lit the fuse
The immediate trigger for the strike is a plan by Ubisoft to launch a voluntary redundancy program at its main office in Paris that could affect up to 200 staff. Management has framed the scheme as a targeted adjustment that applies only to specific teams at the headquarters, but for workers it lands as the latest in a series of cuts and cancellations that have already thinned out teams and increased pressure on those who remain. The fact that the program is formally voluntary does little to ease concerns that employees will feel pushed toward the exit if their roles are deemed non essential.
Under French labor law, Ubisoft intends to channel the departures through the country’s Rupture Conventionnelle Collective process, known as the RCC, which is designed to manage collective separations with negotiated safeguards. The company has argued that using the RCC shows it is respecting local rules and trying to avoid outright forced layoffs at its Paris base. For unions, however, the legal wrapper does not change the underlying reality that hundreds of roles could disappear in a single restructuring wave, at a time when staff already feel the studio network has been cut to the bone.
Unions move from warning to walkout
Faced with the redundancy plan, The French Ubisoft unions shifted quickly from issuing warnings to organizing industrial action. Representatives say they have unanimously agreed to coordinate a stoppage, with The French Ubisoft groups presenting the strike as a necessary response to a pattern of restructuring and project cancellations. In their view, the company has repeatedly asked workers to absorb the impact of strategic missteps, from greenlit games that never ship to shifts in platform priorities, while shielding senior leadership from meaningful accountability.
Union statements describe a workforce that has run out of patience with what they see as a one way demand for sacrifice. Earlier calls for a work stoppage, framed as a Call for action following announcements by chief executive Yves Guillemot about a cost cutting plan and scrapped projects, set the tone for a more confrontational stance. The new vote to strike, described in some reports under the banner Ubisoft Employees Vote to Strike Against Proposed Layoffs, marks a decisive escalation that puts direct pressure on management to revisit its plans.
From Paris dispute to global strike call
What began as a fight over jobs in Paris is already rippling across Ubisoft’s international network. Worker representatives in France have confirmed that they are not only preparing local action but also backing a broader appeal for a global stoppage, with Ubisoft worker unions calling for coordinated action across multiple countries. Reports indicate that the proposed redundancies in France are part of a wider restructuring that touches approximately 1,100 employees in total, a scale that helps explain why unions see this as a global issue rather than a purely French dispute.
Organizers are explicitly reaching out to colleagues in other territories, arguing that the same cost cutting logic that now threatens France could soon be applied elsewhere. A separate report on Eurogamer notes that unions are framing the dispute as a test case for how far the publisher can go in trimming staff without facing sustained resistance. That framing helps explain why the language around a global strike has been so forceful, even before the first picket lines have formed.
Long simmering anger over pay and conditions
The redundancy plan lands on top of grievances that have been building for years inside Ubisoft’s French studios. Union accounts describe a period of several years without meaningful pay rises, or with only very small increases, and say that After another year of disappointing raises, employees have been told once again that the company could not have done better. That message, delivered against a backdrop of major releases and ongoing franchise revenue, has fueled a sense of disconnect between the financial story told to investors and the reality experienced by staff.
Those frustrations are not new. In early 2024, the union STJV publicly argued that wages at the company had failed to keep pace with the cost of living, stating that According to STJV, it had become clear to many Ubisoft employees that the reduction in their living standards was seen not as a bug but as a feature by the company’s leadership. That earlier strike over fair wages in France set a precedent for the kind of collective action now being revived, and it helps explain why the current dispute has quickly escalated from internal discontent to a formal strike vote.
Return to office and the broader restructuring backlash
Beyond pay and job cuts, workers are also pushing back against a broader restructuring agenda that includes a return to mandatory in office work. Unionized staff say the latest call to action is a response not only to prospective layoffs but also to a management decision to roll back remote and hybrid arrangements, with one report noting that Last week Ubisoft announced a shift back to mandatory in office work. For employees who reorganized their lives around flexible setups during the pandemic, that reversal feels like another unilateral decision that disregards their needs and input.
French coverage has highlighted how several unions, including groups representing Video Game Workers, see the combined effect of layoffs, office mandates and project cancellations as a single restructuring package that shifts risk onto staff. Reports note that French publication Les Echos has detailed how the redundancy plan could affect staff whose projects have already been delayed by up to one year, compounding uncertainty about their future. In that context, the strike is not only about stopping a single wave of cuts, it is also a bid to force a broader rethink of how the company manages creative risk and human capital.
