The call goes out for a 'massive international strike' at Ubisoft: 'We are treated like children who need to be supervised, while our management gets away with lies and breaking the law'
Five unions representing Ubisoft employees in France have called for a "massive international strike by all Ubisoft employees" in response to the company's recently-announced restructuring and return to office mandate.
Ubisoft announced the overhaul of its studio structure last week, a process that includes the cancellation of six games in development (including the repeatedly-delayed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time), multiple delays, and the closures of "several studios," with attendant layoffs. It followed that up with a demand that all employees return to full time in-office work, and then initiated a 'Rupture Conventionnelle Collective' process in order to reduce the workforce at its Paris HQ by 200 people. Naturally, there was also fresh noise about AI.
The Solidaires Informatique union called for a half-day strike at Ubisoft Paris immediately after the restructuring was announced, and warned that move was merely an "initial response to the absurdity of management decisions." Now the union, along with four others—CFE-CGC, CGT, Printemps écologique, and Le Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo—are taking the next step: A company-wide walkout.
"We are promised autonomy for Creative Houses, but what about autonomy for employees? Five days of mandatory in-office work: We are treated like children who need to be supervised, while our management gets away with lies and breaking the law," the unions said in a joint statement.
"We have been negotiating for over a year on remote work policy, sometimes under difficult conditions. An agreement has been in place since September in some studios. Trampled underfoot! Our colleagues in entities without an agreement? At the mercy of arbitrary decisions. We are told about responsibility, but those who wield this world so easily do not take any responsibility for the consequences of their catastrophic management, the latest result being the elimination of 200 jobs at Ubisoft's headquarters."
????????✊???? Ubisoft : enough is enough! Faced with the arbitrary decision of the CEO who doesn’t even dare talking to employees anymore, unions are calling for a strike on February 10th, 11th and 12th.
— @stjv.fr (@stjv.fr.bsky.social) 2026-01-28T19:52:06.494Z
In the spirit of "enough is enough," the unions are calling on all employees to stage a three-day strike, over February 10-13: "It is time for our management to understand that they cannot do whatever they want, whether with public money or the work of hundreds of people!"
Those dates, by the way, will coincide with Ubisoft's first quarterly financial report since it announced the restructuring, which is set to take place on February 12—I'm pretty sure that's not a coincidence.
What sort of response this gets from international Ubisoft studios is an open question at this point. Studios in France, generally speaking, have very strong union protections, but many others do not. Ubisoft's many studios in Canada, for instance, are not unionized: Ubisoft Halifax would've been the company's first unionized studio in North America, but it was closed earlier in January as part of the company's restructuring.
That makes participating in a strike much riskier: Ubisoft obviously can't shut down its massive Montreal or Toronto studios the way it did Halifax, but it can, if so inclined, find a little bit of the proverbial fat to trim that it otherwise might not have. I've reached out to Solidaires Informatique and Ubisoft Toronto for comment and will update if I receive a reply.