Ubisoft has recently launched a controversial restructuring plan globally, laying off hundreds of employees across multiple studios. In the latest round of layoffs in June this year, the gaming giant announced the layoff of 51 employees at its studio in Barcelona, Spain, accounting for about 28% of the total local workforce, triggering the studio's employees to declare a collective strike.
According to "Insider Gaming", employees at Ubisoft Barcelona Studio plan to go on strike every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon from June 30 to July 16 to express their dissatisfaction with layoffs and the company's personnel policies.
According to reports, the employees participating in the strike put forward a series of specific demands, including: providing job continuation guarantees for the 51 employees who were laid off this time and conducting binding negotiations; adding protection measures to prevent another large-scale dismissal for at least the next five years; strictly abiding by internal promotion procedures that have not been implemented before; unconditionally restoring the "work from home" arrangement, allowing employees to complete 60% of their monthly working hours remotely; and signing a career development agreement to review and improve the existing salary increase plan and social security benefit plan. Employees believe that the above requirements will help establish more stable labor relations and a fairer and more transparent promotion and welfare system.
The strike in Barcelona is not an isolated incident in Ubisoft's recent labor friction. Previously, the French video game union had launched a two-week strike against Ubisoft's round of layoffs. The demands it raised were highly similar to those of Barcelona employees in terms of protecting employees' rights, preventing layoffs without warning, and standardizing internal processes. As the scale of layoffs expands and studios in different countries take collective actions one after another, Ubisoft's restructuring strategy has caused widespread controversy in the European game industry, and has further highlighted the contradiction between how large game companies balance cost control and employee rights protection during the business adjustment process.