Video game creators in France declare themselves on strike by landslides

After years of abundance, thanks in large part to the boom of sales during the confinement of the COVID-19, the studies are now confronted to a hard adjustment.

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The video game workers’ union (STJV) convened demonstrations for Thursday in Paris, Bordeaux and other cities in the country.

The movement even extended abroad, with a strike in a study belonging to the French giant Ubisoft in Barcelona.

“We expect a fairly significant participation,” said Vincent Cambedouzou, Delegate of the STJV in the Ubisoft offices in Paris.

The sector uses between 12,000 and 15,000 people.

“There are people making terrible decisions and taking our industry to the state in which it is now,” said Cambedouzou.

Labor conflicts in the sector are uninhabitual, but in October, about 1,000 Ubisoft employees protested changes in teleworking rules.

Ubisoft is the creator of “Assassin’s Creed” and employs almost 18,000 people worldwide, 4,000 of them in France.

The video game sector has gone from a long “creative, artisanal” period to become “an industry like any other,” explains Julien Pillot, an economist specialized in cultural industries.

The workers are “waking up with hangover … realizing that they have become employees like any other,” he added.