Only a week after asserting the cancelation of six video games, the closure of two studios and additional job losses at one other three areas, Ubisoft is now aiming its cost-reduction initiative at workers working inside its Paris headquarters.
Ubisoft has proposed the lack of as much as 200 jobs throughout the French capital, the place it at the moment employs round 1100 individuals. This course of can be organized beneath the voluntary Rupture Conventionnelle Collective (RCC) course of, the place workers can conform to type a collective, voluntary mutual termination settlement.
“In keeping with final week’s bulletins on its new working mannequin and the acceleration of cost-reduction initiatives, Ubisoft Worldwide has initiated discussions relating to a possible Rupture Conventionnelle Collective, a collective, voluntary mutual termination settlement that might contain as much as 200 positions at its headquarters in France,” a Ubisoft spokesperson instructed IGN at the moment.
“At this stage, this stays a proposal, and no resolution can be ultimate till a collective settlement is reached with worker representatives and validated by French authorities. The proposal applies solely to Ubisoft Worldwide staff beneath French contracts and has no affect on different French entities or Ubisoft groups worldwide.”
Whereas the RCC course of must be voluntary and must be based mostly on phrases agreed by staff and commerce unions, there isn’t any phrase at the moment on subsequent steps if the corporate doesn’t obtain the discount in headcount it’s anticipating by this scheme.
Ubisoft’s Parisian workplaces have beforehand been the sight of protests in opposition to the corporate’s earlier return-to-office stipulations. Final week, Ubisoft stated its firm reorganization would additionally reintroduce five-day workplace work as commonplace (albeit with an annual pool of distant working days). Nonetheless, IGN understands the choice to suggest an RCC to its Parisian staff was made a while in the past, earlier than the five-day mandate was determined.
Final week, Ubisoft stated it was utterly shuttering its Stockholm studio that beforehand collaborated on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, alongside cell studio Ubisoft Halifax. “Restructurings” have additionally taken place at Ubisoft workplaces in Abu Dhabi, at Trials studio RedLynx and at Huge, residence to The Division.
Of the half dozen video games which have now been totally scrapped, Ubisoft solely publicly named one — its long-awaited Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake. Immediately, an actress believed to have been engaged on the remake stated that she had misplaced three years’ value of labor and found her challenge had been canceled after studying about Ubisoft’s shock resolution on-line.
Ubisoft concurrently confirmed it had delayed an extra seven video games, together with an unannounced title set for launch throughout the subsequent two months that’s broadly anticipated to be the corporate’s under-wraps Murderer’s Creed: Black Flag remaster. Ubisoft’s inventory plunged by 40% following the announcement, and now sits 95% down on its January 2021 peak.
Picture credit score: IGN.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s Information Editor. You’ll be able to attain Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or discover him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
