With publishers pushing more and more towards “live service games” / Games as a Service (games with a strong online component that tend to drive recurring spending under various forms of monetization), more and more players have come to know the disappointment of seeing one of their games become unplayable, one way or another. We could even describe those products as “exploitation services (🇫🇷)“, though it’d be a bit on-the-nose.

This “evolution” is both saddening and damaging for the player experience. For a while, what used to disappear were mere multiplayer modes, which could of course be very appreciated, but remained an addition to the main game experience (one could think of Metal Gear Online, for example). More recently, there was a quick degradation of service for games where the multiplayer component is important (for example, service deterioriations on Call of Duty games when the game’s publisher is still raking in profits from content sales).

Now, more and more, even content that was meant for solo play and that barely, if at all, benefits from online features, ends up being affected by arbitrary end of service, with a recent example in The Crew, which acted as a trigger for many to recognize the tendency we just described.

This is the context in which the Stop Killing Games initiative was started, with the goal of ending such practices. STJV supports the initiative, both because we believe it is entirely feasible to meet its demands, and because those demands are reasonable expectations from players and in the interest of games preservation.

In particular, we invite any person living in the European Union to sign the petition to the European Commission in order to promote the initiative and request the EU to push it into law.

As for why we support this initiative, here is our reasoning:

The initiative’s demands are feasible

The initiative as described in the European petition proposes a simple rule: a project must have an “exit plan” when they shut down the services. Does your studio make a solo game without online components? Congratulations, you have nothing to do. Does the game actually include online content? There’s a myriad of possibilities to explore – many of which have already been experimented on other projects, sometimes even in games viewed as classics. Here are a few of them:

• Keep the servers running if they’re not too costly (but we wouldn’t want to make a dent in EA’s CEO’s salary, poor soul!);
• Plan for content that doesn’t require online connection to remain playable after the servers close (as Ubisoft promised they would for the follow-up games to The Crew);
• Provide the necessary code to run one’s own server within the community, allowing those who want to keep playing online to do so on their own (see the appendix on City of Heroes below).

Those are only suggestions, and the initiative doesn’t aim at making any of those mandatory, but solely to require a solution to exist. On that topic, let’s dive into the disingenuous answer from Video Games Europe, the European lobby of video games publishers:

the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws

How gracious of them to respect the law, well deserving of praise. Good news: the initiative aims at having laws changed to fix the problem, so publishers will have their work cut out for them!

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option

This is why no one is saying that private servers should be the only solution expected of studios.

In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

This is insanity. This argument, which was repeated by unscrupulous commentators, is at best ignorant and at worst a bald-faced lie: if the law changes, companies adapt. The industry is constantly following legal or technological evolutions, why would things be different here?

As such, the publishers’ stance is completely indefensible. The initative doesn’t make revolutionary demands, and if those C-suit execs had spent a modicum of time asking their dev teams, they’d probably have been told that nothing is impossible and that solutions are definitely out there.

The demands are logical and legitimate

First of all, let’s ponder on the fact that this phenomenon of abandonned games is singular. It’s a riff on planned obsolescence that’s particularly agressive, with a perfectly functional product being destroyed remotely by the company that made it. If there are paralles to be drawn with the world of consumer electronics, where for example smartphones run out of update coverage, at least the object itself is left functional.

Under the guise of a digital economy that would get rid of the most basic rules of commerce because it’s different, this is once again pure disdain from publishers towards the audience and their clientele. As game developers, we would love nothing more than for the games we made to remain playable, but due to penny-pinching measures or a lack of care, projects end up discarded even as players wanted to keep playing the game they paid for. How would one feel about a cinema studio sneaking into one’s home to burn the Blu-Rays of their movies?

The Stop Killing Games campaign also brought back talks about video games preservation. In France, the BnF legal deposit of video games (🇫🇷). However that’s not a perfect solution: what use is it to safeguard physical versions of games if the publisher can make them useless by cutting off access to the servers it needs to run? Dozens of people devote their time to safeguarding ancient games that run on equally old hardware, but the challenge today is to face this new wave of degradations. At the turn of the millennium, the favored tech for online play was using community servers, which means many of those games can still run today even if the publisher has no more involvement with them. A quarter of a century later, the demands are merely to return to those good practices!

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March 8th is the international day for womens and gender minorities rights. It’s a celebration of historical and ongoing fights of feminist struggles. In video game, where sexual and gender based violence thrive, these fights are necessary.

Everywhere, the far right is gaining power to impose its project of reinforcing patriarchal, racist and capitalist dominations. Everywhere, it’s attacking our rights: reproductive rights, women’s rights, queer people rights, POC rights, children’s rights, workers’ rights, health and education public services. The sudden rise of fascist ideas and their constant normalisation in the public discourse directly threatens our lives.

In the United States, the Trump administration is destroying trans people rights and creating concentration camps for the undocumented immigrants. In Italy, the Meloni government removes parental recognition for lesbian couples. In Argentina, the Miley government shuts off the undersecretary’s office to the protection against gender violence. In Afghanistan, women are made prisoners in windowless rooms. In Sudan, rape is deployed as a weapon of war. In Palestine, Israel is perpetuating a genocide against the entire population. In Germany, the vast majority of men vote for a nazi party.

The video game industry is not foreign to the constant progression of the far right in the world. Players are radicalised through gamergate that tries to come back by, harrassing players, streamers or workers, in particular when they’re trans women. Our bosses don’t say anything against far right ideas, sometimes even support them!

Our bosses and companies play a crucial role in promoting and normalising fascist ideas, by protecting perpetuators of sexual and gender based violences, discriminating against and exploiting women and queer people. We, video game workers, are concerned and we won’t let this happen.

Video game workers demands are simple, and it’s mind-boggling to even have to formulate them:

• companies management must truly listen to workers, thus take seriously their representatives and respect the negociations ;
• tangible data and information collecting processes must be implemented, in order to then give them to workers representatives ;
• this second item must come with publicly providing statistical and non-personal data, in particular for salary grid implementation ;
• to prevent workers being silenced, real warning, reporting and internal investigation processes must be created and include workers’ representatives

In summary, to be clear: we demand our managers and company leaders to stop pretending to care about marginalised people only to use them as a stepping stone for the their company image, their career, or to maximise profits.

As we stated loud and clear in an assessment about our industry and our role, the fight against gender oppressions will go through unions. This statement comes from the fact that our rights are conquered only by fighting.

Unions are fighting spaces for women and marginalised people rights, whether it’s by creating choosen diversity spaces, by assisting victims of sexual and gender based violence in the workplace or in study areas, by forcing company managers to give back power to the workers, by enforcing equal pay, by assuring stable careers to precarious peoples, or even by undermining abusers authority and powers and of those who protect them.

Against the far right and macronism extreme economic liberalism , we demand dignified life for everyone, through the feminist strike!

Consequently, the Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo call for a strike in video game on saturday, the 8th of march 2025. We call for video game workers, unemployed people, retired people and students to mobilise in their companies and to join the mobilisations that will take place everywhere in France that day.

We remind that this call covers STJV purview in the private sector, and thus concerns everyone employed by a publisher, distributor, video game creator or services provider, regardless of their position or status, and regardless of the company’s domain of activoty (games, consoles, mobile, serious games, VR/AR, game engines, marketing services, streaming, derivative products, esport, online content creation, etc.), and all teachers and professors working in private schools with video game related curriculum or courses. As it’s a national strike call, no process is necessary to be on strike: it’s enough to not come to work.

The STJV has called for a general strike in the video game industry in France on February 13, 2025. After a first article explaining why we are calling for a strike, here is an article to provide details and arguments for each of our demands.

Demand 1: protecting jobs and making decision-makers accountable

Preservation of jobs, the cancellation of layoffs and the accountability of decision-makers who must first make sacrifices themselves when their companies face difficulties.

Layoffs have no justification

We know that it is not possible to avoid all of the current layoffs, but we assert that all of them are illegitimate: either because they could have been avoided, or because they are simply not necessary.

All layoffs can be avoided with proper planning and management. Layoffs are often just a tool for lazy bosses who don’t really want to manage their business. Workers are not variables to be used for financial adjustment.

Also, the necessity for layoffs has yet to be proven by companies. Yet they remain opaque about their finances, their partnerships… It is precisely this lack of transparency that, to this day, makes it impossible to justify most layoffs.

In some companies, we are dealing with managers who have wrongly concluded that layoffs are necessary, merely because they don’t even know how to work out their own financial projections.

Many bosses could fight against publishers and the groups they belong to to prevent layoffs in their companies, but they would rather fire workers and destroy their lives in the process than risk a disagreement with their employer friends.

Why do layoffs never affect bosses?

Every time companies bring up layoffs, the possibiliy of laying off bosses and directors, to lower the wages, to cancel their bonuses or advantages is “strangely” always absent from the conversation.

We have already seen bosses earning half a million euros per year telling workers they should be happy to not be on the minimum wage, and that it is necessary to fire the poorest workers. If it really is so necessary to tighten our belts, then bosses should sacrifice themselves at last!

This is all the more true given that publishers and groups have money, and bosses also have assets (luxury cars, boats, townhouses, mansions, summer houses…). Why should vulnerable workers lose their jobs to allow these bosses and shareholders to maintain their obscene lifestyles? They should put that money into saving jobs. Let them take responsibility and not brush off problems at the expense of workers. Let them finally be accountable.

Fatalism only benefits bosses

It’s not right that workers should have to pay for the mistakes made by the people who took stupid decisions without even asking for their opinion. Without being overly optimistic, being fatalistic about layoffs only benefits companies, which can then continue to increase their profits at our expense without encountering any opposition. The less we defend ourselves against layoffs, the more companies will fire workers without justification.

Demand 2: transparency about company finances and profit sharing

Companies’ full transparency about their financial situation and economic health, so that workers can plan their future, and profit sharing with workers.

We need to know what happened to our surplus value

The intentional vagueness surrounding companies’ finances and economic health and perpetuated by employers is preventing workers from planning for the future. Without knowing the state of a project’s finances, how can we guarantee our economic security and protect ourselves and our families?

Workers must have the right to check that the economic management of their company is sound, that there is no embezzlement, and that it will actually be possible to finish the ongoing productions and keep their jobs afterwards.

Profit-sharing is basic

Today, companies’ financial results only have a negative impact on workers. When a company loses money, workers, far from getting a raise, can be laid off; on the opposite, when a company sees its profits rise, wages remain unchanged. Where losses are collectivised, profits are privatised.

Yet it is thanks to the industry’s workers and their expertise that games are being released today. It is therefore legitimate to demand that good results be shared between all those involved in production, and not just those who have the means to line their pockets on the backs of others.

Demand 3: work reorganisation and the reduction of work hours

Consideration for work-related health and personal life, through work reorganisation and the reduction of work hours.

The video game industry is notorious for its deplorable working conditions

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of distressing accounts about various companies and schools teaching videogame trades, thanks in particular to press investigations on the subject. We all know the grim reality of the industry, confirmed by statistics: the video game industry is attractive and inspires many people to enter the field, yet no one stays in it for very long because of the deplorable working conditions and widespread discrimination.

We want to be proud of our games – give us the means to do so!

We don’t work in the video game industry because of the working conditions it offers. If ‘passion jobs’ are a reality and workers are enthusiastic, we can’t live on love and fresh water. To be dedicated, we must be able to maintain good health, have a social life and have the option of starting a family… Without having to sacrifice everything on the altar of work.

Let’s put an end to widespread disorganisation

Chaotic productions waste a lot of time, lead to overwork and strain work relationships… All these factors have a strong negative impact on morale and health. Who does what, and why? Efficient production means dividing up tasks clearly and transparently. This will not only benefit employees, but will also result in better games.

Achieving a better work-life balance

By reducing working hours, let’s make room for life outside the workplace. Let’s free up time for ourselves, for our loved ones and, why not, for our personal game projects.

Demand 4: direct participation of workers in decision-making

Direct participation of workers in decision-making at their companies in order to avoid management errors and control the proper use of private and public funding.

Our production, our choices

Workers are at the heart of the machine, as close as possible to the reality of what their game is. They are not only competent but also in a position to make decisions about what they are producing.

Workers always identify problems in advance, and that’s normal since they’re the ones who make the games. They are the first to come up with solutions to problems. They are not listened to only because bosses prefer to maintain their power over workers rather than respect them. It’s more important for them to protect their privileges first and foremost, even when it puts their company and everyone who works there at risk.

But in reality, allowing programmers to make decisions about programming, level designers to make decisions about level design, animators to make decisions about animation, etc…. This isn’t the idea of a bloodthirsty revolutionary, it’s a logical conclusion that becomes obvious when we understand that we’re the only ones who are capable of doing what we do.

We are the industry

Many of us in the video game industry have strong creative desires and the hope of really being able to leave a mark on the games we make. But these days, the prevailing thinking is that the only possible way to gain creative freedom is to set up a company and exploit other workers, to express our vision without giving others the freedom to express themselves on our productions. This would be going down the wrong road and allowing ourselves to be indoctrinated by a bourgeois class imposing its capitalist ideology.

Creativity must be accessible to everyone, not just to a minority with sufficient connections and financial means to impose their creative vision as the only possible one. If we want diverse games that tell stories from different backgrounds and experiences, we need to give creative people from all walks of life the chance to create their own games.

The STJV has called for a general strike in the video game industry in France on February 13, 2025. This article addresses a few common questions and explains why we have chosen to go on strike.

Why a strike and not some other action?

Employers have absolute power in the workplace. In practice, the law gives them the right to reject every demand, within a certain framework and as long as they follow the legal procedures. Furthermore, employees are subject to rules laid down by companies, which can punish them for many things, effectively preventing them from speaking out.

For years now, the STJV and other unions active in the industry have been making regular demands to employers to improve the industry and its working conditions. So far, employers have consistently rejected these demands out of hand, without even bothering to comply with the law. As of today, we have only obtained improvements when our demands were backed up by strike action.

The STJV is not calling for a strike for the sake of it, or for the sake of folklore, but because striking is the only genuinely legal and protected way of expressing our discontent and making demands of our bosses, and it works.

A strike is a total stoppage of work for a given period, a way of refusing to continue producing value for our bosses until they agree to our demands.

Why only one day?

For a strike to work reliably in a company, it is necessary to strike over the long term so that the strike costs the company more than the demands made by workers.

The strike on February 13 is not aimed at a specific company but at all companies in the industry. The purpose of the general strike on February 13 is to warn of the mortal danger hanging over the video game industry in France, and to demand the changes necessary to avoid this.

We are therefore calling for a single day of national strike action to come together and demonstrate the will of all workers, past, present and future, not to let our industry die without reaction.

We leave it to the workers to transform this national movement into local actions wherever necessary to defend their rights. The STJV is ready to provide support.

Who can participate?

For salaried workers, the call covers companies involved in publishing, distribution, services and/or creation for video games, whatever the company’s field of activity (games, consoles, mobile, serious games, VR/AR, game engines, marketing services, streaming, derivative products, esports, online content creation, etc.), as well as all teachers working in private education linked to video games.

But everyone can take part in the strike, not just salaried workers. Because workers are all the people who depend, depended or will depend on work to live, not just salaried workers.

Student ? You can come and defend your future working conditions and make sure you will have a job when you graduate, and after.

Unemployed ? Let’s improve the industry so that you can have the possibility of finding a job quickly, under good conditions, and to ensure that you can keep it for as long as you want.

Freelancer as a form of undeclared work ? We must fight to ensure that the industry no longer resorts to this illegal practice and that you regain your rights as an employee.

Voluntary freelancer ? If nothing changes and the industry collapses, you will no longer have enough customers to make a living.

Former worker of the video game industry, whether by choice or necessity ? Come and support the industry you left so that the problems you encountered there don’t happen again.

Gamer ? At the current rate, if nothing changes, the quality of games will only deteriorate.

Supporter outside of the video game industry ? Solidarity between workers is what enables everyone to gain new rights. The STJV is also fighting to get video game workers to support the fights in other industries.

How to get involved?

We have a guide to striking as an employee in a private company: The right to strike in private companies – STJV

Generally speaking, the most important thing is to attend the rallies and events that will be organised in your area on February 13. We will organise a count of participants at the strike and rallies to the best of our ability.

If you don’t know if something is being organised where you live, don’t hesitate to ask!

If nothing is planned in your area yet, try to organise something! Even getting together with a few workers for a coffee on February 13 is an important action. Let’s take advantage of this day to get together, discuss our work and what we could do to improve it.

Why now?

As mentioned earlier, workers have been trying for years to improve video game production and working conditions, and have been facing blockages. All these years, workers have anticipated all the problems encountered, have warned their management, and have even proposed realistic solutions to avoid them.

Today, the video game industry is in a critical state, threatening not only our jobs but the existence of the industry itself. We know there are still more disasters to come, to which executives are turning a blind eye. We cannot wait until the last second, on the brink of the abyss, to take action.

We are calling for a strike now as a means to count ourselves among workers, to acknowledge that we are not alone, and to send a strong message of unity, not only to our bosses but also to ourselves. Worker unity is the only force that will bring about the necessary changes.

We will discuss our demands in future articles.

Drawing on its years of experience as the majority union in the French video games industry, the STJV was able to draw up an assessment of the industry, which has become a corporate circus. We have drawn up an action plan so that we, the video game workers, can make lasting improvements to our industry.

To demand that the industry finally becomes mature and stable, for workers to benefit from dignified working conditions, and to have confidence in the future, the STJV is calling all workers and students to take part in a general strike of the video game industry on February the 13th, 2025.

We demand:

1. Preservation of jobs, the cancellation of layoffs and the accountability of decision-makers who must first make sacrifices themselves when their companies face difficulties.
2. Companies’ full transparency about their financial situation and economic health, so that workers can plan their future, and profit sharing with workers.
3. Consideration for work-related health and personal life, through work reorganisation and the reduction of work hours.
4. Direct participation of workers in decision-making at their companies in order to avoid management errors and control the proper use of private and public funding.

These demands are highly practical, and come in response to decades of corporate mismanagement, opacity and denial of workers’ suffering. For example, at the time this call is published, workers at Don’t Nod are on strike against a layoff plan caused by years of mismanagement, and unheeded workers’ alerts. Don’t hesitate to support their strike fund.

Although our bosses systematically ignore polite requests, workers can count on their numbers and the solidarity that binds them together. We need to organise everywhere. We encourage everyone to meet their union representatives to talk about the situation, to contact us, to organise actions and discussions in their own areas, and to go together to the rallies that will be organised on 13 February.

This call covers the STJV’s field of action in the private sector, and therefore applies to any person employed by a video game publishing, distribution, services and/or creation company – whatever their position or status and whatever their company’s area of activity (games, consoles, mobile, serious games, VR/AR, game engines, marketing services, streaming, derivative products, esports, online content creation, etc.) – as well as to all teachers working in private schools in video game-related courses. As this is a national strike call, no action is necessary to go on strike: just don’t go to work.

If you want to reuse our GG25 visuals, we produced a press kit: https://cloud.stjv.fr/s/FBSYLQ7QZcqMLcx