A few days ago, the French game publisher Microids, which produces many licensed games such as the upcoming new entry in the Syberia series, announced a partnership with the Puy du Fou to produce a video game about this theme park. We denounce this partnership and oppose the existence of such a game, which we think would set a dangerous precedent in our industry by normalising the presence of a brand with strong links to the far right and which actively participates in nationalist propaganda.

While the park presents a good-natured, family-friendly image, it is important to look at the content of its shows. Based on the concept of the national narrative, which postulates that the history of a country has been a continuous line for thousands of years, as if it had always existed, they praise and magnify pre-revolutionary, monarchist and feudal “France”. Their principal and most famous show, the Cinescénie, presents a uniform vision of history, erasing religious minorities and completely obscuring the relationships of economic and social domination between nobles and peasants. Their Manichean vision of history reaches its climax when they evoke the French Revolution, presented in a pure revisionist manner as a totalitarian and barbaric event against which the royalist Vendéens bravely defended themselves.

This backward-looking vision, which opposes monarchy and feudalism, presented as a happy and naive period of history, and the French Revolution, presented as dark and as the cause of a “French decline”, is dangerous. Through its counter-revolutionary discourse, it propagates nationalist ideas that run counter to social achievements and liberties, and promotes an unequal society.

These criticisms do not come from a vacuum, and are based on the work and denunciations of numerous historians and political figures. For those who want to go further, we can cite (all subsequent links are in French) Jean-Clément Martin and Charles Suaud, Michel Vovelle or this article by Guillaume Mazeau.

This situation is less surprising when one looks at the family that created and runs the Puy du Fou. The park is the brainchild of Philippe de Villiers, a far-right political figure close to Catholic fundamentalist circles, who himself acknowledged the park’s militant significance in an interview for the now-defunct magazine France, a far-right publication created by Damien Rieu (a right-wing Identitaire figure and a candidate for the Rassemblement National): “Through my books or my Puy du Fou, I have passed on many more ideas than by remaining the umpteenth crayfish in the basin “ [remarks reported by Libération here] .

His links with the international far right have led him to try to open similar parks in Russia and occupied Crimea, with the personal support of Vladimir Putin and Konstantin Malofeev, a royalist and religious fundamentalist activist close to the Russian president who is accused of having personally funded pro-Russia armed groups in Ukraine. If this were not enough, the Puy du Fou also houses an off-contract school with a traditionalist and militarist organisation, and finances an anti-abortion foundation linked to the anti-LGBT organisation “Manif pour tous”.

We can only deplore the association of Microids with such an organisation, which in our opinion would only help the Puy du Fou to extend its media presence, allowing it to spread its propaganda more widely. The planned release of the game in the spring of 2022 would also make the game’s communication campaign coincide with the campaign for the French presidential elections, which does not help. We ask Microids to reconsider this partnership.

Details added after the publication of our article: the judgement dismissed all Quantic Dream’s claims, against Médiapart AND against Le Monde, acknowledging the quality of the journalists’ work in both publications. Guillaume de Fondaumière and David de Gruttola (known as David Cage) lost against Médiapart and won, as individuals, against Le Monde, because the newspaper did not produce the testimonies it had in order to protect victims.

Last June, the STJV testified in court in favor of journalists from Médiapart and Le Monde, against accusations of libel from Quantic Dream. Our presence met with several of our interests. First, to help journalists whose job to keep the public informed about, and make visible, the problems of our industries and our society in general, was threatened by what we consider to be a SLAPP suit. Second, to defend workers’ freedom to speak about their working conditions, which is vital.

Today, September 9th 2021, we learned, with great pleasure, that Médiapart won against Quantic Dream, the court having dismissed their libel accusations. The French justice system recognised the seriousness and the good faith of the journalists’ work. However Quantic Dream, in its violent initiative to clean-up its public image, has sadly managed to get the court to recognise a case of libel by Le Monde against them. We do not yet know how the court motivated that decision, but it diminishes the freedom of speech and voices of victims of sexism, sexual harassment and, in general, awful working conditions, to the benefit of bosses who use all their resources to silence all accusation.

We want to share our analyses on what came up during the trial, and on its outcome. These feedbacks come from our representative in court, and from the minutes of the hearings.

Hyperpersonalisation of problems

We notice that most of Quantic Dream’s arguments actually fall back to personal matters (“I never saw any shocking photomontage before the affair”, “I don’t understand these articles, everything is fine to me”, “I’m struggling to forgive”, “I barely know Canard PC, this is why we don’t sue them”, “I only have to answer to justice, the tax authorities [and other insitutions]”, …), in particular when the studio’s bosses fiercely persist in thinking the only reason a journalist would want to write an article accusing them of maintaining a toxic work culture would be a personal enmity.

Although personal sympathies can contribute to problems inside companies, it goes without saying that not everything has to do with it. Someone fighting to enforce their rights doesn’t necessarily hold a personal grudge against their boss. Before anything else, it is about enforcing unfulfilled commitments. Likewise, the STJV, as a union, doesn’t hold personal grudges : when we defend someone against their employer, we do it because the respect of everyone’s rights is a collective matter.

The appalling ignorance of bosses about everything which falls out of their realm

One of the outstanding moments of the trial was when Quantic Dream’s lawyer asked our representative : « Did you do any work for Médiapart [by explaining journalists the situation of the industry, and giving them contacts] ? ». We don’t have to shy away from it : the answer is yes. We constantly provide work, made possible by pooling the resources of volunteer workers, for video game workers. We do not need journalists to be complacent, we only need to tell them about the realities in our field, which we know quite well.

Conspiracy theories are not always where we think they are

From this hyperpersonalisation and ignorance to third-rate conspiracy theories, there is only a short step, crossed with ease here. Quantic Dream’s obsession with talking about the alleged damages caused by these articles reveals an out-of-touch vision of the world, where everything is owed to David de Gruttola and Guillaume Juppin de Fondaumière. And the term conspiracy is not misused here: it is indeed the same mechanism of rejection of reality that leads these wealthy and extremely privileged people to look for fictional tormentors, or to try to erase all criticism, even legitimate and sourced

Lessons from the judgment

The court recognised the good faith and seriousness of the work done by the Médiapart’s journalists. Let’s remind right away that in this case, justice does not pronounce on the veracity of the content of the articles, in one way or the other. Quantic Dream’s management would therefore do well to avoid claiming to be cleared of all suspicions, even though its claims have been dismissed. This ruling confirms that the work of the journalists in this case was legitimate, and carried out under all the conditions of professionalism and prudence required. It should also be noted that this judgment recognises the absence of personal animosity, which was central to the accusation brought by Quantic Dream. It is now high time for Quantic Dream’s management to put an end to its communication and intimidation campaign.

We are shocked by Le Monde’s conviction, about which we will need more information to understand the judgment, as the accusations of personal grudges ringed very hollow to us. We will communicate further abouth this judgment at a later date.

In this case, as in the vast majority of those in which we assist workers in court, testimonies and public statements are not actions taken lightly. In this case, as in so many others, it is simply the last resort for people who have been ignored or silenced. Now more than ever, the STJV is determined to reduce the imbalance of resources inherent in conflicts between employees and employers, by supporting those who have to defend themselves against companies that use all their wealth to hide their wrongdoings rather than to solve existing problems, by talking to journalists who are conducting these comprehensive and detailed investigations, and by defending the rights of each and every one of us by testifying in court.

Content Warning: In the articles presented here, we will discuss situations of abuse, harassment, assault, suicide, etc. which may be violent to read for those who have been subjected to such situations.

The experiences of our STJV comrades, the testimonies and feedback that the union has received directly, through alumni networks and our teacher colleagues, make it clear that the video game education sector, as a whole and in a systemic way, is harmful and destroys lives.

A public call for testimonies on students conditions (article in French) the STJV launched in early 2020 allowed us to confirm that the problem is much more widespread and, above all, much more serious than we originally thought. At the time of publication, we have collected around sixty testimonies concerning more than 30 schools, including the best known schools in France.

The suicide of a student at LISAA in December 2020 (article in French), followed by an internal repression by the school to cover up the event, had pushed us to accelerate our efforts to inform the public about this situation, and in particular to contact journalists to alert them to these issues. Thanks to our contact and based first on the corpus of testimonies at our disposal, they were able to launch their own investigations to confirm our information and then publish a series of articles on video game schools in Libération and Gamekult (links at the end of the press release) mid-April 2021.

The cool aspect of video game production, which industry companies already use to keep salaries and working conditions down, is also exploited by schools who take advantage of it to attract more and more young people ready to pay huge sums of money to try to make it their profession.

As everywhere else, as in the rest of the video game industry, mechanisms of economic, hierarchical, sexist, racist and ableist domination, as well as active repression from school managements, tend to prevent any improvement of the situation and to reduce (at least in appearance) the capacity for action of those who want this improvement.

These mechanisms also contribute to emphasizing inequalities and discriminations throughout the industry. Starting at the admission to schools with discriminatory selection processes and prohibitive prices, this only becomes more pronounced during the course of studies with every possible means: the near impossibility of having a job alongside classes due to the heavy workload, the scarcity and mismanagement of work-study programs, the unequal access to equipment, the pressure to do internships in any given city, without pay, etc. The diversity problems of the video game industry begin directly during studies.

The vast majority of the problems we have seen are caused by the commodification of education and students. Private schools remain above all businesses: they are therefore subject to profitability imperatives. This profitability has more or less importance depending on who owns the school, with in the worst cases groups or investment funds that treat schools only as cash cows whose profitability must always increase at the expense of workers and students. Even the best intentioned managements (when they are!) cannot escape this reality imposed by the capitalist organisation of the economy.

After nearly 2 years of work within the STJV, we come back in this lengthy report to the problems found in video game schools, the things to watch out for when it comes to studying video games, and what we can do and demand to prevent entire generations of people interested in our industry from continuing to be bled dry every year. We will only talk about video game schools here because that’s our sector and that’s where we have the most information, but with few exceptions, all of this applies to all of private higher education.

The size of this dossier means that we have to publish it in segments. We will publish sub-sections regularly, which will be accessible via the links below.

Part 1 – State of play

1. Studying conditions are often appalling
2. Students are being exploited for the benefit of schools’ image
3. Educational standards are highly questionable
4. Schools do not make students ready for entering the labour market at all
5. These conditions lead to the reproduction of the industry’s problems
6. Schools are serving the industry, not their students

Following our discussions with teachers and students, and considering the testimonies we received, we realised that these problems were not just common, but systemic. If at the beginning of our investigations we thought that the less known a school was, the more it tolerated abuses, we had to face the facts: all schools and curricula are affected.

It remains impossible for us, at this time, to name a private school or training programme that has not shown serious dysfunctions in recent years. One particularly chilling point is that we have heard of situations of harassment or outright sexual assault targeting female students in all the schools and programmes on which we have collected testimonies.

While it can be said that private education seems to be more affected overall than public education, this does not mean that the public sector is exempt from problems. Some of the lesser-known public programmes are organised in the same way as the private sector and, although they may be different, power struggles exist everywhere, even in the most prestigious public schools.

In most cases these problems emerge and persist because of the inaction of school administrations and/or the financial groups that own them. They are unwilling to give themselves the means to protect students because of nepotism, opportunism, economic concerns, lack of empathy, or ignorance of the situation of their students.

Part 2 – Paths forward

The problems and discriminations present at the general society level can therefore be found in video game education, concentrated in a series of socially homogenous spaces creating an omerta, where all victims’ voices and attempts to fight back are harshly suppressed. If students environments are prone to this, it is not only because of its specificities. The causes of these terrible situations have the same roots as those found in work environments in general.

They are first of all economic: companies’ financial motivations, which are impossible to avoid under a capitalist economic system, make their profitability prevail over the living conditions of students. This problem has been reinforced in recent years by the creation of monopolies in private higher education, with increasingly large investment groups absorbing independent schools and smaller groups. Not coincidentally, this phenomenon also exists in the video game and many other industries.

These economic motivations have a direct impact on the social dimension of these schools, where power disputes and the forceful enforcement of hierarchical relationships are more than common. A genuine economic domination is exerted on professors and students.

The problems described in the first part and their causes are well known to workers’ and students’ organisations, who have been fighting against them for centuries, but also to the companies themselves, which know how to hide or exploit them when it is to their advantage, even if some of them seem to be trying recently to provide actual solutions.

The frequency and severity of problems encountered locally depends on a range of factors, and the responses from schools vary greatly. Some of them are not designed to help students at all, and others, although well-intentioned and sometimes well-designed, completely miss their targets, take up resources that would be better spent elsewhere, or have harmful side-effects.

We will now look at the solutions proposed by these different actors, discuss their relevance, outline those that seem most appropriate, and consider what we can do and demand to prevent entire generations of people interested in our industry from being bled dry each year.

1. Many suggested solutions are dead ends or lies
2. In order to move forward, changes must take place at all levels
   1. In the educational content
   2. TBA
   3. TBA
   4. TBA

The report will be made available as a .pdf and .epub once fully published.

The Libération and Gamekult articles we were talking about in the introduction are available, in French, here :

• Libération 1/3 – Ecoles de jeu vidéo : «Je ne veux plus des humains, je veux des zombies»
• Libération 2/3 – Ecoles de jeu vidéo : «Tu ne peux pas gérer une team, t’es une femme»
• Libération 3/3 – Ecoles de jeu vidéo : «Il y a un amateurisme dingue»
• Gamekult 1/3 – Culture du crunch et détresse étudiante au sein des écoles de jeu vidéo : « Je ne sais toujours pas comment j’ai traversé ça »
• Gamekult 2/3 – Sexisme, harcèlement et « bro culture » au sein des écoles de jeu vidéo : « Moi, je me fais pas diriger par une fille »
• Gamekult 3/3 – Prédation des étudiants, précarisation enseignante et marché saturé : « On avait le sentiment d’être face à une pompe à fric »

Others have laid down very clearly the basic problems posed by the government’s implementation of the “health pass”: see in particular this article (🇫🇷) , or the communiqués of the CGT (🇫🇷) , the Union Solidaires (🇫🇷) and the Union Communiste Libertaire (🇫🇷) . Beyond the measures themselves, this is yet another example of an unacceptable method of governance which consists in announcing new rules without debate, in making MPs vote without negotiation and in imposing measures without justification, destroying one of the foundations of democracy: separation of powers.

It would be a good idea for the government to review its justifications because, behind its reassuring speeches on the health situation, there are real problems and even profound inconsistencies. Its eagerness to return to “normalcy”, driven as it often is by electoral ambitions, leads it to lie by implying that the vaccine is some kind of magic wand that will put an end to the epidemic for vaccinated people.

While the benefits of vaccination (significant reduction of risks for oneself (🇫🇷) and others (🇫🇷) , and ultimately participation in the eradication of the virus) are immense and indisputable, it does not provide 100% protection and does not entirely prevent people from infecting themselves or others. The vaccine is therefore not an individual solution, but a collective one.

This is why it is important that as many of us as possible get vaccinated, not to follow the government in its individualistic ideology but for the sake of everyone’s health. The government’s campaign is full of lies and disproportionately favours the wealthy, like all its policies. Let us act autonomously to build a vaccine coverage capable of protecting all workers!

Let us not forget either that behind this calamitous management of the pandemic and the vaccination campaign, the government intends to relaunch reforms just as harmful for workers, in particular on the topic of unemployment benefits and pensions. It is out of the question that after having done less than the bare minimum in managing the pandemic, Emmanuel Macron should impose these unfair, unjustified and massively rejected reforms.

Faced with the government’s lack of clarity (for example, when it was announced with great fanfare that employees without a health pass could be dismissed (🇫🇷) , although this has fortunately been withdrawn from the law that has been passed), the STJV will continue to help and protect workers who need it.

In the current context, this means sticking to the following facts (in addition to what we already said at the beginning of the summer):

• Remote work remains a practical and effective solution, proven by more than a year of health crisis. The video game industry as a whole is very conducive to working from home. Video game companies must continue to use it until the health situation really allows for a relaxation of the measures taken.

• The application of preventive measures (disinfecting and ventilating offices, social distancing, wearing chirurgical masks at all time during working hours) is vital and mandatory whenever being present at the office is necessary. Minimum air renewal can be measured (with CO2 sensors) and, in poorly or not ventilated spaces, air filtering devices (HEPA norm) can be installed and regularly changed to lower the risk of transmission.

• The possibility for companies to suspend a contract for being unable to present a “health pass” for workers in a place where it is required (and therefore NOT in companies producing video games!) is an aberration, all the more so as the current vaccination rate does not allow everyone to be vaccinated on the day the health pass comes into force. We will firmly oppose any employer attempting to use this measure, especially when other solutions exist. The suspension of salaries is a brutal and unacceptable sanction, and should simply be banned.

• The parliament has finally ratified, in article 17 of the voted law (🇫🇷), the right for employees to go and get vaccinated during working hours, without any deduction from salaries or payed holidays. There is therefore no longer any excuse for this, and we will be uncompromising with any company trying to oppose the exercise of this right.

In any case, the STJV will continue to monitor the implementation of government measures and the general attitude of companies in the sector. We are always available to those who need our help or have questions about their situation or that of their company. Please do not hesitate to contact us at

A few months ago, we raised awareness about the suicide of a student in the Animation section of the Institut Supérieur d’Art Appliqué (LISAA) in Paris. Pheanith Hannuna had taken his own life after being the victim of harassment by other students of his year. LISAA’s management not only failed to protect him, despite being alerted by his family, but even ended up suggesting, shortly before his death, that he was at fault for his own harassment. In the aftermath, the school unlawfully fired a teacher who sought to find solutions to the students’ problems to avoid a repetition of this kind of situation, and even went so far as to prevent students and teachers from discussing recent articles about the school. More information in our press release (in French).

It is therefore with shock, and a very strong disgust, that we discovered that Catherine Constant-Grisolet, director of the Animation and Video Games sections of LISAA, and therefore one of the people who was responsible for Pheanith’s safety, had been chosen to moderate a panel on “the efforts” of the Réseau des Écoles du Cinéma d’Animation (RECA) to fight against student unhappiness as part of the International Animation Film Market at the Annecy festival. She was singled out in several testimonies from LISAA students and teachers as one of those responsible for the bad studying conditions in this school.

There is little doubt about her lack of consideration for the students, as can be seen in testimonies relayed by Gamekult in their article Sexisme, harcèlement et « bro culture » au sein des écoles de jeu vidéo : « Moi, je me fais pas diriger par une fille »:

“We received an abject statement from the director: it lacked empathy and was really badly written. (…) After the somewhat clumsy management of the school on this subject, I noticed that we had not received any instructions from the educational leadership to ensure the well-being of the students in such a situation and on what to tell them, quite simply.”

“The director of studies gathered all the Game classes before receiving the official press release from the school, the teaching staff was not invited (…) When we found out, we were all very shocked at what happened, but the worst part was the director’s surreal communication, it looked like a friendly Twitch stream with jokes. In particular, she imitated the sound of the silencer, as in the film “Les Tontons Flingueurs”, by referring to the fact of shooting oneself in the head. That’s when several people left, it was extremely disrespectful. She even laughed in front of the camera. “

This article from French magazine Capital also points out LISAA’s choice to completely ignore the grieving family:

Neither of the education officials came forward to offer condolences to the family.

No LISAA representative was present at the funeral.

The presence of Catherine Constant-Grisolet as moderator of this panel, combined with internal repression, and the silence of the school following the publication of the articles and our press release, demonstrates LISAA’s desire to cover up the suicide of one of its students… Even though there are 2 ongoing legal proceedings (1 before the conseil de prud’hommes [employee claims court], 1 in criminal court).

In this context, her participation questions the sincerity of RECA’s efforts, since either they weren’t aware of what happened at LISAA (which would be quite worrying), or they were and knowingly chose to ignore this state of affairs to become complicit in the management of this school.

While it is more important than ever to talk about studying conditions issues in animation, video games and beyond, it is unacceptable that these discussions would be led by the people responsible for these issues. This kind of discussion must involve current and past students, as is the case here in all fairness, and people representing and defending them (unions, associations, etc.). School officials are part of the problem, they can’t expect to be welcomed with open arms

The STJV, which has been working since December with various actors and victims at LISAA, denounces the presence of Catherine Constant-Grisolet at this panel. It is a slap in the face of any student who’s suffering from the conditions of their studies and the inaction of their leadership. We’re asking organizers of the Annecy festival to correct what we hope was a mistake made in good faith, for the sake of the Animation students of RECA.

This statement was written by French Ubisoft employees, including the STJV sections at Ubisoft Annecy, Ubisoft Montpellier and Ubisoft Paris, and adresses the situations we face in our day-to-day lives. While our conclusions may not apply to everyone within the company (due to legal differences between countries, for example), we believe that the principles described here remain valid and would be happy to get in touch with workers leading similar struggles outside of France.

To our fellow workers at Ubisoft,

As you surely know, we just went through the performance reviews and wage raises period, which comes with its share of questions. Since we know this situation all too well, the STJV members who work at Ubisoft have put together their thoughts and observations, and we wish to share them with you.

Let’s start with some analysis. Compensation policy is a complex topic, and to us it seems that Ubisoft top management is counting on diffusion of responsibility to skirt criticism. The process as it is presented to us is that HQ negotiates a remuneration budget with local HR, who then attribute it to projects. Managers would then attribute raises to their teams based on all that.

This process makes it so no one can really be held accountable for the decisions. HQ can explain that local HR didn’t argue their case well, local HR can explain that HQ didn’t allocate a good enough budget, managers can explain that HR didn’t give them any leeway…At the end of the day, the buck gets passed endlessly, and an individual’s wage is presented as an established fact, as if nothing could be done about it.

Beyond the smoke and mirrors, we reject the explicit link between one’s performance review and their raise. This may seem counter-intuitive: if someone makes efforts and improves their professional skills, shouldn’t they be rewarded? And yet, we believe that this causes two major problems.

• First, this doesn’t solve the inequalities that are created at hiring level, arising from discrimination, from circumstances that make it so some local Ubisoft entities can afford to hire at a higher wage than others, or other elements that shouldn’t have such an impact.
  Raises are proportional to the current salary and only deepen existing inequalities : we want to center the debate on the value of wages.
• Moreover, since the total amount of raises is capped, creating a zero-sum game where managers have to apply evaluation “quotas” and justify (sometimes poorly) underrated performances. As if their teams could never have globally overperformed over the past year.

It is also important to point out that even with all of the decorum surrounding performance reviews, the standards used to evaluate us aren’t always easy to track or anticipate. Evaluation criteria are vague at best, and pre-requisites for seniority or position progression never made explicit. This only serves to reinforce a feeling of arbitrariness that frustrates everyone in the company, to the notable exception of the top management that can justify any of their decisions by leveraging this vagueness.

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Thus, we make the following demands :

• Individual performance reviews should no longer be directly tied to wages. Compensation is limited by budgets which are, by definition, finite, whereas a whole team (or even a whole entity within the group) could very well have met and even exceeded expectations.
  • It follows that evaluations should no longer be limited by quotas.
  • Performance reviews should only be established by someone’s direct manager. That some of us are evaluated by their higher hierarchy, or that HR would be able to modify a manager’s assessment, is abnormal. Decorrelating wages and evaluation would allow the latter to be used for its original purpose as a tool of personal progression.
  • Finally, performance reviews should come with training opportunities, in order to allow everyone to get better at their jobs and keep sharpening their skills.
    
• Seniority level progression conditions should be made explicit. This kind of acknowledgement is very important in our industry, and it is unacceptable that some may be left out on that front despite having good reviews.
  • More precisely, not only should the expected skills to obtain a given seniority level be made clear, the means through which to nurture said skills and have them acknowledged at Ubisoft should also be clearer.
  • It is certain that, once the previous need has been met, some people will find themselves with a job title that does not match their actual skills. Such discrepancies would have to be corrected through the appropriate promotions.
    
• We want equal pay for equal work. This requires the following:
  • Obviously, we oppose any kind of discrimination in salary. Particularly, no one should ever be paid less for belonging to a marginalized group (as the law already forbids!).
  • Transparency in wages is vital. HR have adopted a very ambiguous stance: they pretend that there is no salary guidance grid and explain that wages are left to individual negotiations, but through opacity and rigidity make it so most of those demands are not met. Who stands to gain from this misdirection?
    
• An impartial process must be created to guarantee accountability in case of dispute. We must make sure that each worker is fairly compensated for the value they create for Ubisoft (thus making it one of the leaders in the market), and that an end is put to all arbitrary and discriminatory practices.
  • Any employee should be able to request to be reevaluated by a neutral third party, based on criteria now made explicit and a transparent salary grid.
  • Outside of the control of local direction and HR.

Ubisoft is a very wealthy company, and is not shy about it. This makes any situation where employees face precariousness unacceptable. Our statement establishes our guidelines on this topic for future actions.

We invite everyone who works at Ubisoft to contact us if you want to join our efforts, or discuss this topics with us. In particular, we invite all Ubisoft employees who have noticed discrepancies or discriminations against them during the last review period to contact their union representatives or to write us directly at . The STJV stands ready to defend anyone who needs our help within the industry, whether unionized or not. We are stronger together!

Those who have been following political news closely in the past few years have been able to witness French politics’ shift toward the right. For a few years now, “anti-terrorists” laws have been piling up, using the (legitimate) fear caused by terrorist attacks to reduce everyone’s rights, attack the justice system and pave the way for an authoritarian regime. This slippery slope recently accelerated, with a government adopting the vocabulary and ideas of the far-right, appointing ministers close to royalist, antisemitic organisations and accused of rape, and answering to every social problem with the only mean left according to their policies in favor of the rich : brute force.

As a consequence, many fascist organisations are coming out in the open, multiplying violent attacks agains leftist activists and organisations, and against democratic institutions (invasion of the Occitanie regional parliament, threats against elected officials). Corporatist police “unions” are multiplying actions, most of the time illegal ones, to explicitly ask for the abolition of the constitution and the declaration of the human rights, in order to satisfy their fascist thirst for violence. Army officers, backed by politicians and newspapers, are publicly calling for a military coup explicitly targeting muslims and the politcal left. All of this is happening with no consequences for the people involved and no reaction from the french presidential cabinet, on the contrary they are getting support from political and media figures.

The role of video games in the right-wing radicalisation of society is not negligible. Video games, currently one of the main media, have notably been corrupted by their links with armies and weapon dealers since the beginning of their existence. These organisations have been financing and using games to push their nationalist propaganda, “sell” imperialist wars to the public and normalise their violence. If representation in video games is progressing the right way, although too slowly and too shyly, the messages of popular games are almost always problematic and actively contribute to discriminations and the fascist atmosphere.

The voluntary subordination, because of capitalist motives, of a part of the industry to a fringe of the online far-right stemming from the gamergate, and to authoritarian governments’ interests is still weighing heavily on our industry. As video game workers our role in the rise of the far-right is sadly not trivial, but we can act collectively to fight against it and eventually tip the scales. This will be done, in part, by taking back power over our productions, and therefore by getting more democracy at our workplaces.

The worrying political atmosphere we live in must push us to stay active, united, and to join with other leftist organisations to put a stop the the far-right. Regreting the fact that anti-racist organisations, which have been fighting police violence and islamophobia for decades, haven’t been included from the start, and disagreeing with the inclusion of a police union, the STJV nonetheless, considering the urgency of the situation, joins the call for liberty and against far-right ideas co-signed by many political organistions, unions and media. We are inviting everyone to join the protests taking place all around France on June 12th.

Just like in June last year or last September, we can see looming in the near future a disorganised situation of workers coming back to offices caused, among other things, by blurry government guidelines.

If the Covid-19 pandemic seems to be slowly, but surely, winding down in France, the virus is still circulating and people are still dying from this disease every day. Worse yet, if we look at the United Kingdom, a country where the number of Covid cases fell down as well, we see that recently it started to rise again because of new variants, making epidemiologists worried. The main takeaway from 2020 is that we need to avoid rushed decisions !

This is, however, what we are witnessing at several video game companies. The eagerness of some french bosses to make workers come back to their offices is shameful. It reveals, at best, a hasty and simplistic understanding of the situation, and at worst a disgusting priorisation of hypothetical profits and a will to exert power over workers. Whatever the reason, it jeopardizes the health not only of video game workers but the population in general.

It is natural and understandable that many of us are eager to come back to a “normal” life. After more than one year of lockdowns, curfews and various other restrictions, who wouldn’t want to blow off steam ? But if we really want to control the pandemic, to prevent as many deaths as possible and to finally allow healthcare workers to breathe, then it would be irresponsible to not make the return to our “old habits” slow and gradual.

The STJV is firmly advising all video game companies to :

• Let workers choose, without justification, between working from home, at the office or any solution in between, at least through the summer and then depending on the epidemic situation ;
• Keep all the required sanitary measures in place, in particular by setting a maximum threshold of people present, to limit contaminations at work as much as possible ;
• Allow workers to get vaccinated during work hours, without penalties and therefore without forcing them to use time off and holidays, to remove as many obstacles to this vaccination as possible.

The STJV will keep watch over the following events, and especially over the video game industry’s companies’ behaviour. We are always available for anyone who may need our help, or who would have questions about their company situation or their own. Don’t hesitate to contact us at

While Activision-Blizzard recorded a turnover of 3.6 billion US dollars over the first two quarters of 2020, which included 913 million dollars coming directly from Blizzard games, the group recently announced a new layoff plan at Blizzard France, intending to close its Versailles offices and ending all activity in France without any economical reason.

This plan comes after Activision-Blizzard repeatedly denied any intention to close its French branch after earlier layoffs in 2019. A great number of employees are now at risk of finding themselves without a job in a particularly precarious economical and social context, in the middle of a health crisis, even though they kept working relentlessly through the lockdowns and beyond.

As the CGT, SPECIS-UNSA and CFE-CGC unions at Blizzard France point out, allegations of maintaining competitivity actually hide a tax avoidance scheme, which doesn’t take into account any human issues.

Solidaires Informatique and the STJV maintain their categorical opposition to any layoff, whatever their motive.

We stand in solidarity with the workers at Blizzard France and extend our full support toward any action they will take against these wrongful layoffs.

The call to strike issued by the unions at Blizzard France on October 13th is available here :

Waves of accusations of sexism, harassment, LGBTphobia and other forms of discriminations in our industry keep repeating and, even though their scale increases, the process stays unchanged. A few people raise their voice, putting their careers, financial stability, and mental health at risk. This in turn liberates others and motivates them to speak up as well. A few particularly toxic predators become the public face of the problem. Companies react by silencing the ensuing media storm and/or by firing the problematic persons (when they didn’t quit by themselves), without really changing their internal structure. At the end of the day, studios and aggressors suffer no real consequences, especially from a legal standpoint.

Multiple oppressions

It is noticeably clear that there are mechanisms in place to protect predators in the video games industry, just like in other sectors. Those lead to complete impunity for the people at the top of the chain. Conversely, younger and more precarious people form the bulk of the industry’s workers, yet they are seen as dispensable, which heightens their vulnerability and makes it virtually impossible for them to defend themselves from aggressions.

This is compounded by the low proportion of women in studios (in France, on average, they make up about 14% of the video game industry’s workforce), the culture of crunch and secrecy, as well as the industry’s employment pressure (“You’re lucky to have this job, if we need to replace you we’ll find 10 other people who are willing to”), all of which makes it harder for workers to oppose sexism. Not only are these elements fundamentally unbearable, they also worsen the violence enacted upon women and minorities. In a society where social roles unfortunately remain gendered and where women are still burdened with most of the day-to-day tasks, these industry practices put an overwhelming pressure on said women, which makes them even more likely to stay silent. The stakes, and therefore the risks, are much higher for people who are not men.

A toxic culture reinforced by its structural aspects

We believe the French video games industry is just like in other countries, and we know its structure does not encourage victims of harassment or sexual aggressions to speak up nor report these behaviours. The STJV regularly receives reports and grievances, by mail or through conversations, about working conditions and the everyday life within companies in general, and about sexism and sexual harassment in particular. Yet it is very rare for this kind of affair to be made public. This omerta is partly due to the concentration of power in the hands of employers and their organisations.

One can find the same kind of institutions, employer organisations, at the helm of every big industry event in France: the SNJV is behind the Gamecamp and the Pégases ; Capital Games organises IndieCade Europe and Game Connection Europe ; the SELL manages the Paris Games Week, etc. These spaces meant for showcasing your work, meeting other people from the industry and exchanging with them, are therefore managed by groups whose priorities do not align with forcing employers to solve their harassment problems as quickly as possible.

The importance of these meeting spaces (and of all their local, informal equivalents) in a video games career makes them rarely safe places, in which predators can use their power and connections to abuse others.

Company parties, another regular occurrence in the stories we hear, bar meet-ups or conference parties are not specific places where bad behaviours suddenly emerge, they are instead a magnifying lens that shines a light on the actual day-to-day reality of the industry. Matters are made worse there by the fact workers, overburdened with mismanaged quantities of work and omnipresent pressure, end up using those moments to let loose in a festive atmosphere, which makes them even more vulnerable.

This kind of behaviours also fit very closely to the testimonies we receive about the French video game schools. How could one expect meaningful change if students are taught before they even get hired that crunch is to be expected, that parties are an outlet, and that sexual wrongdoings are not punished?

While there are specificities, video games studios are not the only places where sexism and other discriminations run rampant. The problem is pervasive to our whole society, and it has to be addressed at every level.

When no other solution works, public call-outs are the last resort

The recent accounts point specifically to HR departments being at best passive, and at worst complicit in covering for aggressors. HR is presented as the first line of defence in situations of harassment or discrimination, yet they end up working against victims. That this many complaints did not lead to swift and efficient action is absurd. Let us remind all workers that, in France, employers have a legal obligation of results when it comes to protecting employees. They must use any and all measures available to prevent problems like harassment, and put an end to it as soon as possible if it still happens, and are legally liable if these measures fail.

The employees’ situations are made harder to cope with because legal complaints of harassment or sexual aggressions are extremely hard to follow through (be it because of the police refusing to open cases, or because legal proceedings are slow and rarely reach a conclusion). The global trend in diminishing the budgets of French employee protection institutions does not help the situation. It ends up being an unsurmountable task to actually face companies in court, when they have all the means necessary to defend themselves.

How can it be a surprise to anyone, then, that in the absence of any other channel, victims turn to social networks and broadcast their calls for help in the form of call-outs?

Crisis management over meaningful change

With employee defence groups being historically absent from the video games industry, companies have gotten away with ignoring their duties, worsening even further the isolation and precariousness victims are faced with. Recent initiatives such as the STJV aim at upending that situation.

When faced with call-outs, the studios’ first reaction is to protect their brand image. This is primarily geared towards consumers and financing firms, but also because they want to preserve the very widespread (and wildly misleading) idea that the industry is an informal place with a welcoming and safe atmosphere. To react to the call-outs and recognize that sexism is a reality of our industry would destroy this idyllic image that employer lobbies worked very hard to craft over the years. Admitting that there is a sexism problem in the company is admitting the employer’s responsibility, and weakens the position of some of the people of power in the studio. That is a step very few executives are willing to take.

While there have been sparse efforts, the situation mostly stagnates. More and more employees speak up and are aware of the problems in their studios but, as long as no structural change is enacted, no real evolution will happen. Most executives refuse to reconsider the way their studios work because of financial and managerial frictions, and because it would also question their own reactions and attitudes towards discriminations. Only a few independent studios have really managed to tackle these issues, but we attribute that ability to their small size, which means a small number of people feeling concerned or being aware of the problems is enough to prompt change.

What are the solutions?

We believe more than ever that a fix to those issues will not only come from management. Since the necessary transformations go against the economic interests and the domination structures companies are based on, they cannot be left to decide alone of the solutions.

External companies whose missions and goals are fixed by employers, and whose findings are not binding, cannot be a proper measure alone. Solutions must come from the workers themselves, and be overseen by independent structures. Unions, by nature, are properly equipped to allow marginalized people to organize and act while shielding them from management’s pressure.

The reports make one thing very clear: subordination within the company is a major obstacle to any honest and exhaustive evaluation of moral or physical harassment within studios. This reinforces our determination to keep creating strong union sections within companies, enabling them to counterbalance studios’ management and demand concrete action. These sections free the workers from the subordination they would otherwise encounter in the company, and make it easier to report the problems they encounter. They can then coordinate with other structures like CSEs (social & economic committees, elected workers representatives within companies) to find suitable solutions.

We call on studio executives to face the truth: up until now, what little they did was not efficient. If they really wish to change things, they should first stop treating call-outs or reports of discriminations as crisis management opportunities, but instead engage in true reflection, that includes workers, about the way discrimination accounts are handled, as well as the means to prevent further wrongdoings. If studio executives do not reconsider how subordination affects the freedom for workers to talk and denounce those problems, or if they do not include workers in the discussions, management will remain untrusted.

If we want to find a solution to those problems, all workers of the industry need to unite. The control mechanisms in place in game companies are very tightly linked to the general organization of work. We need to gather and rally to demand the proper means to protect ourselves from the toxic structural effects.

The STJV stands at the ready to help out workers who need it, whether they’re unionised or not, through listening to people’s stories or by providing advice. If the situation requires it, we are also ready to support legal actions.