On December 20, the National Assembly passed a law known as the “immigration law”. The result of a compromise between Renaissance, les Républicains and the Rassemblement National, its adoption marks a turning point in the attitude of the government and the “centre”: where previously they pretended to stand up against the far right, they are now openly adopting its racist ideas and allying themselves with it without shame.

The French far right applauded the passing of this law, which other fascist parties in Europe are praising and hoping to replicate. And it’s easy to see why: it incorporates directly some of the racist ideological pillars of the far right, such as national preference.

The target of this racist law is no secret: by attacking welfare benefits, birthright citizenship and family reunification, it targets specifically poor foreign workers, the majority of whom are non-white. This is reinforced by the government’s promise to clamp down in 2024 on the Aide Médicale d’Etat (State Medical Aid), of which the disgusting plan to abolish had been strongly denounced. The law’s repressive measures, including the introduction of an offence of illegal residence, will enable the police to unleash their violence even more on these populations, by arresting them arbitrarily on the slightest “suspicion”.

This law’s agenda is that of the far right: violence. Violence from the state, whether exercised through social services (or in this case their inaccessibility), the justice system or the police. It heralds the future, with a government that will continue to exercise ever more violence against foreigners, but also against people with French nationality. Because its attacks on social benefits, freedom, education and research will extend to everyone.

The STJV is firmly opposed to this law and to any restrictions on people’s rights and social benefits, no matter who they apply to. We defend the right for everyone, without restriction, to be able to reside wherever they wish and to live there with dignity, in peace. We call on all workers to join the actions opposing this law, and in particular the mobilisations on Sunday 14 and 21 January.

Last month, we published our 2022 survey on video game workers. The raw figures already say a lot about our industry, but we also need to analyse them and take a closer look at what they reveal politically. And it is not pretty.

The challenge of studying and entering the industry

With an average cost of €25,000 per student going through private schools, video game studies are undeniably expensive.

More than a third of these students rely on a bank loan to finance their studies, which means they are already in debt before starting their working lives. It takes them several years to pay back these loans, during which time a large portion of their income is spent on them.

However, after graduating a significant proportion of workers do not find a job straight away. One in 6 waits more than a year to find a job, during which time they live in fear of their first loan repayment deadline.

But having a job is not a liberation, because the majority of workers end up in precarious employment after graduating. Only a quarter of them have a stable job, with the rest having to live time and again in fear of ending up jobless in the near future.

Everything seems designed to prevent workers from entering the industry. As a result, this system encourages social reproduction, i․e. only people from privileged backgrounds can get in. The industry remains socially homogeneous. Employers’ efforts to pretend to fight against this will change nothing, since on the contrary this situation benefits them, by economically subjugating new workers entering the industry.

The impossibility of building a career

After a very uncertain start in the industry, the workers’ troubles are not over: long careers in video games are rare.

Our survey shows that 61% of workers have less than 5 years of experience, and that 85% of them, the overwhelming majority, have less than 10 years of experience. Yet the French video game industry has been around since the 1980s, and is therefore more than 30 years old.

In addition, almost 84% of workers have been with their current company for less than 5 years, so it seems impossible to make a career in one company. And when you look at the pay data from our survey, it’s hard not to notice, apart from a few special cases, that pay progression is relatively normal up to 5 years’ experience in the industry, but stagnates after that.

Pressure, poor working conditions, low pay, discrimination, working hours making family life impossible, and many other systemic reasons push workers to change jobs or industries after a few years.

Workers are leaving the industry because they have no future in it.

And employers see no point in changing the situation: companies are deliberately trying to keep their production costs as low as possible by intentionally exploiting young people just out of school.

The reality of crunch

Employers almost always deny the existence of crunch, periods of intense work during which managers ask or encourage workers to work beyond what their health can cope with. Anne Devouassoux, president of the SNJV, the French industry’s main employers’ lobby, told Têtu magazine last May that “Crunch does not exist in today’s professional world.”.

Our survey shows, however, that it is a widespread practice, with almost a quarter of workers declaring having experienced one in the last year. The annual approach we have chosen highlights the recurrence of crunch, but masks the fact that a production may last several years. We therefore believe that the proportion of games released using crunch is even higher.

We also see that older workers report experiencing crunch more often, which suggests that, thanks to their experience, they are better able to identify it. Consequently, this figure is surely highly underestimated.

In defence of her social class, the president of the SNJV went on to explain in the same article that “there exists overtime, on a voluntary basis. These are paid and regulated by law“.

Facts prove her wrong once again, since more than half of workers are not paid for their crunch periods. Incidentally, the payment of bonuses to pay for overtime is illegal and constitutes concealed work if they are not recorded on pay slips.

By concentrating a large amount of work in a short space of time, crunch aims to compensate for the lack of investment in the management of video game production, and the problems caused by dictatorial corporate structures. It is a management method in its own right. The damage caused by crunch to workers’ health is the result of deliberate political choices.

The non-recognition of education and skills

Our survey confirmed a well-known fact in the industry: the gap between academic qualifications and employment status.

We can see that around 90% of video game workers have a level of education corresponding to at least Bac+3 (bachelor), and more than 60% of them even have a Bac+5 degree (master’s and above).

Specialised short courses (Bac+2 or less) are extremely rare, and companies systematically ask for a high level of education when recruiting.

At the same time, more than 40% of video game workers have an ETAM (employee) status.

However, this status is normally reserved for positions requiring levels of education ranging from BEP to BTS. In the Syntec collective agreement, which covers most of the French industry, it’s even clearer: all positions requiring a level of education higher than Bac+2 are deemed to fall under the cadre status. In this respect, we consider that all video game professions fall under the cadre status, since they require long-term training, autonomy and extensive theoretical knowledge.

Yet companies refuse to switch employees to this status, and for easily identified reasons:

1. Minimum salaries are higher for cadres than for employees, and they increase more favourably for workers. Very often, minimum salaries for cadres under Syntec are higher than the minimum salaries offered by video game companies. This is particularly true in the design (game & level design, etc.) and art (animation, concept art, etc.) departments.
2. Social contributions are lower for employees than for cadres. Coupled with lower salaries, this allows companies to save on their employer contributions, to the detriment of public services and national solidarity.

As well as denying us better pay and access to better public services and pensions, companies are also refusing to acknowledge our skills and work by forcing workers to work at the lowest possible ranks.

General conclusions

From these points, but also from the other data in the survey, we reach a distressing conclusion: from their studies onwards and throughout their careers, everything seems to be done to push workers to leave the video games industry. For the majority of them, it offers them no future, no horizons to look forward to.

Based on legal support, surveys, union and workers’ council mandates, one truth is becoming increasingly clear: company and group directors have no long-term strategy or thinking. The industry is organised to ensure that bosses line their pockets, with total contempt for workers, their careers, their jobs, the games they produce and their ability to express themselves.

An industry where workers have no future has no future either. Since our bosses don’t care, and since the majority of us still want to make video games, the only solution is for workers to take the future of the video game industry into their own hands.

Workers’ demands

In our survey, we asked workers their demands:

Unsurprisingly, these focus first and foremost on working time and conditions, in particular pay, remote work, and the 4-day week. But many are also calling for better career-long training, better project management, greater transparency, and for their opinions to be taken into account…

Workers are very good at identifying the problems caused by their companies and how to solve them, and it’s time to let them handle things instead of their managers.

A few weeks ago, Toulouse-based studio Umeshu Lovers published its game Danghost. Over the past few months, we have been helping former employees of this studio, who have turned to the STJV for help in dealing with situations that our union considers unacceptable.

To date, three complaints have been lodged with the Procureur de la République (french public prosecutor) against the company and one of its directors, including charges of moral and sexual harassment.

Two cases relating to the execution and termination of employment contracts were also filed with the conseil des prud’hommes (french industrial tribunal), including the same grievances as the criminal complaints. The STJV will intervene voluntarily in these proceedings to defend the collective interests of the profession.

We hope that these legal actions will bring justice to the victims and put an end to the acts being prosecuted.

In all video game companies, the STJV defends and will defend all workers, whether unionised or not. We can carry out this kind of action thanks to our comrades’ dues and the volunteer work of our Legal Support and Assistance Committee.

Update 11/4/23 : A ce jour, aucune poursuite pénale n’a encore été engagée par le procureur de la république.

In response to the heinous murders perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October, the far-right Israeli government, with the support of most Western governments, including France, is carrying out a massacre.

The Israeli army is bombing the Gaza Strip indiscriminately, committing one war crime after another, and is preparing to invade it in a land and sea operation. More than 2 million Palestinians, the vast majority of them children, are besieged there.

As we write these lines, they have run out of drinking water and have barely any electricity, hospitals are running out of medical supplies and are being directly targeted by bombings, and food stocks are dwindling dangerously. Every single person held prisoner in the Gaza Strip is facing imminent death.

In France, the government is violating the law to repress all demonstrations and criminalise all forms of support for the Palestinian people. Everywhere, the mere fact of calling for peace is enough to be treated as a terrorist. Palestinian voices are repressed and treated as outcasts, and an entire people is considered to be terrorists. Suffering the consequences of Israeli policy, Jews all over the world are afraid of an upsurge in anti-Semitic acts. The current situation is extremely worrying in every respect.

We call for peace in Palestine, for an urgent ceasefire and for the total lifting of the siege of Gaza. We also call for an end to Israel’s colonisation of Palestine and recognition of its statehood, the only solutions that will bring a lasting end to the conflict and its deadly repercussions.

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Video games are complicit

Right now, our industry seems insignificant compared to the urgent need for immediate political action. But we video game workers do not forget the role that our industry plays in spreading the fascist ideas that are being implemented here before our very eyes.

Culture in general plays an important political role, and is used as a weapon by death peddlers the world over. Video games are no stranger to this, and even play a part in spearheading global militarism. Collaborations with the far right, the police or the army, and war crimes revisionism are creative choices decided by our directors.

In a more or less subtle and more or less conscious way, all representations glorifying manly heroism, conquest, murder, imperialism, colonialism, sexism… in all genres and all production sizes, help to strengthen far-right political ideologies.

We must fight, over the long term, to ensure that our medium ceases to work towards the oppression of peoples. On the contrary, we must do everything we can to make video games a weapon for peace, against colonialism and against nationalism.

Despite 6 months of campaign against the pensions reform, the government forced it through, putting the final nail in the coffin of democracy. The economic and environmental situation, already catastrophic at the time of the campaign, has only worsened since.

The population continues to get poorer: through pension and unemployment reforms, but also because of an inflation rate that has not been offset by wage rises. Last summer was the hottest on record and it doesn’t seem to be ending. It was marked by numerous natural disasters around the world. The world’s agricultural production is at risk.

Meanwhile, property owners and shareholders are getting richer and richer, while more and more proletarians have to forego medical care, food, etc.

As usual, and for partisan reasons, the government hasn’t proposed any concrete, long-term measures to alleviate these problems. But workers’ organisations have been proposing solutions for a long time:

• Wages should be automatically adjusted for inflation
• Gender equality in the workplace, in terms of pay and working conditions, must be enforced, and non-complying companies must be sanctioned
• The fight against climate change and the necessary changes in production must be placed directly in the hands of workers
• Government subsidies to companies must be reduced and subjected to strict social and environmental goals
• The power of employee representatives must be strengthened, so that they can force negotiations and monitor all these points within companies

We are well aware that these changes will never be handed over without a fight.

The Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo is therefore calling for a strike in the video game industry on Friday 13 October 2023, joining the europe-wide unions call. We call on workers, unemployed people, pensioners and students from the video game industry to mobilise in companies, general assemblies and actions that will take place everywhere in France during this period.

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 come to work.

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Why strike in the video game industry on October 13?

To protect our income

The video game industry is notorious for its low salaries compared to the level of education and the occupations performed. Some jobs are very poorly paid, despite the fact that most of them are located in metropolitan areas where living costs are high (see our latest survey). We are very much affected by inflation problems, just as last year’s wage disputes showed…

For a stable life, without having to worry about tomorrow

Recruitment under fixed-term contracts, periods of unemployment, poor health insurance, no career management… Video game industry careers are marked by precariousness, at the beginning for all occupations, and for their entire duration for some (see our latest survey). We are extremely affected by the pensions and unemployment benefits reforms, which will have a brutal impact on our lives.

To ensure that ecological issues are taken into account

Our industry is leading a frantic race to always improve the performance of electronic equipment, and therefore to replace it often. The environmental challenges we are already facing, and which are already causing a great deal of damage and death around the world, are forcing us to change. Video game companies will not get out of this race without pressure from workers.

To put an end to discriminations

Our industry is notorious as a place where discrimination, based on disability, origin, class, sexual orientation, gender… is rife. And companies do little or nothing about it, often preferring to deny the problems. We must constantly campaign to put an end to discrimination and allow everyone to work and live with dignity in the video games industry.

For better public services

Public services have been under attack from governments for decades, and many are close to breaking down. Access to essential services such as healthcare, welfare, job search, transport and housing is only deteriorating. If we don’t act, we will soon be deprived of services essential to our survival.

We are relaying this statement from workers at Spiders

Spiders studio is in a situation similar to that of Kylotonn (Kt-Racing): reduced to the role of a subsidiary that dare not speak its name. In practice, it cannot choose the orientation of its productions without the approval of the group, which holds all intellectual property on them, and is subjugated by Nacon’s management, which defines financing terms that give it total power, usually in the form of monthly payments.

At Spiders too, management regularly uses this situation to cut short demands for transparency and negotiation by hiding behind « negotiations between the studio and Nacon » from which workers and their representatives are conveniently excluded.

For more than a year, basic demands to comply with the law, respect social dialogue, be transparent and negotiate collective agreements have remained ignored or blocked by management.

These legitimate demands do however seek to respond to vital issues such as the organisation of remote work, formalisation of production organisation and internal alert processes, transparency on assessment processes, recruitment problems, etc.

The workers at Spiders express their solidarity with those at Kylotonn, who were on strike on July 11 and are on strike again today, and support their social movement. Since we are all in the same boat, our fates are closely linked. We’ll be keeping a close eye on any new developments at our two studios and will take action if necessary.

Following their example, we are also making our demands public. Unsurprisingly, they are similar to the demands made by Kylotonn workers. Our demands to the managements of Spiders and Nacon are as follows:

1. Begin, before 2024, the negotiations that have been requested for months by workers’ representatives:
   1. Agreement on remote work
   2. Pay scales
   3. Creation of an internal warning and reporting system
   4. Introduction of an anonymous performance evaluation system enabling managers to be evaluated by their teams
   5. Mandatory annual negotiations, never held despite legal requirements
   6. Standardised process for adapting working conditions
2. Automatic notification and consultation of the workers’ council on matters covered by their responsibilities, as required by law
3. Transparency on strategies and decisions for recruiting and retaining employees within the studio, to put an end to unequal treatment and recruitment problems that plague productions;
4. Consultation of all workers during initial game pitches, pre-production and mid-way through production regarding the creative aspects of the games we make
5. Full and complete transparency on negotiations between Nacon and its subsidiaries, on raises and structural decisions for the group and its studios, through the inclusion of a delegation of workers’ representatives from the group’s studios
6. Bringing minimum salaries in all of Nacon’s entities into line with the highest ones in the group

We relay this press release from workers on strike at the Kylotonn studio, on Tuesday, July 11, 2023.

In the majority of studios acquired by Nacon, the group :

• is the studio’s sole shareholder
• owns the entire intellectual property of any produced games
• funds the studios on a project-by-project month-by-month basis, giving Nacon real life or death power over the studios.

In practice, this means that the studios act as subcontractors, producing games on behalf of the group, as Nacon subsidiaries.

This structure enables studio and Nacon management to pass the buck whenever workers demand accountability, pay rises and social measures. Workers are preventing from finding intermediaries for discussion, thus cancelling any attempt at negotiation.

On Tuesday July 11, 2023, Nacon Group’s number 2, Laurent Honoret, has presented Nacon’s 2022-2023 balance sheet to Kylotonn workers. This annual event is the only direct point of contact between the studio’s workers and the Nacon Group.

The studio workers took advantage of this moment to ask Nacon if the group would commit to providing more resources for Kylotonn and the group’s studios in general. The aim is to give the studio employee representatives more room to breathe in their negotiations with the studio heads, and to prevent studio management from using Nacon as an excuse to avoid mandatory negotiations.

Laurent Honoret replied: « No ». He added that it was the studio management’s prerogative to negotiate more budget with Nacon. This statement shattered the excuses of Kylotonn’s management, who has always blamed Nacon for the lack of negotiation.

In reaction to this unsatisfactory response, which crowned a series of problems and sufferings long denounced by staff representatives, workers went on strike and left the room after presenting the following demands:

• Negotiation of a remote work policy with the trade unions
• Negotiation of minimum wages and compensation with trade unions, in place of unilateral management decisions that penalize a significant proportion of workers
• Immediate implementation by management of concrete measures to put an end to the pathogenic and authoritarian management style that threatens workers’ mental health and cohesion
• Negotiation of working conditions adjustment processes, which currently have to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis with great difficulties
• Opening of compulsory annual negotiations and systematic negotiation with trade unions for all matters falling within their prerogatives
• Systematic information and consultation of the CSE on matters falling within its purview
• Full transparency on the negotiations between Nacon and Kylotonn to find out where the deadlock lies, by including employee representatives in these negotiations
• Same level of transparency for the group’s other studios
• Immediate wage increases throughout the Nacon group at least equal to those at Kylotonn after renegotiation.

In the video games industry, physical violence is often regarded as nothing more than an element of fiction, a gameplay mechanic and a marketing argument. But in other contexts, violence is anything but fictional: in working-class neighbourhoods in mainland France or in the French colonies, cold-blooded murders, along with racist attacks, insults and humiliations, are a daily reality, inflicted by representatives of the state over generations and in total impunity.

The recent murder of Nahel, a 17-year-old, by a police officer in Nanterre comes as a shock because its violence was captured on video, and the intention to kill cannot be questioned. But this murder is not an isolated incident, and the demonstrations that followed are a reaction proportionate to the policies of police repression, segregation and abandonment of the suburbs put in place by successive governments.

We can’t be fooled: such discrimination is part of a strategy to suppress the proletariat as a whole, and the non-white proletariat in particular. Even if at the moment, among video game workers, few of us come from working-class neighbourhoods, overseas territories or isolated regions, we are all affected. As workers, we have far more in common with the “suburban youth” than with the ruling class our bosses belong to.

We must not allow ourselves to be distracted by a government that is trying to make people forget about the murder and racism by fabricating other excuses for the problems, including when it is talking about video games. If we choose to look the other way, to focus on images of anger rather than on its roots and meaning, we are contributing to the fragmentation of our social class and allowing the most marginalised among us to be oppressed. Without solidarity, the state will continue to reinforce discrimination, undermine our rights and impoverish entire populations.

The impunity must end. Justice has to be delivered, not just for Nahel but also for all those we have never heard of. The people arrested in recent days during the demonstrations and sentenced by the justice system must be granted amnesty.

The STJV calls on all workers to always support the families of victims murdered by the police, to be aware of and relay the demands of marginalised communities and to help local organisations to the best of their ability. As a union, we will continue to fight for the replacement of policing with social policies, and for public money to be channelled to those who need it, rather than to the police and corporations as is currently the case.