Ubisoft announced last week that so far 2023 (open in new tab) has not been a good one. Skull and Bones has been postponed again, but more seriously, the company's inability to release a game that anyone would be interested in is causing serious financial bleeding. Now Ubisoft is facing a further headache, as the Solidaires Informatique union called a strike (open in new tab) at Ubisoft Paris on January 27.

A strike, at least outside France, may seem an odd reaction to being told that the company is in dire straits. This stems from a statement by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, who said in an update last week that the company aims to cut expenses by 200 million euros ($215 million) over the next two years, with "targeted restructuring, the sale of some non-core assets, and the usual natural reduction

Kotaku.

In a follow-up email to Ubisoft employees reported by Kotaku (opens in new tab), Gilmo told employees that "we need their full energy and commitment to ensure we get back on the road to success," adding, "I also want to make sure we are as efficient and lean as possible I am also asking each of you to be especially careful and strategic in your spending and initiatives to ensure that we are as efficient and lean as possible," he added.

The words drew the ire of Solidaires Informatique, which called Guillemot's comments "catastrophic" and accused the CEO of planning "job cuts, unobtrusive studio closures, pay cuts, and fake layoffs."

"Several times, Guillemot has tried to shift the blame (again) onto the employees. He expects us to mobilize, to 'give it our all,' and to work 'as efficiently and leanly as possible,'" the union wrote in its strike call. Those words "mean overtime, managerial pressure, burnout, etc. Mr. Guillemot expects a lot from his employees, but no rewards."

The studio has reported that Ubisoft's salaries have not kept pace with inflation, that the company has not implemented a four-day work week (Ubisoft experimented with a 36-hour work week in 2021 (open in new tab) but decided not to continue), that projects noted the lack of protection for "exhausted" development teams after the end of the project.

Thus, the union makes four demands:

"Since Mr. Guillemot and his faction only understand power relations, Solidaires Informatique calls on the employees of Ubisoft Paris to strike on Friday, January 27 from 2 to 6 pm. call for a strike," the union wrote.

The call to strike is limited to Ubisoft Paris, not the entire company. This is because Solidaires Informatique (open in new tab) is a French labor union that has branches in the Paris studios (and in a number of other French tech companies) but not elsewhere. This is not the first time the union has taken action against Ubisoft: in 2021, the union filed a lawsuit against Ubisoft for "systematic sexual harassment (open in new tab)," and later that year, it called Ubisoft's plan to move to NFT (open in new tab) He criticized it as "wasteful, costly, [and] ecologically destructive."

We asked Ubisoft for comment on the strike call and will update if we receive a reply.