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Ubisoft Paris Employees To Strike Following Yves Guillemot Comments

MMaRsu

Banned
Michael Ancel made a bunch of games that would perform horribly in the modern market. He was pushed out for good reason.

Jade Raymond is a producer. She hires people. She doesn't create games.

Patrice Desilets just released a game that sold poorly and was poorly recieved by critics and gamers.

Ubisoft was doing exceptionally well in 2020. Games now take 6+ years to make. If you're not expecting some lean years in the industry then you're not paying attention. Ubisoft is fine. This is all clickbait and some like to feed the algorithm.
Lmao sure bud
 
Cut spending? Well this to me means that we’re going to keep seeing the same old shit from them.

Ubisoft - you have to spend money to make money. It’s not fucking rocket science. Get rid of that absolute wet wipe at the top and get yourself some decent leadership.
 

BbMajor7th

Member
Unions are a great concept but all they do is protect people with well paid jobs fuck me everywhere they are finding the smallest excuses to go on strike, yet you'll never see a union boss for super markets asking to go on strike because itd effect them
Not true: unions are most active in low-paid sectors and low-paid jobs precisely because well... shit rolls down hill, to put it frankly. There's masses of strikes happening across the UK at the moment, and it's mostly in low-paid public sector jobs like nursing, refuse collection, hygiene and maintenance, delivery and infrastructure.
 

Shut0wen

Member
Some of you are real corporate shills.

The blame for making shit games lies at the feet of the CEO. If had no understanding of what was happening or that taking the one formula that worked 10 years ago and milking it dry would cause all these issues then he is useless.
Not just the ceo though, yes in ubi they are responsible for alot of games but ubi is a stepping stone company, they dont have the talent to actually think of a decent new ip
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
"Cassoulet". Nah, we eat sandwiches and sausages during strikes. For a bit of context, today (thursday) is a big strike day in most corporations because our president just decided to push back the age of retirement by 2 years. A lot of people are in mood for strikes in France right now.
For full context, the proposal is to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
 
They're gonna get bought out by microsoft too, aren't they?

Too much garbage in the last few years and the few decent series they had, they squandered those too.
They can't even seem to push foward a frigging splinter cell 1 remake without issues. They won't last long like this.
 

UnNamed

Banned
I wonder how many people who stay with the employees, or think they're lazy, are from US or EU.

In EU is pretty common to be angry because of the incompetence or the gap between how much earn you and your overpaid employer.

In US people could live on the streets but woe to those who think your boss should not be paid 100x your salary.
 
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MMaRsu

Banned
Where do people get the idea that Ubisoft is failing?

I don’t know if people have noticed but this isn’t good economic times right now. Almost every company is laying people off and many are cutting back on costs. People are purportedly spending less on leisure things because food is much more expensive. There’s inflation all over even for the business side meaning you paying more for things than ever before. Debt has become very expensive in the last year and the stock market overall is down a shit ton.

Asking your employees to be careful with spending during bad economic times is pretty reasonable. I can understand getting mad if you see him throwing exec parties, sprucing up his office or taking extra paid time off for vacationing after saying that but no they just mad he said that.

The problem isn’t people are sick of assassins creed as it wouldn’t be their highest grossing AC game. It’s not because they keep removing games off Steam. It’s not because they won’t make new instalments of splinter cell which has traditionally had mediocre sales. People need to realize their personal gripes don’t scale to being major issues for the company.
Highest grossing literally means nothing except that people who are casuals will play it. Doesnt indicate quality or follow up sales in any way.
 

jakinov

Member
Highest grossing literally means nothing except that people who are casuals will play it. Doesnt indicate quality or follow up sales in any way.
Quality is subjective what you think is quality isn’t as important to them as what people are will to buy. The reason they still make billion in revenue is because of follow up sales. The issue they’re having is lower revenue from new releases and they have high costs due to so many games in development & rising costs. And having a operating loss in this climate is way more expensive than having one when the times are good.
 

AJUMP23

Gold Member
LOL at the thread full of american work slaves telling us that the french people it's wrong. Meanwhile the french will be retired by 62 and US slaves will keep on working until they die because they have to pay for their last medical bill.
Loop Trump GIF
 

Gexxy1

Member
Everyone talking about the employees vs the CEO but who really cares. Ubi hasn't made a good game in like 15 years anyway. Let them burn.
 
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IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

As reported by Kotaku, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot apologized to the company staff in yesterday's Q&A session after facing tough comments questioning his performance in the company. Guillemot also came under fire for making the developers responsible for the company's future.

"I heard your feedback and I’m sorry this was perceived that way," said Guillemot after an upvoted question in a recent Q&A session criticized his tone and comments in the last week's internal email to staff. "When saying ‘the ball is in your court’ to deliver our lineup on time and at the expected level of quality, I wanted to convey the idea that more than ever I need your talent and energy to make it happen. This is a collective journey that starts of course with myself and with the leadership team to create the conditions for all of us to succeed together."
 

Kacho

Gold Member
Everyone talking about the employees vs the CEO but who really cares. Ubi hasn't made a good game in like 15 years anyway. Let them burn.
Hyperbole much? I know Ubi doesn’t have the best reputation and the quality of their titles is subjective, but come on.
 

ahtlas7

Member
Are you saying they are as lazy as Grecians?
Lol, I don’t know about that. I only have experience living in Paris during the transit strike of 2019. The longest ever.
I will be visiting Greece in February… they aren’t planning any strikes are they?
 
[/URL]

Employees of Ubisoft's Paris division are set to strike on January 27. This comes as a response to statements made by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot on his plan to combat the company's poor financial performance in 2022.

As reported by Kotaku, Guillemot intends to cut company expenses by $215 million. In an email to employees, he called for unity and dedication, writing "I am also asking that each of you be especially careful and strategic with your spending and initiatives, to ensure we’re being as efficient and lean as possible."

In response, the Ubisoft-Paris chapter of the trade union Solidaires Informatique announced its intention to strike. Union members say Guillemot's language is a dog whistle signaling the deterioration of working conditions at the company, and in response, the union members have released a set of demands.

The union accuses Guillemot of passing corporate failures onto the workforce and warns that his request for employees to "give their all" could increase developer burnout and harsher crunch cycles. Employees claim there is plenty of money to go around without resorting to Guillemot's austerity measures. It cites millions made in stock sold to the company's largest shareholder, Chinese tech giant Tencent, which accounts for 11% of the company's stock.
Donald Glover Reaction GIF
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
People can grow to become incompetent, you know.

It's quite common, especially with age.

It's certainly possible, but clickbait games media and some of the crazies on NeoGAF (still love em) don't do much to shift my opinion on this matter. Ubisoft is fine. People are just desperate to see them fail due to woke reasons or single player obsessed reasons.

https://companiesmarketcap.com/ubisoft/revenue/

All healthy companies go through these ebbs and flows.
 

ahtlas7

Member
It's certainly possible, but clickbait games media and some of the crazies on NeoGAF (still love em) don't do much to shift my opinion on this matter. Ubisoft is fine. People are just desperate to see them fail due to woke reasons or single player obsessed reasons.

https://companiesmarketcap.com/ubisoft/revenue/

All healthy companies go through these ebbs and flows.

I might be crazy, but let’s look at more than Mkt Cap, shall we.
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numbers don’t lie. Ubisoft is not doing well.
Even the CEO knows they are in sewer water when he publicly excoriated his devs.
Can they turn around? Not without a change in leadership or at least leadership style. Guillemot, has proven to be a good leader in the past but times have changed, has he?
It’s probable they will be fished out of the toilet with a buyout or takeover but not at 2.4B. I would buy at sub 10/share with a buyout expectation.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Are they stupid? He basically said “ hey we are sinking, we don’t have enough money to keep paying everyone but if we tighten our belt a little maybe we can hold off laying anyone off for now an see if these next round of games hit big”
 
Nope

Yves shit on Michael Ancel, Jade Raymond, Patrice Desilets.
I might missunderstand her role, but she was not really in the creative department, making games, even though iirc she did the first presentation of AC. Studio management, producer and studio lead, something like that: hiring and greelighting prototypes, looking that the art guys feel happy, search for the guys that can make the artists' ideas work and also fun?
Maybe she first filtered Ancel's and Desilets', and whoever there was, ideas and then sold those to Guillemot, or just suppurted their pitch and since she isn't doing that anymore someone else might do it or Yves is more ivolved in some "only megaIPs-are the future" decisions now than he was back then. Maybe she was the barrier between Yves and creatives who made them succesful and with new heads something crumbled a bit?

Since she left it did not work out well for anything she touched either, but she might have been exactly what is missing at Ubi now.

Or Ubi just shifted to something many gamers don't like, while actually sort of succesful, just now not on the stock market and singular people would not have changed that course at all.
 
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