A social consensus is shattering in the video game sector. Deciphering
the capitalist logic of the sector and the union responses that leademployees to abandon the GOTY race[9]for the class struggle. ---- By
chaining together layoff plans while displaying insolent growth, has the
recent video game industry just earned its stripes in game capitalism? A
figure of French Tech, adored by the Start up Nation, it employs nearly
15,000 people in France. Salaries are low, working conditions are
difficult, and the culture of collective struggle is weak. It generates
more than 6 billion euros in turnover in 2023, "growing by nearly 10%"
according to the Employers' Union of Leisure Software Publishers[2].
#GGWP[3].
Employer combos
However, worldwide, layoffs have been in the tens of thousands since
2021[4]. Social movements are coming one after another. In France, 700
strikers on February 14 and more than 1,000 on October 15 in the Ubisoft
group; a third of the Kylotonn studio on strike on July 25; strike at
the Spiders studio in early September, joined by their colleagues from
the Kylotonn studio; more than 100 strikers at the Don't Nod studio on
October 28 and November 8.
Without shame, the bosses are hiding behind a "post-Covid crisis" and
claiming a drop in consumption at the end of the lockdowns. The reality
is that the irresponsibility of the bosses, competing only with the most
absolute mediocrity, hastened to welcome investment funds and other
venture capital lured by the records due to the lockdowns. These
investors usually operate in the world of startups, where the game
consists of financing a large number of them abundantly in the hope that
one of them will scoop the jackpot, multiply the profits by squeezing
out its customers, then close down or be bought out.
Incompetence or lure of gain, the French bosses, too used to being
showered with public money without compensation, saw nothing coming. The
capitalist logic is then respected: grow, multiply the production lines
and impose ever more excessive objectives.
Investors demand rapid results, sometimes as early as the following
year. However, a video game rarely takes less than two years to be made.
Profits are not there then; it is necessary to move on to the downsizing
stage. Even large groups like Ubisoft or Microsoft, which nevertheless
make considerable profits, cut their workforce more or less brutally,
sometimes by closing studios overnight.
Until recently, France was spared from layoff plans. However, this does
not prevent the capitalists from continuing their sinister work: at
Ubisoft, the supreme boss Yves Guillemot praises "natural
attrition"[5]to skim the workforce. Deteriorating working conditions to
make employees resign is profitable: 200 million euros in savings per year.
In fact, the social context is tense: sexual assaults and widespread
moral harassment, particularly perpetrated by senior executives, total
contempt of management towards the CSE, unions or strikers, etc. Yves
Guillemot even goes so far as to appeal to the far right in his official
statements, exposing workers to harassment and threats from fascists[6].
Indeed, fringes of the far right, particularly in the United States and
France, are trying to revive GamerGate, a large movement of online
sexist harassment that contributed to the rise of Trump[6].
Finally, far from being a demand for comfort, teleworking crystallizes
the distrust and questioning of their management's discourse by the
strikers. Indeed, the forced return to the office is never even
justified by explanations or data, even if they are false. It then
clearly appears for what it is: a desire for control through pure
neoliberal ideology coupled with a strategy to encourage the
resignations of employees who have moved.
High points of salaried employment
But Ubisoft's share price plummets. Profits and "voluntary" departures
were not enough to appease the appetite of minority shareholders.
Ubisoft must now not only save money, but also bring in more by spending
less. With 19,000 employees worldwide, it is the largest employer in the
sector, but not the most profitable. The accounting calculation is
quickly done: the payroll must be cut. On October 15, more than 1,000
strikers followed the call of the inter-union: CGT and Printemps
Écologique at the "headquarters"; Solidaires Informatique, CFE-CGC and
STJV at Ubisoft Paris; STJV in the other entities in France.
Mobilizing at the group level is no small feat, since Ubisoft is made up
of about ten separate entities and therefore as many CSEs and union
sections.
Two weeks later, with the layoff plan at Don't Nod, video game workers
find themselves in an archetypal struggle of the labor movement. It is
interesting to note that one of their main demands is formulated as
follows: "We demand that employees, who are the most competent people,
now have a say in all decision-making."[7]. A large third of the studio
responded to the call. An open letter was sent to management and a new
strike took place on November 8, bringing together more than 120
strikers, or nearly half of the workforce!
For us, libertarian communists, the aspiration for self-organization of
workers is clearly evident. This demand is shared by the Ubisoft,
Spiders and Kylotonn strikers who denounce the decisions of their
management, each one worse than the last, yet anticipated and decried.
Given the success of the recent mobilizations, these demands carry and
find a very wide echo in the ranks of the studios. It is therefore
permissible to imagine a class awareness and an affirmation of a
principle shared by the entire working class: it is we who produce, it
is we who decide.
Antoine (UCL Paris Nord Est)
The speedrun of unionism
"Public strikes are rare" the Union of Video Game Workers (STJV) told us
in 2023[8]. This period is now over. Unionists know it, there is nothing
like the excesses of the bosses to mobilize colleagues. The fact remains
that, without prior union establishment and consolidation, a long-term
and often thankless militant task, the bosses' excess is a steamroller.
In just seven years and without being a member of any confederation, it
is the historic and omnipresent union of the sector. Founded in Paris,
it quickly spread to the other main video game cities and now has around
twenty union sections. Due to the union desert, it had to profoundly
adapt its strategy to overcome obstacles: very young average age,
average career length of ten years, a multitude of very small companies,
industrial recourse to disguised employment of independent workers, a
globalized job market, self-denial in the passionate profession...
The STJV union members had to learn a lot and very quickly, while
demonstrating a fine analysis of their situation by creating a unionism
of struggle, industry and mass, at least on their scale. Hence the
parallel with speedrunning: a practice that consists, through in-depth
knowledge of a video game, in achieving objectives in a spectacular or
efficient way. For example, finishing a video game in record time.
At the heart of their concerns: how to be heard in a rather
depoliticized, falsely horizontal environment, steeped in neoliberal
lies and where bosses take advantage of employees' passion for their
job. In order to be able to unionize, organize and fight, it is
essential for them to propose a counter-discourse. This discourse of
in-depth knowledge of the profession, working conditions, and industry,
which leads to class consciousness. If independence from historical
confederations can rightly be questioned, the bet is winning for the
penetration of the environment and mobilization.
Long live grassroots and industry unionism!
Validate
[1]The Game Of The Year (GOTY) is an award given for the best video game
of the year.
[2]"Video game market: 2023 report", study of March 21, 2024 by the
French video game agency.
[3]Good game, well played is a polite formula used at the end of a
multiplayer game, sometimes used ironically.
[4]14,000 layoffs estimated in 2024 according to "Game industry
Layoffs", publish.obsidian.md/vg-layoffs/Archive/2024
[5]In economics, it is a phenomenon of loss. For example, a company that
loses its customers.
[6]"GamerGate, 8chan, Alt-Right... the breeding ground for Trump's vote
is also online", Le Monde, January 20, 2017.
[7]"Don't Nod: call for a strike on Friday, November 8", STJV leaflet of
October 31, 2024
[8]"STJV: "It is important that the union make people adhere to a
political line through practice"", article of September 27, 2023 in
Alternative Libertaire.
[9]The Game Of The Year (GOTY) is an award given for the best video game
of the year.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Industrie-du-jeu-video-Greve-of-the-year
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