cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/36712639
Ubisoft’s first North American union, located at their Halifax, Nova Scotia studio, was certified on December 18th, 2025. Now, not even a full 30 days later, Ubisoft Halifax is closing.
“we’d rather amputate that entire source of revenue than pay workers fairly”
Capital would rather burn everything down than lose a penny to the working class. Yes in this example, highly paid developers are considered working class relative to billionaire owners
I like to think that we’re all working class, and that to subdivide classes further benefits only the capital
Yes in reality, like 90% of people are working class, but I just wanted to make that designation for anyone reading it and going “software engineers aren’t working class”. I mean it in the more general working class vs capital owners.
Anyone who cannot stop working and live off their own wealth (and not rely on the working income of others) for the rest of their lives is, by definition, working class.
please be nice to the rich ‘working class’ They’re ‘just like you’!
They don’t live week by week, they have thousands to tens of thousands of dollars of disposable income per month.
No, I’m not going to treat them the same as my fellow lower classes.
That’s a mistake. If you treat them as your equal then you can make then see they aren’t special or “middle class” and then you have another pair of hands to help the working class.
Everybody who has to work for a living is part of the working class. Further division is just “divide et impera” by the owners.
Devs are working class
Because they actually work on products literally, they’re the base of their profession with pretty much nobody under them bar a few juniors if any
I fear the day when being a dev like me becomes so normal I make minimum wage and can’t afford anything anymore… It’s seriously terrifying to realize I worked and learned all this time and it may be for nothing in like 10 years…
lol that day is coming sooner than you’d think, I think 10 years is being generous tbh
You should learn a highly niche specialization within SWE if you don’t already have one (that’s what I have). That will be overtaken by AI too, but it’ll give you more runway at least.
Yea… I definitelly need to do that…
If I were in your shoes (and I am), I would start trying to blindly use AI to do various aspects of my job (and I have).
The results are laughable.
There are things that I do that AI can do. Stupid, boring, uninteresting things. In particular, AI excels at doing things I already wrote a simple Bash script to do for me a decade ago.
Seriously, I encourage everyone to give it a try.
Let’s all build that passion project we’ve been dreaming of and host it for the world to enjoy.
In the best case, the world has a happy little passion project chugging away being useful.
In the worst case, we learn what AI cannot do yet, and realize we can still keep charging people for our labor for a few more years (and decades and centuries).
To repurpose The Fermi Paradox, if AI allows anyone to easily make a useful product, then where are they all?
Is that The AI Fermi Paradox?
E: obviously this is the FermAI Paradox.
highly paid developers
Not in the games industry, lol
Really? I always assumed they made more than developers in the “enterprise” world.
Noooo, not even close. There may be some senior devs in AAA studios making bank, but the vast majority of people doing the day-to-day art and development work on games typically get much worse pay and benefits than similar roles in other parts of the tech sphere.
A lot of people are very passionate about making games, and the games industry heavily exploits that passion to short change its workers. A lot of (mostly young) devs are willing to accept less pay to work on games because they feel like it will be more fulfilling than working on other mindless corporate crap, and those who do get jobs in the industry are afraid to ask for more money or try to unionize because they know there are a dozen equally passionate candidates waiting to replace them for less money if they make too many waves.
The result is that wages stay lower than other tech jobs and hours worked are much higher. With AI on the rise the problem will no doubt get even worse as execs use it as an excuse to shrink teams and “do more with less”.
“we’d rather amputate that entire source of revenue than pay workers fairly”
Oh come now, Its not just about money.
Its about making sure frat boy culture of sexual harassment and assault continue unabated.
I’ll just add it to the pile of reasons why ubisoft is on my shit list alongside ea, epic, and activision.
Ubisoft just continues to be awful.
If the Canadian government were real it would exact punishing fines on the company’s Canadian held assets in response to this. And I don’t mean cost of business fees, I mean hurtful costs, because these giant fucking companies seriously damage Canadian lives when they just rugpull the labour after making massive profits of Canadian operations. There is no justifiable reason to side with Ubisoft or their scumsucking management here.
I completely agree. This isn’t so much a failure of business; it’s a failure of the government to properly hurt businesses that enact policies that hurt workers and consumers. And in democratic countries with voters, it’s also the failure of the voters.
This is why we need people like Lina Khan to be given much more power in society. There are good, liberal economists out there who understand that if you don’t regulate externalities, then market systems will cause extreme disfunction in society. Smart economists understand this, elite rich people understand it, the problem is that the bottom tier of society that is ignorant and believes in religious myths is easily deceived by the upper classes.
The result is a society with progressively more unequal wealth distribution, rapidly descending into environmental hell, with a public that is mostly confused, religious, and idioticly upset about market conditions, but glad the evil trans girl won’t be able to play softball.
All of these issues are part of the same problem: how do you convince the poor and stupid to not get tricked by the elite again? But perhaps it’s just impossible. After all, the poor are mostly religious and believe in crazy things like virgin births and flat earth… Until the poor reject such lunacy, or society becomes so awful that they are compelled to reject it, there’s really not much hope for change.
so you are saying we can end ubisoft by simply unionizing?
Eh, we are already unionized in France. The difference is we have laws protecting workers so they can’t just shut a studio down willy nilly.
So do we in Canada… But that doesn’t mean that they are enforced
Ok so did they organize and sue the company?
Cuz enforcement usually requires more work such as a class action suit. Lawyers aren’t just jumping out there suing companies and filing the paper work to protect workers all on their own. There’s usually at least one person organizing it.
So who’s the person who got let go at Ubisoft that got it started?
Jesus fucking christ so blatantly evil
As far as I’m concerned, unionization should be government mandated for every company everywhere in every industry.
But unfortunately we live in hell.
Absolutely this. We need mandated unions for every single company that exists. And with loopholes closed, like offshoring/outsourcing, corporate “headquarters” is a closet in Delaware, etc.
That’s the way it works in France (and other EU countries, I assume?). We literally have to have a workers reprensative council past a certain number of employees.
I get where you’re coming from but unions should not be mandated, they need to be formed for the actual workers that want things to change for the better. Just look at Sweden for a good example of how to implement unions at almost all workspaces without the need for the state to be involved.
Look at Belgium for a good example of how they are mandated.
So how do they do it?
By not getting the state involved at all. All negotiations happens between the workers and the companies with about 88% of workers in Sweden having a collective agreement. All workers also have the right legally to join or start a union and unionbusting is illegal. If the company doesn’t want a collective agreement it usually results in strikes such as the ongoing one against Tesla that has been going on since 2023.
But union busting being illegal is the state getting involved.
“Doesn’t need government” proceeds to name gov protection
The pinkertons have entered the chat
Don’t worry, the America’s free market provides many paramilitary groups to shutdown those pesky unions and curious journalists. No need for government involvement!
Damn, didn’t even know about those. Starting to sound like the US is just majorily fucked up with how they perceive the neverending chase for more profits (and money in the owners pockets). The problem still with government involvement is that it can then just as easily be removed and you’re back on square one. I’m not well informed enough about the US to actually give any valid input on how you would actually solve this.
They’re really up there like EA in terms of shit
My 10+ year long Ubisoft boycott still looking like a good idea.
I started to Boycott Ubisoft when they started online DRM checks for single player games that you could not play offline anymore. It was with the release of Assassins Creed 2 and I think it was Settler 7. That was about 16 years ago.
Eh, I haven’t boycott Ubisoft. But also, they don’t make good games so I haven’t bought any either. Might just make it official after this though.
indeed
Got it. No more Ubisoft support and no more money given. I’m not a big fan of unions but with no federal laws to protect the workers I am even less of a fan of union busters.
Wow, a whole unionized and competent studio now free to pursue internally chosen productions? I sure hope they don’t get some of those “Canadian Heritage” media subsidies. Seriously though this is the shit the state should be funding, it’d be a shame to have this kind of resource squandered.
Yep. Rename to Unisoft and start making good games.
They realy could make another clair obscur
Next thing I’ll learn will be that Splinter Cell was a pro fascist story all along
“Wait your saying the guy that goes in and forcibly changes country regimes with murder is a baddie? No that can’t be it…”
The open corruption and lack of empathy for the working class is just embarrassing. I hate EVERY company now since they only care about shares. They don’t even consider us as human, we are simply just tools for them and can be thrown away at any moment.
They always have. The owners of industry crave for the days of the Golden Age of Capitalism where they get to be the robber barons instead of just hearing tales about their Grandpa.
Whelp, I already de facto boycotting Ubisoft since I’m a patent gamer. Guess I’ll actively boycott them now.
Ubisoft is just seeding their own demise.
They weren’t my favorite studio before, but they’re definitely never getting another dime from me. There’s a lot of fish in the sea.
Ubisoft has been utter shir for more than a decade.
I used to love Prince of Persia, I tried to play Warrior Within half a year ago, that’s how much I love it.
But it hasn’t been the same, it’s just generic shit all over the place.
It amazes me that anyone played any far cry or assassins creed game in the last 10 years and went “yes this is a good game”. All they make is bare minimum surface level crap and it’s been that way for a loooooong time.
For Honor was their last good game.
This particular studio is responsible for some of their best titles.
