French Union Says Ubisoft CEO Has No Knowledge or Understanding of the Company After Major Reset
Ubisoft’s newly announced major reset is already escalating from a corporate restructuring story into a full scale workplace conflict, with France’s video game industry union Solidaires Informatique publicly blasting Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and organizing an initial strike action in Paris.
According to reporting from Le Monde, the union’s first visible response took place on Thursday, January 22, 2026, outside Ubisoft Paris, framed as an initial answer to what it called the absurdity of management’s decisions. The union also shared the action publicly via a post on Bluesky.
This flashpoint arrives right after Ubisoft restructured itself into 5 new Creative Houses, alongside creating new leadership roles, pushing out longtime internal veterans, canceling 6 projects, delaying 7 more, and starting 4 new ones. The shake up is also reportedly paired with additional layoffs and a return to office mandate, which employees and unions argue effectively compresses job security and flexibility at the exact moment teams are already strained.
Le Monde reports the protest drew 10 attendees and carried 3 core demands: ending the cost cutting program, maintaining and extending remote work policies, and securing decent pay raises. The union’s messaging is aggressively aimed at the top. In a statement attributed to Solidaires Informatique union representative Marc Rutschlé, the union claims that Yves Guillemot has no knowledge or understanding of his company or its employees, and describes a workplace climate defined by anger and despair.
The union’s critique is not only about canceled projects or creative direction. It is a direct challenge to Ubisoft’s operating model. The claims include teams working under pressure while understaffed, multiple years without meaningful pay rises, and frustration that a reorganization allegedly creates high level roles with excessive salaries while frontline developers feel squeezed. The union also frames the forced reversal on working conditions as a disguised redundancy plan designed to push employees out.
This is also where the story moves from portfolio management into a reputational risk event. When internal morale breaks down, production velocity slows, recruitment becomes harder, retention costs spike, and delays become a structural outcome rather than a one time slip. For a publisher whose competitive edge depends on long cycle AAA pipelines and live service stability, that is the kind of operational drag that can compound quickly.
On top of the union action, Insider Gaming reports that internal communication channels are now full of employees shaming upper management and calling for change. Separately, some Ubisoft staff are reportedly using LinkedIn to signal they are looking for other opportunities even if they have not been laid off, as shown in this LinkedIn post. That kind of public signaling is a major red flag in any creative industry, because it suggests trust has eroded beyond internal remediation and into open market positioning.
Ubisoft’s situation is already defined by tough optics: a reported share price low not seen since 2011 and a 95% loss in total value over the last 8 years, alongside years of turbulence, project disruption, and repeated morale hits. This latest reset was positioned as the path to execution discipline. Instead, early signals suggest it may be triggering the opposite reaction inside the studios that need to ship the next generation of Ubisoft games.
If Ubisoft wants this reset to land as a turnaround rather than a fracture, the company’s next moves will matter as much as the Creative Houses themselves. Workforce stability, credible communication, and sustainable production planning are now part of the release schedule, whether leadership wants to admit it or not.
What do you think Ubisoft should prioritize first to rebuild confidence, stabilizing working conditions and retention, or doubling down on portfolio focus even if it means more disruption?
