In December last year, Ubisoft Halifax employees voted overwhelmingly in favour of establishing a union – 74 per cent said yes. Just a few weeks later, the French company shut the studio down and laid off everyone.
Legal action followed, which the two sides settled in April, only for Ubisoft to then close its Winnipeg studio in June, laying off a further 65 employees.
Those layoffs – more than 45,000 globally since 2022, with 8,200 so far this year including Microsoft’s news this week of an additional 3,200 Xbox cuts – are what’s driving the unionization push, not just at Ubisoft but across the industry.
Employees at U.S. studios owned by Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax Media and Sega of America have all unionized recently. Last year, workers in the United States and Canada partnered with the Communications Workers of America to announce the United Videogame Workers-CWA Local 9433, marking the historic launch of an industry-wide labour movement.
In this episode, Ubisoft Halifax lead programmer and union leader Jon Huffman takes us behind the scenes of the studio’s move to get organized, and he explains how consolidation and financialization are forcing workers across the industry to finally fight back.
Check out Huffman’s new independent games studio, Phantom Rowboat.
