In the second half of this year, Ubisoft was once reduced to a talent market in the game industry.
The main reason is the "complaints" of employees, more than a thousand employees have launched petitions to ask Ubisoft management to improve the office environment, and denounced the "systematic discrimination, harassment and bullying" of Ubisoft content, but the top management is not concerned about this. As time went on, more and more people joined the protests, slamming Ubisoft's inaction, and many began to leave the company.
On the other hand, the strength of many manufacturers overseas, so that they are full of desire for talent, only in the domestic side, there are Tencent, NetEase, Mihayou and other manufacturers are eyeing the tiger, Tencent's Tianmei and Photon have established R & D teams in North America, with other regional teams to develop in collaboration; NetEase has also issued an announcement that the establishment of a game studio in Montreal will recruit international talents in North America for research and development work; Mihayou has also said that within two years, in Montreal, to establish a hundred-person development team. Overseas, Google, Facebook, Fist Games, etc. are all in full swing to absorb talents, and the dissatisfaction of Ubisoft employees has given them the opportunity to expand their talent pool.
However, in order to retain the hearts and minds of employees, Ubisoft has chosen the most practical and effective method - "salary increase". According to relevant sources, Ubisoft Montreal Studio quickly took action, announcing that it will increase salaries and increase paid leave for employees involved in the development of the Assassin's Creed series and Far Cry series from January next year to retain those senior game development talents, in terms of amount, junior employees can get 5-7% salary increases, while senior employees can get up to 20% salary increases, but this move has also intensified new controversy, and grassroots employees feel that such an increase will make the salary gap of the company's content continue to widen. Especially for the majority of junior developers, this salary adjustment will cause them to have a greater psychological gap.
Many problems make Ubisoft's current situation extremely difficult.
According to foreign media reports, and the growing brain drain of many game companies, Ubisoft is facing a particularly serious situation, especially in terms of employee departures, according to the latest report of Axios, in the past 18 months, Ubisoft has seen a large-scale departure, the proportion of middle and low-level employees is very high, but there is also no lack of some project leaders, such as "Far Cry 6", "Assassin's Creed" and other game projects, some employees said that the business gap caused by the departure of employees is slowing their progress.
Among them, the departure of studios in Mondier and Toronto is the most serious, but this is also expected, after all, under the sincere invitation of many companies, employees who leave Ubisoft are not worried about their follow-up work problems. That's why Ubisoft has left 60 of its studios alone, with a common attitude of new studios being over-competitive pressure, disappointment with creative issues related to compensation issues, and uneasiness about the company's recent developments.
In the report released by Ubisoft, issues such as turnover rates have also been responded to. Ubisoft admitted that its attrition rate is indeed a few percentage points higher than normal, but it does not break through the normal range of the industry, and foreign media also cited the turnover rate of other companies on LinkedIn data, such as Activision Blizzard at 16%, EA at 9%, Take-Two at 8%, and Epic Games as 7%. As of January 2020, the average downsizing rate in the gaming industry was 15.5%.
From Ubisoft's point of view, experienced developers, capable senior talents, through higher salaries to retain themselves is not a problem, but the key is how to adjust to make everyone feel balanced, which requires managers to have better ideas and judgments, from a recent series of operations, Ubisoft seems to be somewhat lacking in this regard.