Ubisoft Paris Acused Of Crunch Culture And Mishandling Just Dance 2023
Ubisoft Paris has come under fire several times over the past few years following complaints of “institutional” sexual harassment within its walls. Now, the studio is once again in the limelight after the French game worker union Solidaire Informatique accused its top brass of crunch culture and mismanagement during the time that the studio was working on Just Dance 2023.
The studio’s employees complained about forced overtime, broken promises to hire more staff to share the workload, and long shifts for most developers, particularly those in the QA department. They also claimed that the studio mismanaged the game’s development with last-minute development and design decisions that had to be implemented “at all costs” and unreasonable demands which included swapping game engines less than a year before launch despite the fact that the dev team was already drowning from the workload.
“Either they have no choice but to achieve the impossible, or we are forced to change everything,” one of the studio’s employees anonymously revealed. “This is morally and physically exhausting for the employees.”
Ubisoft HQ also allegedly pressured the Paris studio to ensure that Just Dance 2023 became the company’s first big live service game and that it was launched in time for Christmas 2022 despite suggestions to push it back to 2024. The project reportedly caused 10% of Ubisoft Paris’s employees to burn out.
Ubisoft Montpellier is also under investigation by the French labor agency following similar reports of excessive burn outs and sick leaves.
Ubisoft has yet to comment on the matter.
