It's been announced yesterday, it's just insane. Ubi-Soft plans to hire 1000 new employees in Montreal in the next few years. This will bring their total number of employees to 2000. It's easily going to be the largest game development centers in the world if not the largest gaming center.
As a software developper and a born gamer, how does this news make me feel... Well, in a word, angry.
Now, for a little bit of history. 30 months ago, I had been hired as a student by GameLoft. GameLoft is a small satellite company of UbiSoft that develops games on portable devices (cell phones, PDA's, etc...). Having studied in computer science in order to join the gaming industry, I was very excited by this chance, despite the small scale of games I was going to work on.
However, one week before I was supposed to start working. They sent me an e-mail, nothing else, telling me that because in Montreal we made more money than the students in France, we were all out of a job. It's something that they knew long before they decided to hire me in the first place. It was a decision from the UbiSoft administration in fact.
Nonetheless, one of my friends, who was supposed to be working with me at GameLoft, negociated a contract at minimum wage, because he had nothing else to do. Nonetheless, he was shit on during the whole four months he was there. He found them to be the four most miserable months of his life.
Also, I have a friend that used to work at the company where I'm at. He decided to quit it because he had the oppertunity to join Ubi-Soft. That was five months ago, since then I've only seen him once. He works 12 hour days 6 days a week. He barely had any time off on Christmas. He's driven to slave labour by the promise of some glory... but doesn't even get his overtime paid.
But hey! It's great, he's working on Splinter Cell 3, which should be one of the smashing hits of 2005. *sigh* I don't care much about Splinter Cell personally, but I do care that my friend might burn himself out and that I haven't been able to see him in a while.
Ubi-Soft has a harsh management. It's a huge software box that leaves you minimal creativity. It slave drives it's employees, knowing far well that there are hundreds queuing outside for the chance to work with the gaming giant. It disheartens me, makes me sick.
Two years ago, I've taken the decision to boycott UbiSoft entirely. I'm one of those weirdos who buys his games, but I've not purchased a Ubi-Soft product in the last 2 years, nor will I ever again.
What I do hope, however, is that this expansion might attract other gaming companies and initiatives in my city, Montreal. What I fear might happen though, is that Ubi-Soft will suck the young programming talents and kill the competion in Montreal. And that would be sad.
Boycott Ubi-Soft.
Layson
