Following a catastrophic assessment of the video game industry, the STJV set out a plan to make the industry better, including a call for a video game general strike.
The strike happened on the 13th of February 2025. It was joined by other unions present in the video game industry, including in other countries with coordinated strikes in Spain and Italy.
The turnout was huge, with more than 1000 workers attending the 9 rallies in France, and approximately 2000 workers going on strike during the day, 20% of the whole French video game industry. It showed how much workers are aware of our industry’s issues, and how much they want to take part in its management.
A little bit over a year later, we can only observe that the video game industry is not doing better. High up in their ivory towers, the executives managing the industry’s companies are still dead set on their self-destructive path. They keep taking out of touch decisions, hoping that problems will magically solve themselves and that profits will go up, probably. One could think that, to them, jobs, salaries and workers’ health are only management variables, but it would require that executives are able to manage anything in the first place.
On the opposite side, workers and unions keep mobilising and producing concrete work, hoping to save the industry from their bosses’ wrongdoings. The ongoing social movement at Ubisoft is a perfect example.
Let’s take a look back at the STJV’s progress on the orientations presented in January 2025.
Informing workers
- We started work internally on a future survey of the industry, to concretely analyse jobs and working conditions in the video game industry.
- We continued the production of guides and fact sheets, both for internal and public use, including ongoing work on the rights of freelancers and independent workers.
- An internal training programme is being developed and should be deployed in 2026 if everything goes well.
Raising awareness among public authorities
- Since the general strike in 2025, many contacts have been established with local representatives, to present the industry, its issues and its importance. These contacts were useful to help workers during strikes.
- The STJV was able to advise national representatives while they were preparing to audition video game executives at the Assemblée Nationale and the Senate.
Reorganising video game productions
In addition to the constant discussions and debates taking place inside the STJV :
- We worked on guidelines on generative AI, focused on the long term threat it poses for jobs and the video game industry.
- We started work on workers cooperatives and small scale video game production initiatives, to study the options available and fight against the creation of an indie games petite bourgeoisie.
Making the fight international
- The STJV actively took part in Uni Global and Uni Europa activities and congresses in 2025, and will keep doing so in 2026. Our goal is, at the international and interprofessional level, to present our structure and defend our conviction that unions must hold clear and radical positions if they don’t want to be destroyed by fascism.
- We have been trying for months to help Palestinian video game workers to escape the ongoing genocide perpetrated by Israel, but we have been stuck by France’s refusal to ask for their evacuation.
- With IWGB Game Workers, the STJV organised an European summit for video game unions at the end of 2025. It led to a joint declaration and a concrete plan for action between 6 video game unions across Europe, which should be implemented in 2026.
- Game Workers Coalition (GWC), the interntational video game unions network, kept growing on all continents.
Creating and securing new rights
- In 2025, we focused on efforts to increase our negotiating knowledge and skills, both by training workers’ representatives on collective bargaining, and by providing direct help to our union sections.
- Our comrades at Don’t Nod managed to win professional recognition for the company’s workers, making it the second video game company with such global recognition after Amplitude. This status was also retroactively awarded to a worker by the labour courts.
- Despite delaying tactics from Ubisoft, we gained, with the other unions present in the group, the recognition by a court of a de facto single entity grouping together all legal entities of Ubisoft in France.
- Last year also saw the slow but steady emergence of a new right in the video game industry, with menstrual or short sickness paid leave being rolled out in several companies.
Afters several years of complete blockage by company executives, who only seem to understand force, the STJV encouraged its union sections and worker representatives to sue their companies to be able to exerce their rights. This call was duly noted, as the number of legal actions increased significantly in 2025. The STJV and worker representatives are raking in victory after victory on topics such as negotiations, labour law, harassment…
Video game workers did not rest on their laurels after the general strike of february 2025! On the contrary they showed that, despite facing many obstacles, it is possible to build a lasting movement to try to stabilise and improve a video game industry despised and trampled down by its own bosses.
Following the principle of the double besogne (double task), we will follow our orientations and implement the necessary actions to both improve working conditions in the short term, and make the video game sustainable in the long term through direct worker control.