In spite of national protests, electoral results and the emergence of an anti-fascist front during the last French parliamentary elections, an illegitimate government has been imposed on us. This ultra-liberal, far-right – though it doesn’t dare admit it – government, is following in the footsteps of the policies we’ve been suffering from for the past 7 years: the destruction of everything that allows us to live.

In other words: ever fewer taxes for the rich, ever more public funds given to companies without anything in return, ever less budget for public services and wefare for those who need it… Coupled with the continued spread of far-right ideas, inaction in the face of ongoing genocides around the world, continuing inflation and the many lay-offs, in the video game industry and elsewhere, the future looks bleak if nothing changes.

Like every year, the beginning of October marks the start of parliamentary discussions on French state budgets, which govern public policy for the coming year. We need to demand funding for public services, the safeguarding of employment and the repeal of the latest pension reform.

Let’s all join forces, in continuation of past, present and future social movements in the video game industry, to demand better wages, the respect of our rights, guarantees for our jobs and democracy in the workplace.

To this end, joining other French unions, the Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo is calling for a strike in the video game industry on Tuesday, October 1, 2024. We call on video game workers, jobseekers, pensioners and students to mobilize in their companies and join the demonstrations taking place across France on that day.

We remind you that this call covers the STJV’s field of action in the private sector, and therefore concerns anyone employed by a video game publishing, distribution, services and/or creation company, whatever their position or status and whatever their company’s field of activity (games, consoles, mobile, serious games, VR/AR, game engines, marketing services, streaming, derivative products, esport, online content creation, etc.), as well as all teachers working in private schools in video game-related courses. As this is a national strike call, there’s no need to take any action to go on strike: just don’t show up for work.

Workers at Kylotonn are on strike today Monday, September 2nd to support their colleagues at Spiders.

Both studios are property of the Nacon group and encounter similar problems such as: hiring, turn over, a general lack of information about the future of our companies and the productions…

Management regularly brings up the studios’ supposed independence, but every demand we make gets rejected with the argument that there should be coherence within the Nacon group. Much in the same way, negotiations are hampered under the same pretense.

If no improvement in our working conditions is offered because “it would drive other studios within the group to ask for the same”, it stands to reason then that we make those demands together.

We thank the respective management of our studios for raising awareness of the group’s importance, and are now working on consolidating it. This is why, as workers at Kylotonn, we are expressing our solidarity with our colleagues at Spiders and are calling for a strike on September 2nd!

[08/31/2024] Update from the Spiders workers’ action committee: Spiders management met with workers on Friday morning. We are pleased to have had the opportunity to discuss a number of issues with them, but we are still waiting for concrete measures and commitment from them. A second open meeting is scheduled for Monday morning. We are maintaining our call for a strike next week. A picket will be held on Monday morning starting at 9:30 a.m. in front of Spiders’ offices at 6 Rue André Voguet in Ivry-sur-Seine, and we are inviting our supporters to join us there. Workers will also be meeting online.

This open-letter from workers at Spiders to their employers is being published by the STJV at their request. Spiders is a paris-area studio 100% owned by Nacon. It produced games such as Greedfall and Steelrising, and is currently working on Greedfall 2 and an unannounced project.

This letter to our management follows an earlier open letter and a strike on January 19, which management has chosen to ignore. Since then, new negotiations have begun on wages, and conditions in the studio have continued to deteriorate. Today, it is with regret that we speak out publicly, in the hope that this will finally push management to act in the best interests of employees and the company.

This document covers several years of known problems, which have been greatly amplified over the past year with the arrival of the current head of the company : instability, opposition to anticipating problems and securing working conditions, global mismanagement, turnover and recruitment problems, unacceptable delays in achieving gender equality and parity, important lack of transparency, denial of problems, refusal to acknowledge worker representation and blocked negotiations.

As of August 28, 2024, this letter has been signed by 43 workers at Spiders, out of 95.

We had demanded that the head of the company receive a delegation of Spiders’ workers to discuss all these points. She accepted, the delegation came to a meeting on August 27 and then waited in vain for the management to come, which it never did.

Call for strike action during the week of September 2

In light of management’s continued refusal to discuss, take the problems raised seriously and act to rectify them, we are calling on Spiders workers to go on strike during the week of September 2, 2024, on the basis of the demands set out above.

In particular, we will be organizing pickets on September 2 and 3 in front of the company’s offices and online on a Minecraft server created for the occasion.

We are inviting our relatives, friends, supporters, workers in the industry in general, journalists and political actors to join us at the pickets.

To help us strike, and if you have the means to do so, you can make a donation to the STJV strike fund, which has been activated for this strike at the request of the STJV section. Instructions on how to donate can be found on this page. Don’t hesitate to specify “Spiders” in the reference of your transfer. We’ll keep track of the sums paid to workers.

For any questions, messages of encouragement or inquiries, we invite you to contact in priority the Spiders workers’ action committee: . As a second resort, you can contact the STJV union section, which will pass on messages: .

Do not hesitate to ask for the files of the cartoons used in the letter, we can provide them by email.

In a tough context for the video games industry, the STJV section of Amplitude Studios is pleased to report the encouraging results in the 2024 annual mandatory negotiations (NAO) with the studio’s management.

Along the past year, a delegation comprised of the STJV union delegate at Amplitude Studios and workers representatives from the CSE led the NAO 2024 to an agreement with the studio’s management.

These negotiations were concluded on an equal footing with management who, despite initial resistance, opened up to discussion thanks to the joint efforts of the STJV section and a keen interest shown by the studio’s workers.

An agreement was signed on June 17th, 2024, bringing Amplitude’s workers:

• The abolition of the ETAM (employee) status and the promotion of every employee to the executive (Ingénieur et Cadre, IC) status of the SYNTEC collective bargaining agreement;
• A minimum raise of 1400€ on the annual gross salary per employee for 2024 ;
• A raise of internships stipend to 1300 € per month, as well as a raise of work-study contracts’ wages to a minimum of 1321 € ;
• Better on-call duty working conditions for the relevant teams, including the provision of company smartphones ;
• The introduction of a cap to the top-level salaries raises budget: Directors/Chiefs/Head of…

The switch to the Ingénieur et Cadres (executive) status for everyone is merely the correction of a pervasive injustice in our industry: everyone of us is practicing a skilled job, requiring autonomy and expertise. This status gives, among other things, access to better compensations in case of medical leave or layoff, as well as better retirement contributions. Find out more about the Syntec status in our practical guide.

Studio management also conceded the opening of a deep reflection about the studio’s compensation policy with the studio’s labor organizations (STJV section and workers’ representatives). It started in June 2024 and will last until the next NAO in March 2025.

The STJV section at Amplitude Studios thanks the employees for their involvement, and stays available for any feedback or questions they might be able to help on.

In these troubled times both for the video games industry and for France’s political landscape, it is easy to lose hope against rising inflation and attacks on our social rights. This victory stands as proof that together, we can obtain better work conditions for ourselves.

We encourage workers to join unions, and to get involved in fighting to preserve our rights and gain new ones.

We need to defend our rights and freedoms

Successive governments have destroyed public services, attacked justice and individual freedoms, and shattered labour laws. By legitimising far-right ideas and setting up fascism as a possible alternative, they have created the current situation.

Last Sunday, the far right came out well ahead in the French European elections. In the immediate aftermath, the President decided to add fuel to the fire by disbanding the National Assembly.

Legislative elections will be held in less than 3 weeks: the first round will take place on 30 June, and the second on 7 July. These elections may well bring the far right to power in France.

The far right in power means being caught between a rock and a hard place. Wherever it is in power, whether abroad or in our city halls, it follows the same programme:

• deadly austerity, destruction of public services
• undermining freedom of expression, of the press, of association and of trade unions
• reducing access to culture, information and justice
• attacking the rights of women, LGBT people, foreigners…

Everywhere the actions and votes of the far right prove that it is the enemy of workers. In France, for example, it has voted against: pay rises, housing benefits, increases in hospital budgets, and all ecological measures. Nor is it opposed to raising the retirement age…

We call on workers to mobilise against the far right and to join the demonstrations and rallies taking place on the weekend of 15 June.

We encourage workers to vote in the next elections to prevent the far right from coming to power, to get involved in the election campaign, which promises to be intense, and of course to get involved in the trade union and anti-fascist struggle which will be the only way for workers to win in the long term.

Do you have any questions about the electoral process, proxy voting, voter registration, etc.? We encourage you to get in touch with union activists near you or to contact us.

Let’s defeat the far right today through unity at the ballot box. Let’s defeat it tomorrow by fighting for social policies. Let’s make it disappear forever through solidarity and internationalism.

Since October, the violence perpetrated by the Israeli far-right and Israeli army against Palestinians has only increased, reaching genocidal proportions by imposing an unbearable siege on the population in which famine affects everyone and the Israeli army’s bombings and murders by drones are constant.

In the north of the Gaza Strip, which has been split in two for several months now, what little news is getting out is more catastrophic than ever, as this part of the world is effectively cut off from all supplies of water, food and healthcare.

In the south, Israel has forced Gazans to move to Rafah and along the Egyptian border, then near the sea in an ever smaller area where the density of displaced population is only increasing. The Israeli army is currently attacking and bombing this area full of civilians, breaking ever more despicable horror records.

In the West Bank, the settlers and the Israeli army are exploiting the situation, in line with Israel’s colonial policy, to multiply murders, violence, destruction, land seizures and humiliation of the Palestinian population.

Israel, with the support or complicit indifference of the majority of Western countries, including France, allows itself to ignore the condemnations and arrest warrants issued by international legal bodies, and is actively campaigning to weaken international law.

Mobilisations for a ceasefire, an end to the genocide in Palestine and the release of all hostages have continued non-stop since October, despite repression by the French government. They have resumed in earnest in recent days.

In this context, we communicated in October about the links between video games and the politics of violence around the world. Today, the STJV is joining the unitary call initiated by the CGT, and is calling on video game workers and the population as a whole to come together and demonstrate en masse on Saturday 8 June.

We demand:

• an end to war crimes and crimes against humanity as named by the International Criminal Court
• compliance with international humanitarian law
• an immediate ceasefire and the lifting of the blockade on Gaza
• an end to the bombing and forced displacement of the population
• the protection of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank
• the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas
• the release of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held without trial in Israel;
• an trade embargo on settlements in occupied Palestine
• sanctions, including the suspension of the association agreement between the European Union and Israel
• an immediate cessation of all military cooperation with Israel and all arms deliveries
• a just and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis

While negotiations are taking place at Spiders on remote work and annual pay rises for 2024, company COO and SNJV (french employer’s organisation) president Anne Devouassoux took the liberty of demanding that the STJV change the company’s trade union delegate.

Negotiations at Spiders have been going on for several months now, and have been slowed down by the management’s attitude. The climate surrounding these negotiations is very tense. As our union delegate was on sick leave for 4 weeks, negotiations were necessarily put on hold during this period, but all we had to do was wait for his return to resume them.

Anne Devouassoux, who wants to roll back the freedom to work from home acquired within the studio and is offering workers “between 0 and 3%” pay increase, sent an unbelievable mail to our union and our delegate. In her letter, she tries to exert pressure on our representatives to put an end to negotiations altough they have no deadline. These actions constitute union discrimination against our delegate.

Before trying to intimidate a democratic and independent trade union, she could have turned to the STJV’s duly mandated negotiating delegation in her company.

Anne Devouassoux claims to represent employees and to be acting in their best interests, while at the same time threatening in a follow-up email to unilaterally terminate negotiations, which would lead to the imposition of rules that have been overwhelmingly rejected by Spiders’ workers, whatever the management is pretending internally. Whilst workers want negotiations to succeed, they do not want this to happen at any cost.

As an employer, and the president of an employers’ union to boot, Anne Devouassoux cannot claim to represent and defend the interests of workers, especially when she has explicitly refused to consult Spiders employees on the negotiations underway. Workers are represented by the elected staff representatives and the representative trade unions in the company.

We demand that she put an end to these gross manoeuvres, and that she respect employee representation, our trade union freedom and the principles of fair negotiation. The injunctions and allusions made in her letter and email are intolerable. Trade union discrimination is an offence under the French Labour Code and Criminal Code.

To ensure that negotiations run smoothly and reach a successful conclusion, we advise Spiders’ management to provide the delegation with the necessary information, listen to employees and accede to the demands of the STJV trade union section.

This advice applies to all companies. We will never give in to intimidation, and we will help all workers who are victims of it.

The current situation

For several months now we have been lamenting a particularly lack of commitment on the part of video game industry employers. They believe that social dialogue means imposing their conditions unilaterally and ignoring workers’ demands and rights. It goes without saying that this kind of position also has consequences for the quality of games.

In many French studios, elected workers and union representatives have voiced their disagreement and told their employers that this situation is completely unacceptable.

In addition, and despite the spectacular mobilisations that have taken place in many studios throughout France, without necessarily having been made public, we are not seeing any appropriate reaction from our employers.

Since it is absolutely out of the question to cease fighting for workers’ rights in the industry, and as we anticipate an escalation in conflicts, we believe it is necessary to do everything we can to strengthen our means of action. And among these actions we believe it is necessary to economically re-arm the social movement in our branch.

The STJV’s strike fund is fed by a share of its members’ dues, but remains largely dependent on donations. This is why we are launching a call for donations to the STJV’s strike fund.

This call is addressed to all those who have the means to do so, and who wish to support social action in our industry.

What will it be used for?

These donations will be dedicated to the strike fund, and exclusively dedicated to this purpose. They will be used to provide an income for striking workers, by going directly into the local strike funds run by workers.

Traditionally, strikers meet to decide collectively and democratically how to distribute the available funds, taking into account the information available to them, everyone’s needs and the future of the movement.

Why donate to our strike fund?

If you work in the video games industry

Then you probably already understand why we need to be prepared. We invite you to donate if, for example, you are not in a position to go on strike because your working conditions do not allow you to, but you have sufficient financial means. Or if you work alongside people who are involved in games production but you are not directly involved yourself, and you would like to give them strength.

If you don’t work in the industry, but play games

In that case, it is also in your interest that good working conditions are ensured in game studios. Companies in which workers’ voices are no longer taken into account are also companies in which the final result of the work done is likely to be mediocre.

Video game development is a collective effort that requires intelligent organisation, both to ensure that the people working on it don’t burn out and to ensure that the end result is correct. If you’re interested, we recommend a video (in French) on the Bolchegeek channel on this subject.

Whether we’re criticising dysfunctional working conditions or the mediocre state in which games are released, we’re talking about the same thing: absurd decisions taken against all logic, ignoring the warnings of those who actually work. Our response to these problems must be collective.

How can I donate?

To donate to the STJV’s strike fund, all you have to do is make a transfer to the STJV’s strike fund account, which can be found below:

IBAN: FR76 1027 8060 3100 0207 2930 259

BIC: CMCIFR2A

To simplify accounting and the identification of donations to the strike fund, please remember to mention “strike fund” in the description of your transfer.