The hits keep rolling for the makers of Assassin’s Creed

• Assassin’s Creed creator Ubisoft is now facing strike action from its developers after asking them to return to the office a few days a week.
• The union that represents Ubisoft’s employees says that the devs have had to shift their home lives around to support remote work and now they cannot return to normal office hours.
• The strike threat comes a day after Ubisoft delayed the launch of its highly anticipated Assassin’s Creed: Shadows.

French game development giant Ubisoft isn’t having the best week. After announcing the delay of its upcoming and highly anticipated Assassin’s Creed: Shadow by around three months, and seeing its stock price tumble, the company may now face strike action from its staff – the people that actually make the games.

The labour union that represents the developers at Ubisoft are calling for a three-day strike action after executives at the company requested staff to return to the office for three days a week after they had been working from home since 2020.

According to a Reuters report, Ubisoft’s top brass called for workers to return home after a recent profit-sharing negotiation collapse between Ubisoft and the union, STJV.

“After more than five years of working efficiently in the current remote-work context, many of our colleagues have built or rebuilt their lives (family life, housing, parenthood, etc.) and simply cannot return to the previous working conditions,” the union said in a statement.

The strike action is currently slated to take place from 15th to 17th October, which is smack dab in the middle of development, and very close to the previously set release date of 12th November 2024.

Officially, the company said that its developers “need more time to polish and refine the experience.”

“We understand this decision will come as disappointing news, but we sincerely believe this is in the best interest of the game,” added director Marc-Alexis Côté. Ubisoft also started offering refunds for players that pre-ordered the game early.

Delaying Assassin’s Creed: Shadows piles more problems on Ubisoft, which also launched Star Wars: Outlaws this year to mixed reviews. A bigger disappointment to the critical response for the game was its commercial response.

Ubisoft told investors that “sales were softer than expected” for Star Wars: Outlaws. In our own review we noted that the game was solid, but lacked a certain spark that kept us coming back. After we finished our review, we had no reason to return.

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