Gaming: Don't Call It A Layoff: Ubisoft Issues A Full Return-to-office...
I can't help wondering if maybe there's a connection.
Stuffed away in a corner of Ubisoft's latest high-speed skid off a cliff is a note for employees: "To support the effective implementation and operation of this new model, the Group also intends to return to five days per week on site for all teams." Employees who have been working remotely in any capacity, in other words, will no longer have that option: It's back to conventional office time for everyone.
"This evolution is intended to strengthen collaboration, including constant knowledge sharing, and the collective dynamic across teams," Ubisoft said, explaining the decision. "In-person collaboration is a key enabler of collective efficiency, creativity and success in a persistently more selective AAA market." In lieu of regular remote work, employees will be given "an annual allowance of working-from-home days."
It seems like a small thing amidst yet another Ubisoft catastrophe, but the reaction to the announcement is strongly negative, and rightly so. Remote work, by and large, works, and after years of doing so effectively and adjusting their lives accordingly, being ordered back to the office on a full-time basis is incredibly disruptive for employees suddenly find themselves faced with a need to find childcare, pay commuting costs, and absorb other related expenses, all with no compensating increase in pay—which is to say nothing of the massive and often unnecessary pain in the ass it is.
Because of that, some employees, and possibly many, simply won't do it. Which is the point: It's an effect companies have wielded strategically as a form of "soft layoffs," in which employees aren't actually laid off, but are instead presented with onerous conditions for continued employment that effectively coerces them into resigning.
The term can also be applied to, for example, a "voluntary career transition program" in which employees are given the choice to either quit now with some benefits, or risk getting shitcanned later with nothing.
Ring a bell? It happened recently at Ubisoft Massive, which in October 2025 offered employees "the opportunity to take their next career step on their own terms," and then dropped the hammer earlier this month when not enough of them did so.
And yes, more such cuts are coming: Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said today that as part of the company's latest bid to keep the lights on, it will "selectively close several studios and continue restructurings throughout the Gr
Source: PC Gamer
