Nov 11 2008
RUMOR: Ubisoft/Eidos Montreal involved in employee salary fixing scandal and spying
From maxconsole.net:
 |
Just a rumor so far, so take this with a grain of salt.
A former mid-level manager (of whom we do not previously know) has got in touch with us to potentially expose what is a very disturbing alleged occurrence in the games industry. On the condition of anonymity, he has revealed attempts of Montreal gaming studios to fix salaries of employees and rampant spying by Ubisoft Montreal on all emails to and from its competitors. The source (he was responsible for setting up the e-mail spying) forwarded us along an email between former director of HR at Eidos Montreal (Tremblay) to the Vice President of HR at Ubisoft Montreal (Baillet). In the email, Eidos note there is no benefit of raising salaries and hope the two companies do not so for competitive reasons and EA must be convinced to do the same.
What is your opinion on this? Have you been affected by this?
Update: In-Depth: Montreal Game Biz Sees Salary-Fixing Collusion?
Related posts:
- In-Depth: Montreal Game Biz Sees Salary-Fixing Collusion?
- Rumor: Ubisoft readies new Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six
- Rumor: Midway’s Wheelman Is Now Ubisoft’s Wheelman [Update]
- Thief 4 rumors reignited by Eidos Montreal teaser
- An Eidos Montreal Studio Tour
5 responses so far | Tags: collusion, eidos, rumor, salary, scandal, ubisoft
If the wage-fixing rumor is true, then it’s probably illegal. I am not a lawyer, but as far as I know wage-fixing falls under the category of collusion and violates canadian antitrust law.
From a logical standpoint however, it seems to me that Ubisoft and its competitors in montreal would be playing a dangerous game if indeed they did commit collusion. Any agreements they made would not have the force of law behind them (being illegal agreements) so it would be easy to screw each other over. Even without raising base salaries for their employees, it would still be relatively easy for each competitor to retain talent and poach talent from each other by way of raising bonuses, adjusting bonus payout schemes, and offering hiring bonuses.
Even if they all played fair with each other, any new competition entering the market is not in on the scam and can easily poach talent by offering higher salaries, leaving the colluding companies to scramble to attempt to halt turnover.
It just seems like a really stupid idea and I hope its just a rumor.
This is standard fare for Ubisoft in almost every city it sets up. An informal agreement of this nature with any top competitors in the city is always a top priority. There should be nothing surprising about this news.
Ubisoft management “ideologues” are some of the most corrupt in the business, as anyone that has worked with them can attest. This is one of several methods they use to shore up either incompetent or shoddy internal HR practices.
What is surprising is that Eidos didn’t tell Ubi to go fuck themselves when extended this kind of offer like EA/Dice did in Bucharest or Crytek did in Kiev.
I confirm the practice at Ubisoft who I worked for many years.
They let you think that you will have a good salary upgrade at the end of a project, but each time, they find things on which you have to work-on before, so you don’t have your upgrade.
The worst thing is they have the help of Quebec Government and they pretend to give some of the most competitive salary in the industry…
You just have to find some head-hunter to know that it is not true, you can easily got the double in US and UK and 33% more at EA montreal.
An other proof of they’re corruption and the corruption of our Government Mr. Charest.
I’m not for upgrading the salary too higher, but fairly and according to the position.
If you do not accept they’re stupid offers, maybe they will have no other choice than following the industry…
[...] original memo — independently verified by Gamasutra as being legitimate — was also recently leaked onto the web, and the timing of the leak appears significant – it is, after all, over a year [...]
The “spying” on emails to and from competitors is also standard practice in Quebec City. Ubisoft Quebec, Sarbakan and Frima are known to do it. Some of them even inform their employees of such company practices. Don’t ever negociate contract terms with the competition using your work email address.