French game-worker union calls national strike over layoffs and AI fears

Trust in management has become a fault line in games, and the latest strike call from France’s STJV shows how far that skepticism has spread. The union said it will call a national strike across the entire video-game sector on Thursday, June 25, arguing that the industry is in a critical situation and that more than 1,000 jobs have already been destroyed or threatened.

STJV’s June 22 appeal did not treat layoffs as isolated shocks. It tied the crisis to years of warnings about poor working conditions, project-management failures, repeated abuse against workers and hostility toward unions, while also warning that AI and outsourcing could make jobs and day-to-day conditions worse if companies do not change course. The union said the action was meant to unite workers across the sector and press for major organizational changes and more democratic decision-making.

The strike call lands in a French industry already rattled by repeated cuts. STJV issued a separate national strike call on May 27 after publishing a tally of layoffs and liquidations that named Ubisoft’s headquarters in Saint-Mandé, Cyanide, Big Bad Wolf, Kylotonn, Nacon, Quantic Dream, Eden Games, Midgar Studio and Don’t Nod among the companies affected. That earlier call said the union had counted more than 1,000 jobs destroyed or threatened in the short term.

The broader context matters well beyond France. On February 13, 2025, French video-game workers staged what AFP described as the first-ever sector-wide strike in the country’s games industry, a walkout centered on working conditions and job cuts. STJV has also been collecting anonymous testimonies about harsh treatment and sexism, underscoring that the current wave of labor unrest is about more than headcount.

For Nintendo employees, especially those in production, QA, localization and operations, the warning signs are familiar even if the company’s structure is different. Burnout, opaque decision-making, unstable staffing and pressure to ship on unrealistic schedules are the same problems that can quietly erode quality-first cultures. Nintendo’s own CSR philosophy says its goal is to put smiles on the faces of everyone Nintendo touches, including employees, supply-chain workers, shareholders and investors, and its support operations span multiple regions, showing how wide the company’s labor and service footprint runs.

That makes STJV’s strike call more than a French labor story. It is a measure of how much confidence workers now have in the people steering the business, and a reminder that in games, reputational risk often starts as a workplace problem long before it reaches players.