EA's Open Letter to Ubisoft

Alex Petraglia writes "I'd actually laugh at this if I didn't find it so disturbing. An open letter sent from Alain Tascan, General Manager of EA Montreal, to Joel Tremblay, Ubisoft Montreal, begins as such: 'On behalf of all game makers in Quebec, I urge Ubisoft to stop the illegitimate practice of forcing talented people to sign employment contracts that restrict their creative and economic freedom.' EA came under great scrutiny last year with claims of stifling employee creativity, refusing to pay for overtime, and generally engaging in less-than-savory practices. Additionally, it's widely known that EA currently seeks to gain greater control over Ubi through a hostile takeover."

Comments

Instead of bitching about EA

[Anonymous Coward]

vote with your wallet and don't purchase any of their games. It's not like they're a monopoly.

Re:Instead of bitching about EA

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Sorry but this is NOT even remotely insightful.

Lets say I was going to buy 1 EA game this year and so were 3 of my friends. If I convince them all night to thats 4 sales lost... now when you consider a big hit like EA sports games they sell thousands or millions. Nothing short of losing a good 1000+ sales will even remotely register with them. I don't have the power to stop that and I doubt most of Slashdot does. So "vote with your wallet" works about as well as "vote for the guy you want". One or two people mean nothing in this day and age, you really can't do much and a small scale boycott won't effect them at all.

Re:Instead of bitching about EA

[prefect42]

That slightly misses the point. If a geek is pissed off with EA and decides to vote with their wallet, then even though it only affects 1 game purchase, if EA piss off enough individual people, that's a lot of sales gone. So it easily could register in the thousands.

Re:Instead of bitching about EA

[perp]

So "vote with your wallet" works about as well as "vote for the guy you want". One or two people mean nothing in this day and age, you really can't do much and a small scale boycott won't effect them at all.

I can relate. It would be inconvenient for me to not buy EA's Whatever 2006 and/or go and vote and/or give money to charity or any of those thing that misguided people say can make a "difference". I won't go out of my way to do anything that doesn't immediately solve all the problems in one fell swoop and, since I have no choices that will have that effect, I am sadly unable to do anything.

At least I am not alone in my view. There seem to be many other people who believe as I do.

translation

[Tebriel]

"Since your people are contracted, we can't steal them away to burn them out and abuse them like rented mules. No fair!"

Screw EA

[MarkPNeyer]

Non-Compete clauses are typical in plenty of industries. This is just a bunch of posturing by those jackasses over at EA. Screw them.

Re:Screw EA

[Guspaz]

That's the thing, though. Labour law is a provincial affair, and Quebec labour law is quite different from the rest of Canada or the US. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that Ubisoft's non-compete agreements will be ruled invalid.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the Quebec government subsidizes Ubisoft. As the article mentions, 50% of Ubisoft employee salaries are paid by the government. Does Ubisoft really have any right to a non-compete clause when the government is paying half the salary? I would still disagree with a non-compete clause with no subsidy at all, but when you have a 50% subsidy, it is insane.

Talking about non-compete being standard "in the industry" doesn't matter. This is not "the industry", this is Quebec. We tend towards a civil-law legal system, not common-law. This means that while jurisprudence is considered, more stock is held in the SPIRIT of the law rather than past rulings about the law. Regardless of what the rest of "the industry" does, any ruling on a non-compete clause would be based on violation of Quebec law.

My guess is that if a final ruling is rendered, the non-compete clause will be declared invalid. That seems in line with the attitude here. However, IANAL.

shows uncanny insight into human psychology

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to be dishonest, do it on the big scale. Do you treat your workers like shit? Deny it, if you don't pretend like it doesn't exist in the first place, but turn around and claim the high road and accuse your competitors of doing it. People are more dazzled by audacity than they are turned off by dishonesty, and so long as the "cha-chings" outnumber the "tisk-tisks", you're golden.

Works elsewhere, as you can imagine. Take that hateful son of a bitch Bill O'Reilly on Fox. The man dumps contempt on absolutely everybody he can, and when it's revisited to him, he pretends to take the high road and chastise those who point out what he does, including a recent stab at NBC. The hypocrisy is so blatant it's blinding, and yet so long as there are a bunch of yokels stupid enough to keep tuning in to Fox to watch the fireworks, he'll get his paychecks and all the critics will be wasting their breath.

Even in politics. Look at George W. Bush. The man lied about WMDs in Iraq. There are other lies, the administration bleeds them, but this one serves as an example well enough. The man lied about WMDs in Iraq, and not just a few, but stockpiles and delivery systems and plans to get more. When the UN started sending back reports that the disarming was going steadily, Bush stepped it up and demanded on television that Saddam stopped playing his games, even when all evidence at the time, and all evidence after the fact, pointed to the fact that Saddam was cooperating more than he was hindering. What did Americans do after Bush started that needless war? They re-elected him. IN RECORD NUMBERS.

It's a question of power. People love people who wield power audaciously. It's why the Napoleans and Alexander the Greats and even the Hitlers get their power and keep it. For all our evolutionary advances, we're still tribal creatures. We love shows of power, because it reminds us that we have it, which is much better than realizing that you don't.

Non-compete clauses

[hattig]

When taken to the extreme they unfairly restrict a person's trade.

E.g., Computer programmer writing games for Ubisoft, moves to EA. Cannot do so, as 'computer game programming' is competing.

Clearly if a programmer for an unreleased game in a certain genre with unique features left Ubisoft and joined EA to help write a game in the same genre, it'd be an issue. I don't see how it should stop them joining EA to program something in a different area.

If you want to retain your employees, then give them an incentive to remain with you, such as good working conditions, good wages, a fun job. Don't indenture them to you by restricting their freedoms if they choose to leave, i.e., work for us in this dark cellar, have no fun, no wage increase, oh and if you leave, we won't let you get another job except in MacDonalds.

(yes, that's taking it a bit too far, and EA aren't exactly renowned for their good working conditions and practices, but hey...)

Re:Huh?

[Sefert]

It's a small industry. Monopolies are created when you effectively have control of the market. (Not when you have 100% control, as most people think). As such, if EA, with their very deep pockets, can cripple the competition just by hiring away a few key individuals, they're exercising monopoly powers rather than just engaging in fair competition.

Ubisoft on the other hand, as a defence, is trying to strongarm their employees to do what they want. Though, as another posted mentioned, it's common practice to sign non-competition agreements, this is not the same thing - let's face it, if you're a game developer in Montreal, and you don't want to work for Ubisoft any more, where are you going to go? Courts will generally not uphold an agreement that forces someone to be left unemployed (and effectively unemployable if they're wanting to use their skill set).

Once again though - EA is using their lawyers to defend the poaching of employees, under the guise of looking out for the employees interests. Somehow, based on their history, I think we can be pretty sure that EA isn't looking for their employees' best interests....

Lets put 2 and 2 together

[bherman]

This has nothing to do with EA wanting to steal away talent or Ubi having "unethical" business practices (In EA's opinion). This is about EA trying to make their takeover better for their bottom line. If EA gobbles up Ubi, they have to then deal with the employment contracts. Usually a contract has buyout if the employee is terminated. Well, if EA buys Ubi they are going to probably terminate plenty of employees to cut their costs. They can't do that efficiently if they have to pay X dollars for every employee they terminate. This is just EA trying to improve their bottom line for a takeover plain and simple. But they are doing it under the guise of being a good company.