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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."
The pot told the Kettle : "You're black".
"Quit making decent games. You make us look bad."
This is a sig. It is appended to the end of comments I post.
"Since your people are contracted, we can't steal them away to burn them out and abuse them like rented mules. No fair!"
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Non-Compete clauses are typical in plenty of industries. This is just a bunch of posturing by those jackasses over at EA. Screw them.
My blog
Ubisoft should reply telling EA to stop running talented people into the ground and putting them off working in the industry
Did you get that thing I sent ya?
nothing
I pulled the above from this article:
http://www.nyunews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/0
I don't know what sort of evil corprate games they are playing, but knowing E.A. they will probably manage to shaft everyone.
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.
I like muppets.
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.
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...)
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....
Dear EA:
Screw you!
With our best wishes,
Ubisoft.
you would rather be a consultant. At least then you are paid by the hour. 80 hour weeks for 6 months at a time while death marching to an unrealistic gold date is no fun. When I was putting in 100+ hour weeks at a now defunct game company I calculated I could make more money on a per hour basis by being a manager trainee at McDonalds.
Yes, the benefits were good.......... but nowhere near the compensation for the long hours.
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there is no job security in the game indistry. Period. Top talent is laid of with impunity at the end of development cycles. I worked under a really great lead programmer who has an incredible work ethic, is very talented, and who would work 100+ hours every week to make sure we didn't slip our milestones. He has numerous credits on top titles. Last I heard he was laid off by Lucas Arts (him and the majority of the project's team) after putting in blood sweat and tears to see the project to completion.
You are disposable in the games industry. there is no job security.
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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.
jh
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.
Error: Sig not found.
Sadly, here in the States people can't value a good product. No, names on players are more important than quality gameplay and 2K Sports knows this. Luckily, Blitz: The League proved that you don't need a license (actually Winning Eleven has been doing that for years, but it has names if I'm not mistaken).
Oh well, I'm just crossing my fingers that EA doesn't snatch up the NHL license.
"This is considered plagiarism."
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.
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
It's disturbing because EA has been (and continues to be) the target of class-action lawsuits over non-payment of overtime pay... not to mention the target of much online scorn over their working conditions. (Google for "ea_spouse" if you somehow weren't paying attention the past two years.)
Granted, it's not exactly the same issue as Ubisoft, but EA is in no position to be criticizing *anyone* over its employment policies.