Eden Games, developers of (most recently) Test Drive Unlimited 2, have gone on strike today, in protest at what the workforce describes as “Atari mismanagement.”
The French studio is facing massive redundancies, with 51 of the 80 staff under threat of losing their jobs. In a statement, the studio claims that “Restructuring plans have been following each others for 10 years at Atari. Each time the recovery project was beautiful and promising, and ended in a failure.”
“For several years we are witnessing multiple leader changes at [Ataris] head, they did not hesitate to get rich despite financial difficulties,” it adds.
A four-point agenda has been drawn up by the studio which is recreated in full, below:
Communicate and interact with the CEO, Jim Wilson, who has never introduced himself to his employees.
Have a constructive negotiation on the terms of the redundancy plan, and not one-sided as is the case now.
Be sure that an employee of Eden Games is compensated the same way as an employee of Atari.
Have real visibility on the future of the studio after the restructuring, especially in giving us the financial records requested by our accountant.
This is one of the few times I can ever recall a games development studio taking collective action over proposed job losses.
Source: GamesIndustry
Image taken during the May riots in Paris, 1968.
