We’re Done Playing! Standing up for Video Game Workers

MONTREAL (Feb. 11, 2026) – CWA Canada members from Ubisoft Halifax, BGS Montreal, United Videogame Workers, and Game Workers Unite held an information picket today outside the office of video game giant Ubisoft.

They spoke with hundreds of Ubisoft staff about working conditions, and passed out leaflets about the recent closure of the company’s Halifax studio. The Montreal workers were overwhelmingly supportive of their laid-off colleagues, and appalled at the closure.

The event was timed to coincide with an international strike called by unionized Ubisoft workers in France and Italy.

“I was moved by the outpouring of support we had from our colleagues at Ubisoft Montreal,” said Kira Wigg, a Ubisoft Halifax worker who helped organize with CWA Canada.

Jon Huffman, another Ubisoft Halifax worker, called the event “a huge success.”

“And we’re ready to keep going until we get fair treatment for all 71 of us.”  

CWA Canada President Carmel Smith noted that there is overwhelming support for unions in the video game industry. 

“When talented, creative people are shut out of the discussion, they are forced to stand up for themselves,” she said.

A recent survey conducted by the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in the U.S. suggests 82 per cent support for unions, with just five per cent opposed. No one in the 18-24 age range of the 2,300 game workers surveyed was against the idea. 

CWA Canada has filed a complaint with the Nova Scotia Labour Board accusing Ubisoft of shutting down the Halifax operation – just three weeks after workers unionized – to keep out the union. 

The workers are also calling on N.S. Labour Minister Nolan Young to hold Ubisoft accountable for the $11 million in provincial subsidies it received. Nationally, Ubisoft has taken over $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies in four provinces.

France-based Ubisoft is one of the world’s most successful game-developing companies, employing 17,000 people globally, including over 4,000 in Toronto, Winnipeg, and four cities in Quebec.

Ubisoft Halifax includes 71 producers, programmers, designers, artists, researchers and development testers. Sixty-one of them are members of CWA Canada Local 30111, which includes nearly 120 game workers at Bethesda Game Studios (BGS) in Montreal, and staff at the Montreal Gazette newspaper.

CWA Canada is the country’s only all-media union, representing 6,000 workers at the CBC, The Canadian Press, and newspapers, tech, digital media, video gaming, and other companies coast to coast.