Ubisoft has ruffled more than a few feathers in the last week, thanks to recent news that it would be cancelling a swathe of games, postponing a handful of other games, mandating a return to office for its workers, and potentially laying off about 200 of its employees at its headquarters in Paris, France. In response to the aforementioned cost-cutting measures, widespread organizational changes, and potential layoffs, unionized Ubisoft staff members are apparently planning a walk-out in protest.

According to a post on Bluesky by the French Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo (Video Game Workers' Union), workers were informed of these changes at the same time as the press and the world at large, and the union alleges that the gaming giant did not discuss any of these plans with workers at mandatory union consultations mere days earlier. As a result, the five unions representing workers at Ubisoft—CFE-CGC, CGT, Printemps Écologique, Solidaires Informatique, and STJV—are jointly calling for a "massive international strike" on 10, 11, and 12 February, 2026. In the statement, the organizations reject what they call the "anti-remote-work obsession," cost-cutting plans that negatively affect employees, top-down decision-making, and "coercive control" over staff working conditions. They also call on management to take responsibility for the decisions that have led them to this point and for sincerity about their failings. In the statement, the union leaders reveal that they have been in talks with Ubisoft for over a year about remote work, and some agreements that have been in place since September 2025 have been broken by the recent announcements.

SAG-AFTRA workers have officially ended an 11-month-long video game strike and three years of bargaining with major game studios with a new contract that increases compensation for video game workers and establishes new protections from AI. According to the new SAG-AFTRA Interactive Media Agreement, which passed with 95.04% approval, video game performers will receive a 15.17% increase in compensation upon ratification, followed by annual 3% increases for three years starting on November 1, 2025. The agreement also aims to reel in late payment issues, limiting the payment window to 12 business days after services have been rendered.

One of the more contentious issues that was being protested was the increasing use of AI in video games, and to address this, the new agreement requires game studios to get performer consent to use AI to recreate their likeness—for both audio and visual purposes—and it mandates that performers get paid their standard rate when their likeness is recreated by AI for use in a game. There are also workplace safety and comfort provisions, including mandatory rest periods, stipulations for overnight working conditions, a 2× overtime payment rate, and increases to the mandatory contributions to the AFTRA Retirement fund. Overall, much of the agreement aims to make work more sustainable for video game performers. Similar demands are currently being made by the United Video Game Workers Union, which casts a wider net to include programmers and other workers in the video games industry—not just performers.

Thousands of dicussion communities on Reddit have now shut doors to public access—warning signs started to appear online over past weeks, with community leaders drumming up support for a protest against the social news site's policy changes, including a strategy to monetize access to a vast pool of user data. For example the highly popular r/hardware subreddit is now "a private community"—unregistered users are greeted with a succinct message on the front page: "This subreddit is temporarily closed in protest of Reddit killing third party apps, see /r/ModCoord and /r/Save3rdPartyApps for more information." News sites are reporting that close to a total of 3500 subreddits have joined the "blackout" effort. According to the BBC this includes "five of the 10 most popular communities on the site - r/gaming, r/aww, r/Music, r/todayilearned and r/pics - which each have memberships of more than 30 million people."

A group message was shared by a moderation collective last week: "On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love." A moderator (speaking to the BBC anonymously) said that the protest will be effective due to "strength in numbers," which will presumably grab the attention of Reddit's executive team.