Former Blizzard Versailles staff have won their legal battle against the company
The French studio made all employees redundant before closing in 2020.
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Back in 2020, Blizzardclosed the doors on its French studio in Versailles, putting around 285 people out of work in the middle of a pandemic. Now, those former employees have won their appeal with French courts against Blizzard.
Reported by French outletGamekult(viaGamesIndustry.biz), the successful appeal means that employees may be entitled to compensations worth up to six months salary, as the court found Blizzard’s reasoning for the redundancies wasn’t legally justified.
It’s a hollow victory, mind. Blizzard Versailles is still shut, closed over the course of the legal battle, and redundant staff won’t be getting jobs back with the company.
“What this means in concrete terms is that, as soon as the administration validated the [redundancy] plan, the company sent the dismissal letters in the following days,” Mehdi Bouzaida, the lawyer representing the employees, told Gamekult. “In other words, people get dismissed, and a few months later a decision like the one we have today is reached, but the law at that moment won’t force the company to reintegrate the former employees, so only compensations are planned.”
A similar appeal was made against a previous round of layoffs in 2019, a year that saw Blizzard makeabsurd redundanciesin a year is posted record profits. The 2020 redundancies saw unions representing the Versailles workers call for a strike, describing Blizzard’s reasoning as “absurd”.
ActivisionBlizzard refused to comment to Gamekult. PC Gamer has reached out for a statement.
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20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she’s not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it’s the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.
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