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Montreal devs caught in salary price fixing!
Lightthrower \| 12:32 PM on 11.11.2008	3 comments

This news leaked today about Montreal devs (Ubisoft, Eidos and possibly EA/A2M) caught price fixing salary employees not to make competition between them. Here is the full transcript:

A former mid-level manager (of whom we do not previously know) has got in touch with us to potentially expose what is a very disturbing alleged occurrence in the games industry. On the condition of anonymity, he has revealed attempts of Montreal gaming studios to fix salaries of employees and rampant spying by Ubisoft Montreal on all emails to and from its competitors. The source (he was responsible for setting up the e-mail spying) forwarded us along an email between former director of HR at Eidos Montreal (Tremblay) to the Vice President of HR at Ubisoft Montreal (Baillet). In the email, Eidos note there is no benefit of raising salaries and hope the two companies do not so for competitive reasons and EA must be convinced to do the same.

All of this is indicated to be part of a larger problem in which Ubisoft Montreal spies on all emails to and from its competitors. All email is copied in the background to a special mailbox for executives to read (at least back in 2007) and essentially all Ubisoft employees have no privacy.

This 'leak' must be strictly treated as a rumor as we can not guarantee the validity of his claims or even the e-mail. It could just be an angry and sour ex-employee. The source has told us that he left the gaming industry back in 2007 as he got a 'better' job.

Also, the e-mail that leaked is here: http://www.maxconsole.net/content_img/hremailub.jpg

The full transcript is here: http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=33611

I currently am a Montreal dev working at A2M, so that news hit home quite hard...

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3 comments | showing # 1 to 3

nademagnet

Those sons of Bitches!
GONADS AND STRIFE!
GONADS AND STRIFE!

timtheterrible

The privacy issue doesn't seem like much of an issue to me: if you are at work, you should check your privacy at the door (or the bathroom). That being said, the salary fixing does seem underhanded.

JamnOnTheOne

"essentially all Ubisoft employees have no privacy. "

As is the case in every computer enabled workplace. You should expect that all traffic (email, IM, "anonymous" traffic) is hitting the company firewall and being examined by IT. I can go to the IT department and get a yahoo IM chat history that originated to and from my IP for the last 3 days.

Salary fixing is "bad", but I understand why it would be done.

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about me

I've been gaming since the end of the 80's with my good old friend the NES, but soon after, her hotter sister the SNES caught my eye and we married. I re-married every 4-5 years after that, but that's unimportant.

Presently i work in the gaming field in Montreal and it's SWEET! Finally playing those games all my life has paid off. If someone wants you to stop playing games because "you won't get a job by playing games, blablabla" don't listen to them.

Waiting for: Final Fantasy XIII, Killzone 2.

Games currently sitting in my systems:

360 - Mass Effect
PS3 - Persona 3
Wii - i dunno, it's dusty
PSP - Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core
DS - Final Fantasy IV remake + FF4 in the GBA port yay
PC - I think Fallout 3 is in my dvd drive