TDU Solar Crown: Developer Kylotonn Goes on Strike!

Communication Issues with Management Team​

We relay this press release from workers on strike at the Kylotonn studio, on Tuesday, July 11, 2023.
In the majority of studios acquired by Nacon, the group :

• is the studio’s sole shareholder
• owns the entire intellectual property of any produced games
• funds the studios on a project-by-project month-by-month basis, giving Nacon real life or death power over the studios.

In practice, this means that the studios act as subcontractors, producing games on behalf of the group, as Nacon subsidiaries.
This structure enables studio and Nacon management to pass the buck whenever workers demand accountability, pay rises and social measures. Workers are preventing from finding intermediaries for discussion, thus cancelling any attempt at negotiation.
On Tuesday July 11, 2023, Nacon Group’s number 2, Laurent Honoret, has presented Nacon’s 2022-2023 balance sheet to Kylotonn workers. This annual event is the only direct point of contact between the studio’s workers and the Nacon Group.
The studio workers took advantage of this moment to ask Nacon if the group would commit to providing more resources for Kylotonn and the group’s studios in general. The aim is to give the studio employee representatives more room to breathe in their negotiations with the studio heads, and to prevent studio management from using Nacon as an excuse to avoid mandatory negotiations.
Laurent Honoret replied: « No ». He added that it was the studio management’s prerogative to negotiate more budget with Nacon. This statement shattered the excuses of Kylotonn’s management, who has always blamed Nacon for the lack of negotiation.
In reaction to this unsatisfactory response, which crowned a series of problems and sufferings long denounced by staff representatives, workers went on strike and left the room after presenting the following demands:

• Negotiation of a remote work policy with the trade unions
• Negotiation of minimum wages and compensation with trade unions, in place of unilateral management decisions that penalize a significant proportion of workers
• Immediate implementation by management of concrete measures to put an end to the pathogenic and authoritarian management style that threatens workers’ mental health and cohesion
• Negotiation of working conditions adjustment processes, which currently have to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis with great difficulties
• Opening of compulsory annual negotiations and systematic negotiation with trade unions for all matters falling within their prerogatives
• Systematic information and consultation of the CSE on matters falling within its purview
• Full transparency on the negotiations between Nacon and Kylotonn to find out where the deadlock lies, by including employee representatives in these negotiations
• Same level of transparency for the group’s other studios
• Immediate wage increases throughout the Nacon group at least equal to those at Kylotonn after renegotiation.

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