TDU Solar Crown: Developer Kylotonn Goes on Strike!

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A day before the big streamed event supposed to reveal more about Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, the workers from the developing studio for the game, Kylotonn, published an official letter declaring a strike.

Image credit: Nacon/KT Racing

The statement has been posted on the STJV's website (Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo - translated to English: Union of Video Game Workers), which as its name states, is a french union dedicated to employees from the video game industry.

Communication Issues with Management Team​

The strike seems to have been prompted due to relationship issues between Nacon and Kylotonn (KT Racing) management and the developp
ers team. The main griefs cited are difficulties to communicate and set up negotiations with higher-ups regarding working conditions.

With the TDU Connect show originally planned for July 12th at 7:00 PM CEST, one can wonder if this strike will impact the show. Seeing that it is scheduled as a premiere on Youtube, it should not be postponed as it indicates the video is prerecorded.

You can read the full letter below:
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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Your Thoughts​

What do you make of the surprising strike? Let us know in the comments below!
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About author
GT-Alex
Alexandre Tonini
Global motorsports enjoyer, long time simracer, Gran Turismo veteran, I've been driving alongside top drivers since the dawn of online pro leagues on Gran Turismo, and qualified for the only cancelled FIA GTC World Tour. I've left aside competitive driving in 2020 to dedicate myself to IGTL, a simracing organisation hosting high quality events for pro racers and customers, to create with friends the kind of events we wished we could have had. We strive to provide the best events for drivers and the best content for viewers, and want to help the simracing scene grow and shine further in the global esports scene.

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Comments

R
Neilski said:
Quite apart from salaries, simply being funded on a month to month basis seems both bizarre (self-defeating!) and disgraceful. And yeah I imagine many of the workers already voted with their feet...
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Indeed, this presumed month to month basis is a motivation killer and the worst way to manage a team. It may be 100% real, it may be an excuse made by Kylotonn's management head to stop any negociation with the employees. This strike should make that clear.

This is unfortunately a quiet common bad management technique and Kylotonn's management head may report the truth (I've been in the exact same situation and it is not a confortable position towards the workers if you care about their jobs), we can't know at the moment. But it's going more interesting than the game itself. :D
 
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Jay Ekkel
The surprising thing to me is why it took this long for the working people in the studio to realize that how KT management ran that studio and project, and how they treated their staff was not sustainable!
 
R
Jay Ekkel said:
The surprising thing to me is why it took this long for the working people in the studio to realize that how KT management ran that studio and project, and how they treated their staff was not sustainable!
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It is not clear whether the issue is with KT management head or with Nacon. The company managers are also employees. It's always difficult as a worker to know whether the company's boss is the bad person ot whether he is just with his hands tied.

If you know about how the working conditions has changed in a few years in France, you understand that every victory from the past, for the workers, has been simply erased, except the creation of one unique organism to represent the employees of a company.

he issue is, culturally, employers still think they deal with an favorable employee labor market, which is absolutely not the case anymore for many years, but they still use old harassment techniques against their employees, although they don't need to. And secondly workers have been so much culturally used to be not respected that they forgot how much power they have in their hands with this recent organism (in fact KT employees have much more power than the head management people, who are just employees themselves, against Nacon) ; generally the elected representatives in this organism are incompetent, lazy, and / or not trained for their new responsabilities (in general they seek this position primarly to get a special protected status).

It results in an unbalanced situation with employers still treating their employees in an unacceptable manner, and employees who don't know or dare to give their input when the head, being a management team or the mother company, just to get respect or to save their jobs because the head takes bad decisions.
 
R
tumbleweed_092 said:

Now, the presentation is out and I gotta tell ya the game looks like the shot @8:53.

Lack of imagination, the same driving experience as in Need For Speed [cough}, overall cheapskate Forza impression. Don't hold your breath. Play BeamNG.
Click to expand...
Yes indeed, it seems this 8:53 moment is what the game has to offer to differentiate itself. I feel almost bad for this stunning German woman, she has difficulties to move with those pants and shoes (the pants also not matching the top and the shoes, is there an artistic director in this game?), she really seems unconfortable with an unatural smile on her face. I have seen her just a few tomes, and she usually don't look like that. And making her walking behind the players with her unuseful tablet... A detail, a detail, that's not the racing...

Anout the racing, the awful frame rate, even on feet (with the atrocious motion blur, but ok, it is good incar), doesn't do the game justice.
Suprisingly, the lightning in the nights looks quiet bad (the repetitive bland grey buildings ; let's not talk about the windows light bug which I hope will be fixed), but works really well in the day time. It has some NFSU2 vibe with the addition of dirt racing, so I will still keep an eye on it, that's the only positive thing I can see at the moment.

This video looks like a quick "the game exist, it's not a scam" message than anything else, nothing interesting there. Definitely, the strike story is more interesting than the game. :D
 
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