In 2020, Blizzard Versailles closed its doors, which put about 285 employees out of a job. These former Blizzard employees banded together to file an appeal over unpaid compensation. A case that they have now won.
French media outlet Gamekult (via GI.biz) says that these employees are now entitled to unpaid compensation worth up to six months of pay. The Versailles studio allegedly closed in 2020 due to "redundancies." A French court ruled in favor of the employees saying that Blizzard's reason for the redundancies wasn't legally justified.
The legal battle was looking into whether Blizzard Versailles 2020's 'plan de sauvegarde de l'emploi' (PSE, a legal framework that typically aims at limiting the number of redundancies at a company struggling financially) was justified. The court has ruled in appeal that it was not.(...)
The lawyer handling the case, Mehdi Bouzaida, told Gamekult: "That's the hypocrisy of this law voted in 2013: you can discipline the administration, and behind it the company, for not handling things properly, but instead of drawing the necessary consequences and prevent the reorganisation -- and in this case the closure -- things can just follow their course in the meantime.
"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. 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."
The lawyer handling the case, Mehdi Bouzaida, told Gamekult: "That's the hypocrisy of this law voted in 2013: you can discipline the administration, and behind it the company, for not handling things properly, but instead of drawing the necessary consequences and prevent the reorganisation -- and in this case the closure -- things can just follow their course in the meantime.
"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. 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."
The six months of salary compensation may not be the end of it. Employees may choose to pursue further legal action to contest their redundancy at a labor court. Blizzard Versailles remains closed and will not be returning.
