I'd like to know if anyone heard about the story involving UbiSoft and 4 former employee this morning ??


Nick

Slashdot article (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/14/0527252&mode=thread&tid=123&tid=127&tid=186&tid=206&tid=211&tid=99). I haven't read it.

I can't believe a contract like that is even legal.

Well, I unfortunately *can* believe it's be legal in Quebec ;) but not in the rest of the (sane) world. Doesn't it violate a persons basic liberty to be able to seek the best possible employment?

Incidentally we had a former Ubisoft Montreal employee at my old workplace and he wasn't very fond of them at all. Never went into much detail, though.

Good mental note for anyone who does go back to the "industry" - read your employment contract carefully!

hehe.. well.. the 4 guy didn't probably had any good lawyer.

Actually, I can undertsand the basis of the claus, prevent people from stealing idea, but like I said somewhere else, I think Ubi is just very scared right now because their studio will loose all their good talent with the arrival of EA.


Nick

Originally posted by KNau
Good mental note for anyone who does go back to the "industry" - read your employment contract carefully!
Won't do much good. Most companies now have non-competes as standard operating procedures. I heard a rumor that this was to help make it more enforceable --- one of the ways you can theoretically contest a noncompete is to demonstrate that not everyone at your level had to sign one. (There's probably a lot more to it than that, but that's what I've heard).

So - you are going to have a tough time getting a major studio without signing one.

A company should go out and offer the 100 best game programmers in the world a truck load of money to work for them, get them to sign a bunch of those non-compete clauses, fire off the bottom 80 coders and then take over the whole industry:)