In an update to a story we’ve previously reported on, French Labor union STJV launched its “Summer Greve Fest” at 9:00 AM on June 25th. Workers gathered outside Quantic Dream’s Paris office at 30 Rue Raoul Wallenberg, but they weren’t clocking in. They were picketing.
“Summer Grève Fest” is a deliberately festival-branded national strike campaign organized by the France’s independent video game workers’ union. The name is deliberate: a festival frame for a serious labor dispute. More than 1,000 jobs have been destroyed or placed under immediate threat across the French game industry since 2024, according to the STJV. The union calls it the worst social crisis in French gaming in over two decades.
Quantic Dream — the studio behind “Detroit: Become Human” — cancelled its free-to-play MOBA “Spellcasters Chronicles,” then immediately announced mass layoffs targeting roughly 25% of its French workforce, amounting to 115 planned positions. Additional cuts hit its Montreal studio. The STJV has made Quantic Dream the campaign’s focal point, a case study in what it frames as systemic executive failure. No detailed public response from Quantic Dream leadership has surfaced in available reporting.
But this isn’t one studio’s problem. Since 2024, the French sector has bled out across multiple fronts.
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