Ubisoft CEO spent an hour defending his company’s tax breaks to French lawmakers

In a rare hearing with French senators, Yves Guillemot revealed a lot about how his company operates in its home country--and addressed skepticism about Ubisoft’s efforts to limit remote work

2024’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which was developed primarily in a French studio, Ubisoft Bordeaux. Screenshot: Ubisoft

Assassin’s Creed maker Ubisoft employs around 4,000 people in France, and paid them €310 million ($353 million) in salaries and benefits in the 12 months ending March 2024, company CEO Yves Guillemot told French politicians during an unusual hearing before members of Parliament in France early last month.

The cost of those salaries would have been 8% higher for Ubisoft if the company didn’t receive tax breaks and other financial support from the French government to offset wages, Guillemot said. The savings is more than triple in Canada, he said.

That underscores how crucial tax breaks and government subsidies are to Ubisoft and to its business of making Assassin’s Creed, Ghost Recon, Skull & Bones and myriad other big-budget games.

And it helps explain the stakes back on May 5, when Guillemot appeared before French senators amid questions about the French tax breaks. There has been recent talk among French politicians of terminating them or at least tying it to a game company’s performance.

Overall, for 12 months ending March 2024, Ubisoft received €38.4 million ($43.2 million) in public aid in France. That’s largely thanks to the “crédit d'impôt jeux vidéo” (CIJV), or video game tax credit, which has been offered, with some modifications, by the country’s government since the late 2000s.

It’s a program that Ubisoft executives would like to see expanded, even as some political leaders in France are discussing going the other way.

At one point during the hearing, Guillemot was pressed about whether the tax credits should come with strings attached. “You would not be in favor of a re-evaluation every year that would be in proportion to your net business results?” asked senator Michel Masset.

“I think that this is not desirable,” Guillemot said. It would cause uncertainty around government funding and would force projects to be budgeted for the lowest possible financial benefit, ultimately limiting the scope and commercial potential of the game, he said.

(The hearing, which was in French, has not been previously reported on, to the best of my knowledge. While I don’t speak French, I watched the event in full, reviewed a machine translation, fact-checked details and confirmed the translation of quotes with a native speaker.)

The hearing Guillemot attended, alongside two other Ubisoft executives, was part of a larger French senate inquiry about government funding for large corporations well beyond the video game industry. Senators have spent 2025 summoning leaders from dozens of big corporations, including Airbus, Exxon Mobil, and Unilever France, under the premise that public funding has not prevented companies from closing offices and laying off workers.

On May 5, the dialogue between Guillemot and the French senators was consistently courteous but showed clear areas of disagreement. Topics went beyond government support, as senators pressed the CEO on the Ubisoft’s recent deal with Tencent and the tightening of its remote work policy that led to an employee strike last year.

Lawmakers were at times skeptical of Guillemot, with one accusing the company of “crushing” other French game developers.