The letter sent from the top dog at EA Montreal to the head cheese at Ubi Montreal, has stirred a lot of emotions inside both companies.

I received a letter from a passionate Ubisoft programmer who talks about his personal feelings about this latest tiff and how he views the non-compete clause he works under. The programmer was kind enough to allow me to reprint the email, anonymously.

There are some interesting points raised. Read the entire thing after the jump.

It is true that the non-competition rule in our contract is very spooky. When I read the contract they offered me, back when I got hired here, I was not only scared; I was also very mad. I talked to the HR department about it, and they reassured me that it had been enforced only once, in the case against EA we all know about. They explained to me that the situation then was very peculiar; Mr Tascan himself (who was formerly a founder here at Ubi Montreal if I recall correctly) approached the five top developers of the (at the time) new Splinter Cell franchise, the very first one that made the Ubisoft Montreal studio famous, and offered them a LOT of money in exchange for helping him start his brand new EA studio. This isn't just competition; this is sabotage. You whip out the big bucks, cut the head of a competitor's successful franchise, and acquire the expertise for yourself. (It seems that it didn't work as well as intended, considering what comes out of that studio... but I digress...)

That being said, I am still annoyed by that part of my contract, but not mad. I've seen at least five developers here leave for other companies, in Montreal or elsewhere in North America, declaring so overtly in their goodbye emails, and no one got any trouble for it. Turns out, Ubi will not enforce their non-competition policy for individuals. Not only that, but that last time where they did enforce it, it caused a massive drop in the morale of their employees as well as very bad public rep.

One could wonder why the contracts still have that line. My guess is that it is in order to protect the company from more "massive marauding". Games aren't the only industry where this exists and is loosely enforced; I just heard one guy mentioning that he works in the elevators industry and has the same kind of contract. Yet no one there freaks out about it since it is granted that it won't be enforced except in extreme cases. I'd prefer not having that in my contract, but it definitely doesn't prevent me from looking around for other opportunities.

Now, you get the boss of a company that will often lay dozens of employees off at a time at the end of projects, enforces overtime by threatening with lay offs, claiming that their competitors treat their employees like crap by... not allowing them to go work for him? Which is false, considering that people did leave here to work there in the least few years, and nothing happened as far as I know.

Like a friend of mine mentioned, this whole thing is just like a wife-beater telling a neighbor to stop yelling at his wife. It's hypocritical, ridiculous and infuriating. I'm not saying he isn't right about the whole government funding part, which when tied-in to this, makes it look rather fishy. But it's a world of business. I strongly doubt Mr Tascan proclaimed this in order to be the Defender of Justice For Game Developers.

Anonymous Ubi Programmer