Cognition Dissemination: Ubisoft Is Getting Away With It

The recent stories about sexual harassment allegations and infidelity that have occurred at Ubisoft over the last several years initially appeared to be coming at a bad time for them.

The allegations, largely detailed on the frontpage of French newspaper Libération (translated by other sources), manifested just before the Ubisoft Forward E3 2020-replacment stream to showcase upcoming software. Ubisoft did the bare minimum about it by telling three top staffers to resign, but others accused of harassment or who excused it remained (and remain) at the company. They mentioned nothing about this on the stream despite it being heavily covered in gaming and mainstream press outlets at the time, with the excuse that it was all prerecorded. But nothing stopped them from including a quick segment alongside it.

This was always going to work in their favor. There’s a good chance they were betting on the announcements and demonstrations for games like Far Cry 6 and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla to distract from the stories and discussions of the allegations, many of which would be covered by the same sites that reported on the allegations. There were questions at the time as to whether this strategy work out for them, but everyone should have known they would considering prior reactions from the gaming audience.

When the allegations surfaced, a very vocal audience was unconcerned about them, and hoped they wouldn’t interfere with their video game news. This should go without saying, but the games themselves are not more important than stories of people, largely women, being harassed. But if that truly needed to go without me saying it, the allegations would still be heavily featured in the press, and discussed on social media and message boards. Guess what? They aren’t.

Too many gamers decried the mere act of employees suffering consequences for their actions. One among them was Ashraf Ismail, creative director for several of the best Assassin’s Creed games, including the upcoming Valhalla. He was accused of multiple counts of infidelity and other allegations, and stepped down as creative director for the game as a result, though he remains employed at Ubisoft. Some gamers were more upset about him stepping down than the allegations themselves. Just read the comments below that IGN article I linked to, with some users saying this is another example of that pesky Cancel Culture censoring “good” people. The reaction has been the same for everyone else accused of harassment, even those facing more egregious allegations.

What makes this more alarming is how more allegations have been revealed since the Ubisoft Forward conference, as reported by Bloomberg (Warning: It’s paygated) and others individually on social media. They’ve further delved into how institutionally misogynist their development studio culture was to allow for and sustain creeps.

For one: Kassandra was to be the only choice for the main character in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (something quite apparent after playing it), but Ubisoft COO Serge Hascoët intervened and said “women didn’t sell” despite ample evidence to the contrary, which led to a male option (Alexios) being added. There’s also an anonymous report that former Ubisoft Montreal creative director Alexandre Amancio liked a woman’s face at the party, and a Tweet from former Ubisoft developer Gabriela Salvatore about how a rape sequence would have worked in one of their games (likely a Far Cry game). Listing all the allegations could take an entire post, and consider that there may be some we still haven’t heard.

There hasn’t been enough talk about Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot’s role in all this. As someone who oversaw the company’s operations, there was no way he couldn’t have known about these institutional happenings as they were reported to an HR department that constantly did its best to bury them and protect abusers and harassers. (That HR head, Cecile Cornet, was part of the recent departures.) But he allegedly did more than nothing: He allowed it to continue as long as the company achieved good financial and sales results. Guillemot, through a PR statement, promised changes from here, but didn’t address his involvement.

When asked by a very poignant shareholder about why and how he was involved with the culture of harassment and what he’ll do about it, he gave an unsatisfactory answer. “It has now become clear that certain individuals betrayed the trust I placed in them and did not live up to Ubisoft’s shared values,” he replied. “I have never compromised on my core values and ethics and never will. I will continue to run and transform Ubisoft to face today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.” Considering senior officials were involved with the allegations, it’s very difficult to imagine that he didn’t know anything. But if he truly didn’t, it shows how little he was paying attention to Ubisoft’s day-to-day operations. Either way, it’s a bad look. But he made it clear that he isn’t going anywhere.

It’s easy to be cynical about this and think nothing will happen every time allegations like these pop up. It would have been tough, for one, to pressure Guillemot to resign, considering he’s nearly equivalent to French aristocracy. Know that little happens because the gaming audience is more than willing to tolerate this as long as they get games they want to play. It will take a culture shift to amend this, and who knows where to even start with that.

This won’t be the last time we’ll hear about allegations that occurred behind closed doors at Ubisoft, along with generally incompetent decisions. Just today, it was reported (another paygated Bloomberg article, but there’s an accompanying tweet) that Hascoët was responsible for killing a Monster Hunter-like multiplayer game with an Arthurian setting spearheaded by former Dragon Age designer Mike Laidlaw because he didn’t like the setting. Hascoët claimed it would have to be “better than Tolkien” for him to approve it, which is inscrutable. It’s wild that one person can have enough power to strike down an entire project and lead to the departure of a big name after only one year, and while it doesn’t happen all the time, those same people can use that power for more nefarious means.

It’s good that the worst people are being punished for their behavior, but it will be a while before we get to a point where all of them and their enablers get even close to similar treatment. We’re so far away from that now that it’s a question of whether we’ll ever get there.