Two years have passed since testimonies about assault and sexual harassment at Ubisoft were released. Since then there have been resignations, layoffs and commitments. The ABetterUbisoft (ABU) group now gives an update on the situation in a Interview with AC Sorority. Responses have been anonymized to protect their authors.
What is ABetterUbisoft?
ABU was founded in 2021. These are people who have previously or currently worked at Ubisoft and are dissatisfied with the company’s responses. This group has so far made four requests that it considers unsatisfied.
A situation that does not satisfy
While some respondents were fired, in other cases they resigned or retired without receiving a sanction. Others still exist, have been transferred or promoted. So Ubisoft would not have done anything to change the corporate culture itself.
Even if they force the perpetrators to leave, they still protect them. As far as we know, Serge Hascoët, Michel Ancel, Maxime Béland and many others were not fired, they simply resigned.
There were no consequences for her. They just walked away from the problem and didn’t justify anything. Some of them just found other jobs in the video game industry.
To prevent such acts from happening again, employees are encouraged to report anything wrong to their manager. For employees, this is just an image. The system would accomplish exactly the opposite of what it intends to do by silencing them.
In fact, these reports are not anonymous. Worse, they have to be done through an in-house tool, which is also used for the annual assessment of employee performance on which increases depend.
These managers can see these feedbacks and who wrote them (…). This means that if an employee upsets their manager, their manager can retaliate with a poor annual review.
New Complaints
Some employees have seen the COVID-19 pandemic as a welcome break in the poison management cycle. Since all communication was remote, they left a trail. The accused managers were therefore no longer active.
But in general, Ubisoft doesn’t seem to be taking a very good view of telecommuting and would refuse to acknowledge that COVID has had an impact. It would even have become a new source of allegations against the workforce.
I hate the way Yves [Guillemot, CEO] blames remote work for the productivity drop during the pandemic and not the fact that people have been ill, in constant fear of having to work at home with their children (…)
It also makes me cringe when people talk about labor shortages without acknowledging that we’ve lost a significant portion of the workforce to COVID-19, refuse to discuss the impact of the long COVID, and have a significant number of people attending died of the disease and/or because health systems were overwhelmed.
Also this summer we had to reduce the number of services and postpone the introduction of new features simply because many people fell ill with COVID-19.
Changes too shy
Diversity and inclusion departments have been established. More women get promotions, raises. Teams have more diversity. However, these are only local initiatives and not a general guideline across all Ubisoft studios around the world. In addition, where these departments exist, they lack resources and struggle to make their voices heard.
Evidence of real and lasting change on the ground is therefore extremely difficult to detect. At the same time, we have seen an internal backlash against D&I work and initiatives, with measures and language designed to prevent abusive behavior now being used to silence and ban all dissenting opinions.
In the absence of far-reaching changes, some employees see no alternative to resignation. Another part of them decided to unionize to have more weight against the hierarchy. But those who have already taken steps have attested to pressure from Ubisoft to get them to give up.
Answer from Ubisoft
It was Anika Grant, General Manager of Human Resources, who answered on behalf of Ubisoft. It renews the commitment to making the workplace safer and more respectful of individuals. It also shows that all offending staff still in office have been cleared of any suspicion. Grant also implies that a union is not necessary as there are “internally elected employee representatives”. [du] Board”.
How to support Ubisoft employees?
Respondents tend to reject the boycott of the games. They offer those who want to make themselves heard on social networks.
There’s a seemingly endless stream of toxic anti-worker trolls who think we should just shut up and accept exploitation so they can finally get their next game, or who think we deserve it for not having a game may be misused that our company has developed. It’s not funny to see these comments, but every time someone else supports us in these situations, we feel a little less alone in this battle against the corporate machinery. See you and appreciate you very much.
And of course, talk to your colleagues about getting organized wherever you are! The more we normalize unions and workers’ power across industries, the better off we will all be – all at the expense of a handful of the rich 1% who will be a little less ridiculously wealthy. If we look at the bigger picture, we’re all in the same boat. Cross-industry cohesion will ultimately bring about lasting changes.
The post Ubisoft and Toxic Corporate Culture: A State of the Art first appeared on XboxSquad.
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