The departing members of the management team, who previously created a bad, toxic work environment, have been caught by the French authorities.

In 2020, Ubisoft (also) got burned when it was revealed that the French publisher was not a friendly place to work. As a result, many senior executives took their business elsewhere (either voluntarily or by being fired), and some of the lower-level developers got fed up and left as well. Since then, Ubisoft’s internal situation has faded from the news, but a French publication, Libération, has dragged Yves Guillemot back into the spotlight.

At least five ex-Ubisoft executives have been detained for questioning, and it appears that they may soon be facing trial. Among those arrested is Serge Hascoet, who headed Ubisoft’s powerful editorial team. They are responsible for the plans and content of the games published by the French company. Hascoet’s protégé Tommy Francois was also arrested. The authorities have come to this conclusion not only because of the overly male (frat boy) work culture and abuse of power, but may even accuse those involved of systematic sexual harassment!

According to Libération, Tommy Francois once asked employees to hold down a female employee at a company party so that Francois could forcibly kiss her. When this was brought to the attention of managers, they swept it under the rug (it wouldn’t be surprising if they were eventually caught by the police…) And Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, kept promising to eliminate the scandalous work culture within the company, but last year a union (A Better Ubisoft) sent an open letter signed by hundreds of employees saying that almost nothing had been done.

They asked Guillemot to stop promoting and moving known offenders from studio to studio, team to team, without repercussions, because this cycle needs to end. They want a collective seat at the table to have a meaningful say in how Ubisoft moves forward as a company. They also suggested a cross-industry collaboration to agree on a set of ground rules and processes that all studios can use to handle violations in the future, and that this collaboration must heavily involve non-management employees and union representatives.

The punchline: When asked about the arrest of Hascoet and the others, a spokesperson for Ubisoft said that they had no knowledge of what had been shared and therefore could not comment…

Source: WCCFTech