Ubisoft is still feeling the effects of sexual harassment allegations at the executive level as Tommy Francois, VP of editorial and creative services, is how gone from the company entirely. Francois was previously put on administrative leave in June and widely reported to have left earlier this week, though Gamasutra’s source says he was in fact fired for cause.
Francois is now the sixth high-ranking employee to be ousted from Ubisoft over numerous accusations of sexual misconduct and perpetuating a harassing work environment for women and minorities, along with VP of editorial Maxime Beland, chief creative officer Serge Hascoet, Canadian studios managing director Yannis Mallat, HR director Cecile Cornet, and PR director Stone Chin. In fact, Gamasutra’s source also characterizes Beland’s departure as a sacking, not a resignation.
Ubisoft has been the subject of major scrutiny as employees from across the game’s offices report instances that made employees feel unsafe. CEO Yves Guillemot promised in July that he was “committed to implementing profound changes across the company to improve and strengthen our workplace culture.”
At this rate there’s gonna be no one left by the end of the year.
…actually, I don’t even think they’ve scratched the surface yet.
Again, this is clearly desperation from the highest echelon to cut all ties to whoever they can scapegoat.
Cultures don’t install themselves without the head’s knowledge. Good administrations should always check the workings of the pyramid to see if anything can make the structure crumble.
It’s becoming clear to everyone that there are no decent CEOs in gaming, and most of these companies are run like complete shit. May all of them get sacked.
Yves Guillemot firing all of his ‘friends’ after covering up their behavior, just to save his own position as head of Ubisoft. Morals are not a word in the executive world.
Morals is a word. It’s just a word that’s likely to get you quietly fired for saying it too often in a lot of companies. OnO
They should of all been fired instead of letting them resign. And the CEO should be sacked. Leaders should be held accountable.
I genuinely cannot wait to see if/how Ubisoft’s games will change as a result of all this.
Let’s hope they do. That Camelot game sounded cool AF
And the reason for it being canned was some bull***t too, “fantasy games have to be better than Tolkien”. Meanwhile, AC games started copying Witcher 3 immediately after its massive success. And as good as Witcher was I would be cautious comparing it to the work of Tolkien.
and comparing odyssey to Tolkien is even more of a stretch (game is great, but lets be real)
Then again, Witcher was based on a series of written novels.
And there hasnt actually been a good conversion of Tolkiens story into video game format yet.