Ubisoft reckoning with its workplace culture continues, most recently with the firing of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla creative director Ashraf Ismail. According to Kotaku, Ismail was already on leave from the team following accusations that he’d abused his position at Ubisoft to prey on industry newbies, but Ubisoft Montreal made it official this week, announcing his firing to employees.
“Following an investigation by an external firm, it was determined that Ashraf’s employment with Ubisoft had to be terminated,” the company reportedly told staff. It gave no other details, citing a “confidential investigation.”
Ismail is just one of the Ubisoft leaders who’ve been ousted this summer after investigations relating to various allegations of sexual misconduct or harassment. Those include VP of editorial and creative services Tommy Francois, VP of editorial Maxime Béland, chief creative officer Serge Hascoët, Canadian studios managing director Yannis Mallat, HR director Cécile Cornet, and PR director Stone Chin. Ismail makes the seventh that we know of.
Not surprised. As above, so below.
I think i can safely say i reached the point of never buying a Ubisoft game again.
Let’s not forget the victims also worked for ubisoft. Adding unemployment to what they are also dealing with because people boycott the company in protest of the abusers is probably not helpful, nor to the MANY other people who work for the company that had nothing to do with any of this and were just doing thier job like normal folks.
At what point does the buck stop with the boss ?
Probably not until the boss no longer has enough bucks to make sure it stops elsewhere.
I’m hoping they’ll be able to weed out all the bad actors and create a more professional, and above all safe, environment for the people who work there.
But…I somehow get the feeling that if they fire all the underlings who did the misconduct and were caught, they’ll still have a bad CEO. Even if the CEO didn’t do anything bad themselves, they must have known or at least heard rumors about what was going on.
To that point – the CEO was replaced in late July:
So long as the external investigation’s findings are open to investors and out of the new CEO’s control, the shakeup should be about as clean as it could be.
Wow, almost like they think this is one of the perks of working at ubi. One big happy harem, right?
Given how many people were involved in this nonsense, I find it hard to believe it wasn’t listed as one of their executive perks.
Seventh…yikes!
I’m just wondering whether it’s the Assassins or Templars that are winning in this.
I had initially thought that this was a smokescreen and that they were actually fired for putting politics into videogames but I like your explanation that they were sexually harassing and abusing people in order to breed children with their alien dna.
Ironically enough, Ubisoft has shown themselves to be working with the Templars in the AC games.
now the male protag in AC: Odyssey makes WAY more sense.
At least he wasn’t ‘allowed to resign’…
but still their CEO remains…