It looks as if the French authorities are moving against Ubisoft employees who were among those accused in the studio’s wide-reaching sexual misconduct exposé. French newspaper Libération reports that five former staffers, including one of the studio’s former executives, were detained by police for a full day and night of questioning earlier this week.
Among the five employees scooped up by police were former editorial VP Tommy François and former chief creative officer Serge Hascoët, who readers will remember was among the multiple top brass employees who walked from their positions in the wake of the scandal. According to Polygon, no charges were officially filed, but French law does allow for police to hold suspects of a crime without an arrest for 24 hours without a charge. (Google’s English translations of Libération’s French report on this are probably a bit misleading as they refer to the accused being “in custody” as part of a “wave of arrests.”)
This is the latest step in a two year-long problem for Ubisoft among multiple others including game delays for multiplayer pirate title Skull and Bones, unionization efforts, a worker’s strike this past January, accusations of developer crunch, and most recently a reported return-to-office mandate rug pull. As for the sexual misconduct accusations, those resulted in an attempted “structural shift” within the company, which was called “superficial” by employees and failed to stop a French game workers union from filing a harassment lawsuit in 2021 – all while Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot claimed that complaints stemmed from a generation gap.
Further reading about Ubisoft’s sexual misconduct allegations are here:
