Ubisoft Singapore employees face a 'French ceiling,' report says | PC Gamer - andersoncritaiment

Ubisoft Singapore employees face a 'French cap,' cover says

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

In November 2020, Ubisoft Singapore director Hugues Ricour was removed from his post following a leadership audit sparked by a Gamasutra describe of abuse and misconduct throughout Ubisoft. Ricour had been accused of intimate harassment by multiple sources, according to the cover, and anyone who complained faced workplace repercussions that went ignored by Ubi's HR department.

A new report by Kotaku goes deeper into the working conditions at the studio both under and after Ricour's leadership, with sixfold accounts of serious issues including failures to address sexual torment complaints, bear disparities 'tween local and deport employees, and a "French ceiling" (Ubisoft is based in Capital of France) that makes it difficult for employees from other countries to advance.

"We have a joke: there's a French multiplier and there's a skin colour multiplier," one employee told the web site.

Patc problems at the studio apartment are far-flung, Ricour himself comes off As particularly troublesome. His elevation to studio foreland, replacement Olivier de Rotalier, was delineated by one employee as "like replacing a velvet-textured glove with an executioner." The office was especially bad for members of the Skull and Bones squad, accordant to the report. One developer told the site that they'd been warned not to get connected Ricour's bad side because "helium's very vindictive and petty," while another claimed that anyone who made that mistake would be "disappeared."

Gamasutra's investigation into Ricour and Ubisoft Singapore Island came amidst an discharge of allegations of ill-treatment and wrongdoing involving other executives throughout the company, which resulted in the resignations of chief creative policeman Serge Hascoët, Ubisoft Canada manager Yannis Mallat, and planetary head of frail resources Cécile Cornet, among others. Ricour did not suffer similar consequences, all the same: Ternion sources told Kotaku that Ricour went on leave immediately after the Gamasutra report was promulgated, but Ubisoft refused to conduct some investigations unless dress claims were made through its Hour department or an internal unnamed reporting creature. Ricour returned to puzzle out concisely afterward, reported to the report, and apologized to anyone who felt uncomfortable because of his actions during a subsequent town hall.

A third-party HR firm brought in to investigate the matter further compulsive in October 2020 that there wasn't enough information to warrant action against Ricour, but in November Ubisoft's Primary studios Operating Officer Virginie Haas, who was appointed to the post in August 2020, announced internally that Ricour was existence removed as studio head. Atomic number 2 wasn't discharged, though: Instead, he was transferred to Ubisoft's Paris head office. His LinkedIn account now lists him as Ubisoft's Production Intelligence Director.

Information technology's been almost a year since Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot apologized to "everyone WHO was hurt" by work abuses, although he pointedly declined to take any responsibility for information technology. Away many accounts, teeny-weeny has denatured since then: Cobbler's last calendar week, the Solidaires Informatique union filed a unaccustomed complaint against Ubisoft in France, alleging that executives including Guillemot himself enabled and bucked up a culture of "institutional sexual harassment" at the company that persists to this day.

Kotaku's probe into the work culture at Ubisoft Singapore comes shortly later on a break report on the troubled development of Skull and Castanets. Employees at the studio aforesaid it has undergone two-fold changes in steering and in large quantities reboots over the long time; combined former employee pointed the fingerbreadth at "the toxic culture permeating the Singapore studio" as largely causative the product issues. Despite the long-running problems, Ubisoft remains committed to making it pass off: Skull and Bones is currently expected to come unstylish sometime in 2022-23.