Ubisoft concedes that its handling of misconduct scandal was flawed

NME

Management at Ubisoft has admitted that how the company handled the ongoing misconduct scandal when it arose was lacking.

• READ MORE: Ubisoft Singapore under investigation by fair employment watchdog over allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination
  

As reported by Axios, chief people officer at the Assassin’s Creed developer Anika Grant laid out how Ubisoft missed “the employee experience”, which led to staff losing “trust in that process” of the investigation.

“At the beginning of the crisis, we spent a lot of time making sure that we had the right process in place, that we were able to very quickly and efficiently run an investigation and get to some outcomes,” Grant said.

“What I think we missed, though, is the employee experience through that,” Grant added. “I don’t think we always communicated enough back to the people who had raised an issue in the first place about what we found as part of the investigations — the decisions that we made and the actions that we took. And so I think, unfortunately, people lost trust in that process.”

According to the interview, this means that Grant is “100 per cent focused on fixing” a more improved response to workers who report any and all misconduct.

Ubisoft workers formed a group called A Better Ubisoft in response to the allegations, which aims to demand changes from the developer in the wake of the misconduct at the company. The group responded to Grant’s statement on Twitter:

“[Grant] fails to acknowledge what we’ve been saying, repeatedly, all this time: employees of all ranks must have a seat at the table in these processes for them to be effective and fair,” reads the statement.

We'll keep stressing this: a main component of what was unveiled in the articles, from the very first one at Libération, was how Ubisoft's structure itself protected people who committed abuses of power, and how this was done with intent.

— ABetterUbisoft (@ABetterUbisoft) December 6, 2021

The group then outlines how Grant positions the loss of trust as a matter of miscommunication, to which it responded: “We believe it’s the opposite: Ubisoft’s top management has very clearly communicated through its actions that they’re adamant on keeping full control over decisions concerning safety policy and reports, and about running the new processes as a black box.”

This comes over 12 months after Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot addressed developers in an internal letter which said: “I would like us to thoroughly review all of our systems so that these types of situations cannot happen again.”

More recently, the Singapore office at Ubisoft came under investigation over allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination. One former developer said the Singapore office is internally known as “one of the worst Ubisoft studios in terms of culture”.

In other news, 343 Industries apparently went through “development hell” to get Halo Infinite shipped.

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