Ubisoft CEO Lays Out a Plan To Change the Company's Toxic Culture (engadget.com) 79
A week after launching investigations into many claims of harassment and misconduct, Ubisoft's CEO gave an update on what the company is doing to change things. From a report: In a letter posted on its website and emailed to employees, Yves Guillemot said "the types of inappropriate behavior we have recently learned about cannot and will not be tolerated." That's sharply in contrast to reports from employees and statements posted internally, citing complaints made to HR in the past that they said have been ignored. Even today, Chelsea O'Hara, touted as a success story of the company's mentorship program, wrote extensively about the reality of her experience at Ubisoft where she felt marginalized and exploited. Beyond the ongoing investigations, Ubisoft says it has set up an online confidential alert platform where people can report harrasment or other inappropriate behavior, that's run by a third party. Guillemot also said they will shake up the Editorial Group that oversees creative decisions, which Kotaku notes has a roster made up exclusively of white males.
Letter (Score:4, Informative)
From the letter: "I do not have words to describe all the feelings I have right now."
Then she writes a 10 page missive on her feelings. You can't make this stuff up.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
By the way, her experiences sound pretty bad, so I totally support her and hope these Ubisoft pigs get what is coming to them, but she was in Toronto so we all know what Canadian men are like. They are almost as bad as Trump.
No. Canadian men would ask first to grab a woman's pussy and apologize. And they would apologize after intentionally walking into a women's dressing room.
They are much more polite up there.
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They would also apologize for raping young girls.
Re: Easy solution to racism & harassment. (Score:3)
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What, because there is only male/female and black/white? You really are a coward.
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You don't seem to understand the meaning of the word "coward".
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Coward to use something other than Anonymous Coward. Coward to work with women and minorities.
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If it's all white men, then the next wave of discrimination will be age. After that, religion. And after that, hair and eyes colour. Do you see where that's going?
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Seems we can only be happy if we find something to complain about.
Re: Letter (Score:1)
They are the opposite of Trump. Not only are you Telegraphing youâ(TM)re bias, but your ignorance.
Re:Letter (Score:5, Interesting)
Sarah Silverman has a perhaps fitting joke. "If all you've had are bad roommates, you're the bad roommate." Nothing in her letter shows that she was actually good at any of her jobs other than her saying she was. She worked in Finance, had illusions of grandeur, and seemingly wasn't very good at it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sarah Silverman has a perhaps fitting joke. "If all you've had are bad roommates, you're the bad roommate." Nothing in her letter shows that she was actually good at any of her jobs other than her saying she was. She worked in Finance, had illusions of grandeur, and seemingly wasn't very good at it.
Unfortunately, not a joke, but an accurate description of many SJWs. They never really fit in, they never really are good at anything, they never are successful. And then, because they fundamentally believe that they are superior, they misidentify the problem as everybody else.
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You can tell the nature of the artists by the nature of the work they create, their psychology on display. So for the gaming industry, you can tell the nature of the corporation by the nature of their creation on display. Those that produce it and those that approve, expressing their psychology. Gamers just play the game on offer, the psychology of those that create those games, the minds that imagine it, are not the same as those who play the creations made available.
Look at the kind of games they create t
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I don't know what you read, but I disagree, she's very good at her delusions of grandeur.
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Sounds like she was great at it. The only issue raised on her first performance review was that she "wasted" time learning some VBS.
The rest of par for the course at toxic companies. If you are actually good they just load you up with more and more work until you are doing 3 people's jobs. They only way to survive is to have low productivity and be really good at hiding it.
Re: Letter (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that makes sense if you actually want to think about it.
If you don't have the words to say it directly, you describe it with many words that are not really suited, to try to at least circle it in.
It's because brains are pattern matchers, and this is basically "I mean the subset of all the patterns I'll throw at you now." Or, in other cases, the superset.
Of course I can understand your prejudice. SJWdom is just as toxic, and it is safe to first assume insanity and then correct for thee few cases that are
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If you don't have the words to say it directly, you describe it with many words that are not really suited, to try to at least circle it in.
That's how language usually works, doesn't it? You still have words to describe things though, not gestures or telepathy.
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We're in 2020. We have words and emojis!
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and emojis!
Welcome, time traveler from 2053's /.!
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
If you can't attack the message of the messenger them attack the wording.
If you have to stoop that low them you've admitted she's correct.
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The letter is about what happened and how it made her feel at the time. Basic reading comprehension, 9 year old's understanding of tense.
Re:Letter (Score:4, Informative)
reading this whole victim blaming thread makes me sad.
I'm a white male, currently a technical director in video games, working for 20 years in the industry, and what she describes definitely rings true. The industry does have a bro-culture and maturity problem. Often Managers have barely any management training (unless you could a weekend Scrum course and a CSM adequate for managing 100 people). Toxic people do stay on the project because they are "essential" for launching that AAA title so your publisher pays your bills. The industry is very small and you do get hired by word of mouth. There is a tendency for cliques and nepotism because the industry is small and because it is just human when people prefer to work with someone "they know". There is also a tendency to excuse bad behavior as result of "passion" or a "fun work environment" or simply because of "crunch stress". There is also a notion that games are different. If tech in general doesn't have to behave like boring traditional companies, then this applies double for games. Most games people who manage to stay longer than 10 years have stories about genuine WTF?! moments that are about people, often managers, behaving in absolutely mind boggling immature ways, that would disqualify those people for even looking after your cat.
Overworked people are going to be assholes (Score:1)
If you lock people together and work them like slaves when they have to sleep at the workplace to be able to meet their quota, of course some will develop psychological issue. If Ubisoft wanted to fix this they should start improving their working conditions.
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You mean RealDolls for everyone?
It will take time (Score:2)
The best thing to do would be to shut the company down and rebuild it from zero. What I heard was it take 20 years to really change a company. Basically everyone has to either quit, get fired, laid off, retire, or die. That's why many companies spin off divisions or sell them if they are underperforming, it is the easiest thing to do. Then after a few years, after the non-compete clauses expire, they might try entering the market niche again if the market is lucrative.
Disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
For a brief moment, I was hoping that Ubisoft would be apologizing for their toxic treatment of customers.
Silly me.
Re:Disappointing (Score:4, Funny)
For a brief moment, I was hoping that Ubisoft would be apologizing for their toxic treatment of customers.
Silly me.
That's foolish. Ubisoft knows that their customers pay good money for the privilege of being mistreated by Ubisoft.
Re: Disappointing (Score:2)
Uum, you keep paying. Just like you keep voting for the Democrat and Republican arms of the same creature.
If that is not a statement of wanting more of that, then what is? ;)
But it's neat to blame others, isn't it? I just did it to you, so I don't have to face the reality that I'm also unhappy with my own amount of effort to fix the world.
Now Ubisoft's CEO can do it to me, and we're all one happy family of armchair slacktivists.
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Unlike with Democrats and Republicans, you can actually NOT give your money to UbiSoft. It's possible to simply say "no".
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Honestly, I think Rainbow Six has the most toxic player base I've ever seen.
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Pretty much this. I was actually interested whether there's a chance I could start buying their games again, but it seems they're more busy navel-gazing than actually getting their shit fixed.
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For a brief moment, I was hoping that Ubisoft would be apologizing for their toxic treatment of customers.
I'm not current in gaming culture, so wasn't aware of this. So, a gaming company with incredibly bad work culture is also bad to customers? Ah, it's probably a coincidence.
Inappropriate behavior (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
As someone that actually works there, that's not actually a thing. Ubisoft is probably the most stable game company I've been at. Quebec law forbids them from mandatory overtime, so most people don't work more than 40 hours, even at the end of a project.
Re: Inappropriate behavior (Score:2)
That's not saying much though.
Like "He's probably the nicest baby-eating child rapist I know...". ;)
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You know the Bishop of Bath and Wells too!?
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That's what she is complaining about. Regular 70 hour weeks, 6AM to the small hours of the next morning sometimes.
When she pointed out she was doing 3 jobs for them and asked for a pay rise and more realistic workload they refused so she left. Now she is just warning others that it's a shitty place to work.
Bad Managers (Score:2)
In my experience bad managers think they are irreplaceable and their staff are interchangeable. In most situation the reverse is actually true, staff are the ones with the difficult to replace skills and experience and bad managers are ten a penny. Good managers are hard to comeby and recognise the value of their team members.
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That's definitely a valid view. When I do management roles, I treat myself as logistics support for my staff. They build the worlds, I have to get rid of the roadblocks to let them work freely and make sure they have what they need.
So far, it's not let me down. I wince every time I see a manger that thinks management is just an excuse to shout at people and push them around, because "authoriteh".
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Indeed. A good manager knows that management is just a support role. A bad manager thinks he is king of his domain.
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Bad employees also tend to think they're irreplaceable and they're as common as bad managers. The difference is that bad employees are the manager's problem, a bad manager is your problem. Unless you become the manager, then you see the other side of that equation. I don't mind taking on a tech lead position but if I went into middle management I'd probably end up strangling someone. I have the feeling I'd be one of those technically bright but horribly micromanaging bosses who'd rather be doing my underlin
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Management in games is a joke. It's either people who stuck around forever. They get promoted because of their "expertise" - usually not in management, but because they grew up writing assembler on their C64. Or people who get promoted to manage a team of 30 because they are gifted artists or programmers, not managers. Or people who don't fit anywhere else and who get equipped for the job by attending a weekend CSM training. Seeing people run projects who have proper qualification in running projects and ma
Step Down! (Score:2)
The culture is toxic because that is the environment Management has created.
If management is able to change said culture, then they were responsible for the current culture. The employees are just living in the culture and doing whatever they think works.
Management is just like politicians. They first create problems and then they talk about how they are going to solve them while claiming responsibility for successes and blaming failures on their subordinates!
just a thought... (Score:2)
Might want to make a game that doesn't suck once in a while, maybe that will put everyone in a better mood
Re: just a thought... (Score:2)
Can't. Because nice would mean it actually giving somebody nice feelings. It being actual art. And useful. And since everyone is different, that means others will strongly dislike it too. Meaning less "after-sales disappointment". You should only be disappointed after sales.
The industry wants the biggest target group and profit. And that means making a *product* instead.
A key distinction. Art, or a product.
And being right above the line of "meh", but standing out not one bit more, to not "offend" anyone.
So:
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Photorealistic 3D worlds are a bit like UHD-TV. You only see more clearly that the content is garbage.
Good luck with that! (Score:2)
One does not simply "change" a corporate or old boys culture. That takes a century, to do. The only quicker way is, to to create an entire new company, and re-hire only those that fit the criteria.
Everything else will be a delusion. People will just act like yoh expect them to publicly, and compensate when you're not looking.
Hell, I don't think a CEO will be able to even change *himself*. Even if not just lying through his teeth to signal virtue, which is most definitely the case here, the group one is in,
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I've always tried to do an evidence based approach, and apply the test "Does it work" with the slight corollary of "does it work for most".
Quite often, the corporate, or "old boys" networks work fine. Just the same as the "young women's" or similar work in certain cases.
I've seen them be an unmitigated disaster too.
As I don't work in Ubisoft, then my evidence is lacking somewhat (an article in a paper is no longer what I'd consider authoritative). There's one Ubi employee doing the AC rounds at the moment
Does the plan involve resigning? (Score:2)
Culture is always driven from the top down. If the CEO is a current CEO as Yves Guillemot is (20 years running now), then the singular reason for a toxic culture is themselves. The only people who can plan to change it are new CEOs into the position, who in turn bring in a new organisation.
Yves Guillemot, you are your company, you are the problem. You're the reason culture is horrible internally, you're the reason customers are treated just as poorly.
Someone has got to do the work ... (Score:2)
This will just result in a couple show departments in first world countries with some coddled women, no more real work will get done there of course ... that will move to the lower wage nations where people are more hungry for employment and where complaints don't blow up so big.
I do think editorial will change though ... fan service and objectification to make sales won't go away, just accompanied with more liberal symbolism to ignore among the titties and murder.
Toxic, shmoxic (Score:1)
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"Toxic" is in the eye of the beholder. The correct word is "I-don't-like-it." Unless we are talking about say plutonium.
Calling something "toxic" is just the first lie (by misdirection) in the usual chain of lies that makes up an SJW attack. Most of these people cannot be original, so they use a standard pattern.
And yet no word about Microtransactions?! (Score:2)
In a related topic I see no mention about MTX in the article.
Ubisucks had shitty Pay-To-Win- MTX (microtransactiosn) in Ghost Recon Breakpoint [tweaktown.com] before they removed them - but ONLY after [wccftech.com] there was a huge outcry over how obnoxious the grind and Pay-to-Win mechanics were.
If Ubisoft, as a company, can't even respect the customer's time and money then why would we expect them to have employees that respect one another?
--
Carrie Lam became China's Bitch when she didn't allow the full draft of the National Security
easy fix (Score:2)
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Can't do that. Before you have them out the door you'll be slapped with a lawsuit about misogyny.
uPlay (Score:1)
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Yeah, that's the biggest thing that I "cannot and will not" tolerate at Ubisoft. Saw some of their stuff on sale and decided it wasn't worth it. Only 6 more weeks until Wasteland 3.
Sweat-shop bullying (Score:2)
He cared more about getting rid of me than about how the team would be able to cope.
She realizes she is being vilified and insulted but puts loyalty (to her colleagues) over her own safety. Like so many passionate (or co-dependent) people she excused their bullying with "It's not so bad". She, at least realized she was wrong but still stayed in a toxic workplace. That says far more about her than about the institutionalized sweat-shop bullying.
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