Ubisoft Singapore Described as Most Toxic Publisher Antenna According to New Survey

Ubisoft Singapore Described as Most Toxic Publisher Antenna According to New Survey

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Kotaku took advantage of his time at Ubisoft Singapore to question the company's culture. After having brought to light the chaotic development conditions of Skull & Bones, the site yesterday published a particularly disturbing investigation into the management of this branch of Ubisoft.

Revelations which, for anyone who has already read the Liberation, Numerama or Gamasutra investigations concerning other Ubisoft studios last summer, will sound less like a surprise than confirmation that there is indeed a worm in the fruit. .



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“The worst Ubisoft studio in terms of culture”

Prompt to promote a healthy and inclusive corporate culture, the reality behind Ubisoft's curtain would be quite different. 

The facts recounted here by Kotaku sources are almost — and obviously sadly — trivial. Are described in particular tyrannical managers, an HR department protecting its "talents" at all costs and significant wage disparities between employees from Singapore and French-speaking expatriates.

Among the twenty employees and ex-employees of Ubisoft Singapore that Kotaku was able to question, one name kept coming up. That of Hugues Ricour, first producer, then general manager since 2018 before an internal investigation dated November 2020 described him as “unfit to continue his duties. »

Hugues Ricour is now “Production Intelligence Director” at Ubisoft's headquarters in Paris; responsible in particular for the production of the group's AAA projects.

A “punishment” which resonates strangely in the ears of those who describe the man as partly responsible for the toxicity of the studio, and who would have delivered insistent and inappropriate remarks against his subordinates during several events of the company. Not to mention his mood swings. Vindictive and mean-spirited, in the words of Kotaku sources, Hugues Ricour “seems like the kind of person who gets off on making you feel incompetent.”



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The second chance policy

Confronted by at least two employees on the reason for the transfer of the ex-producer when the facts described would have deserved, according to them, a dismissal, Virginie Haas, head of Ubisoft studios, would have argued the "culture of memory" prevailing in the company.


A term that evokes an exit from Christine Burgess-Quémard, the predecessor of Virginie Haas, during an interview in 2019: “We have a saying: at Ubisoft, you are always entitled to a second chance. We don't cut heads if mistakes were made for the first time. We are giving them a second chance”.

Now headed by Daryl Long, former director of the Ubisoft Winnipeg studio, the atmosphere seems to have calmed down – a little – in the Singapore premises. But employees are still waiting for the profound changes promised by Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, in response to surveys on his company's culture published last summer.


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