Union representatives for Ubisoft employees have demanded CEO Yves Guillemot’s resignation. Speaking to Game Developer, Ubisoft Paris employees and union representatives Marc Rutschlé and Chakib Mataoui have referred to recent actions by the company’s top management as being a “betrayal”. This comes on the heels of Ubisoft having announced its organizational overhauls, which also included project cancellations and other cost-cutting measures.
Calling back to the sexual harassment and misconduct allegations from back in 2020, Rutschlé noted that Guillemot has continued to surround himself with yes men. In response to a question about a potential change of leadership, he responded in the affirmative, saying, “Sure. I expect nothing from this guy.”
Mataoui, on the other hand, has spoken about another criticized aspect of Guillemot’s leadership: nepotism. With Vantage Studios being headed up by the latter’s son, Charlie Guillemot, serving as co-CEO, Mataoui called out the lack of diversity in top management.
“If you just put your white male friends in [those jobs], then you don’t promote any diversity or get any new opinions or ideas,” he said. “We are in a creative job. We need new ideas to come in to [help us] make great new games. But we don’t have that. We don’t have this mindset for creativity.”
He went on to note that the executives of the company “don’t understand their social responsibility to employees”. Ultimately, he believes the employees should have a more direct say in who fills these leadership positions. “I’d rather have a manager who I consent to give my workforce, than a manager who I cannot trust. The situation right now is that we don’t trust these people,” he said.
Things have seemingly come to a head, with Rutschlé believing that the only way forward would be with Yves’ departure from the company. “I think Guillemot should move away at this point,” he said. “I think the level of hate people have for him [means] he should move on. Then, we could build some sort of trust again.” This comes after Ubisoft has continuously failed to win back the trust of its employees after 2020, and its decision to enter the NFT market.
Another major point of dissension has been the recent return-to-office mandate. Ubisoft even fired the level design team lead at Ubisoft Montreal for speaking out against it. Mataoui has noted that the announcement caused panic for several employees, since they live quite far from the Ubisoft Paris office.
“Most [employees] were very, very panicked by the [RTO] announcement because they started their lives very far from Paris and from their studios—and now they’re being asked to come back knowing that their paycheck doesn’t help with living in the Paris area,” he said. Rutschlé has supported this, noting that the company is yet to provide any evidence of lapses in productivity or creativity from remote working.
As for the recently-announced major corporate reset, Rutschlé has called it a way for the company to “make big announcements that make shareholders happy.”
Ubisoft has been under fire from unions recently. French unions Solidaires Informatique, STVJV, and CFE CGC had asked employees to “stop working” if Guillemot showed up at the office. The corporate reset announcement also sparked Solidaires Informatique to call for a half-day strike.
