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French union Solidaires Informatique is taking Ubisoft to court

French union Solidaires Informatique is taking Ubisoft to court

French union Solidaires Informatique is building a lawsuit against publisher Ubisoft after details of its troubling working culture have emerged.

The organisation has put out an open call for members of staff at the French publishing giant to come and add their complaints to the case. The action will be led by lawyer Maude Beckers. This follows a wave of accusations of harassment, abuse and other misconduct at Ubisoft.

Solidaires Informatique says that Ubisoft has allowed a toxic working culture, with the company's former chief talent and comms officer Cécile Cornet reportedly having said that: "Yves [Guillemot, CEO] is okay with toxic management, as long as the results of these managers exceed their toxicity level."

The French firm has brought an external company to investigate the claims and has already started to force out some of those accused.

Chief creative officer Serge Hascoët has been booted, as has VP of editorial, Maxime Béland. Director of Canadian studios Yannis Mallat and chief talent and Cornet have also stepped down. That's on top of PR director Stone Chin, whose employment was terminated due to his troubling management style.

"The repeated acts of harassment and sexual assault, sexists acts and discrimination, as well as the impunity that the group has been subjected to over many years, must be explained and repaired," wrote Solidaires Informatique.

"The exclusion of a few prominent individuals, such as Serge Hascoët is not enough, as those who have benefited from the group's activities are hiding under their leadership."


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.