Maxime Beland Resigns Following Accusations of Abuse from Ubisoft Employees

Last week, Ubisoft’s CEO, Yves Guillemot, announced that now that Ubisoft has been caught being awful to their employees, they would finally do something about it. While they articulated some of their plans, such as reevaluating their editorial board, other aspects of their plans to purge their organization of problematic people were left up in the air.

Well, late last night, at least one such problematic person was just shown the door, of sorts: former vice president Maxime Beland has resigned after joining the company earlier this year. This comes after several employees shared their horror stories with the man on Twitter. The most damning story was when one woman claimed he choked her at a Far Cry 4 launch party, but there were other reports of him creating a toxic, “party culture” that was hostile to female employees.

"Maxime Beland, Vice President Editorial, has resigned from his role at Ubisoft, effective immediately. Despite his resignation, we continue to investigate the allegations made against him. Additionally, effective as of yesterday, Tommy François, Vice President Editorial & Creative Services, has been placed on disciplinary leave pending the outcome of an investigation. One other individual in our Toronto studio has been terminated for engaging in behaviors that do not align with what is expected of Ubisoft employees. Other investigations are ongoing and will be conducted rigorously."

This wasn’t just in response to the Twitter reveals – it also came following an internal letter sent by 100+ employees at Ubisoft Toronto on June 26 encouraging studio management to investigate the workplace culture, which has lead to people feeling unsafe or harassed. While Maxime was not named specifically in this letter, it was probably obvious enough to the people involved that he was a problem.

For what it’s worth, it’s great he’s leaving, but as a higher-up, it’s not unlikely he also got a pretty significant payout on the way out the door. So don’t forget that.