Ubisoft CEO Vows to Change Now That They've Been Caught

One of the companies most caught up in the recent flurry of sexual misconduct accusations was Ubisoft, who on top of fostering a toxic workplace, promoted two men accused of misconduct, Maxime Béland and Tommy Francois, to the company’s Editorial board, which had the power to decide what they published and the ultimate direction the company was moving in. In short, Ubisoft was caught doing a lot of really bad things, and protecting their bad actors rather than doing anything about them.

Well, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, who almost certainly played a role in their company’s crappy behavior, is trying to turn things around, not because he’s sorry about what they did, of course, because he could have done something at any time. Rather, he’s sorry they’ve been caught, so now he wants to take steps to ensure they never get caught again.

In a company-wide email, he wrote:

“The situations that some of you have experienced or witnessed are absolutely not acceptable. No one should ever feel harassed or disrespected at work, and the types of inappropriate behavior we have recently learned about cannot and will not be tolerated. Specifically, have decided to revise the composition of the Editorial Department, transform our human resource processes, and improve the accountability of all managers on these subjects.”

Currently, the editorial board is made up of seven white dudes, and it seems a little odd that such an important job would be filled by such a narrow group of people. That’ll address any issues with the creative leadership of their company. He’s also creating two new jobs in the company, a “head of workplace culture”, and a “head of diversity and inclusion."

So really, we owe a lot of kudos to the people who were brave enough to point out how terrible Ubisoft is, forcing their CEO to do something about it. Because if they didn’t do anything, he wouldn’t have done anything, because he’s just as bad a sack of crap as everyone else who was accused.

Hooray capitalism.