Ubisoft Workers Signed an Open Letter for Change, Signed by Over a 1,000 Workers 100 Days Ago
Game developers associated with the ABetterUbisoft group are asking for help with changing the current environment of Ubisoft. Specifically, ABetterUbisoft is asking for help from fans and from developers in their requests for a seat at the table, so to speak, with how the company moves forward, as well as its toxic work environment. Ubisoft, the publisher of Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and other hit games has been known in the past year, unfortunately, to do little in the case of workplace harassment The Ubisoft workers want to change that. Moreover, they want to change this unfortunate standard for the industry and have listed it in their demands to an open letter to the company.
They have four demands that they made in an open letter to Ubisoft: that known offenders not be promoted and shuffled from studio to studio with no consequences, a meaningful say by the employees on how the company moves forward, and a cross-industry collaboration on setting the ground rules and processes on how workplace offenses may be handled in the future- and that it involves union representatives and employees, not just those in management positions.
It’s not unreasonable, and after over a thousand workers have signed the open letter of demands, they have been waiting for a response. What they have currently is an assurance in publicly stated commitments to overhauling its company culture. But some employees have not heard anything back on complaints, or if anything had been done to improve the situation. With Activision Blizzard’s legal troubles as of late, it would have been thought that Ubisoft would have taken that as a cue of how to proceed. ABetterUbisoft group has certainly noticed what has happened with Blizzard, and how similar the cases are. This elicited them to speak of the matter on their Twitter account on October 29th.
“While our demands are not identical, many overlap and could be addressed through similar actions just as swiftly,” said the ABetterUbisoft tweet. “You offer nothing more than your assurance…while offering us no evidence, involvement or oversight in any part of the process.”
ABetterUbisoft asks for support from fans and other game developers so there can be a change in the current workplace environment and hopefully even a change in the gaming industry workplace standard.