A Better Ubisoft Cites That It’s Been 200 Days From the Initial Address
Ubisoft has been trying to move forward with various projects, such as Assassin’s Creed and Skull and Bones. They’ve been trying to go forward with the Ubisoft Quartz as well, despite employee dissatisfaction.
And A Better Ubisoft, a group of employees from the company that formed out of the concerns, is noting Ubisoft’s management lack of will to move forward with workplace issues. Or even address them. According to a tweet that was sent out earlier this week, it’s been since July 2021 that Ubisoft was given four demands, and employees asked for “a collective say in how Ubisoft as a company moves forward.”
That makes it about 200 days since the declaration was made. And currently, according to A Better Ubisoft, Ubisoft leaders “refuse to engage.”
Instead, there was an internal satisfaction survey, which was, according to employees, “vague”. While there had been over 40 questions and a place where comments could be placed for each one. Afterward, there was an internal video released by Ubisoft chief people officer Anika Grant. This video struck with six points, but none seemed to hit the points that went with the petition. Not to mention, the video itself was only eight minutes long-not long enough to cover all of the survey questions and comments that may have been from the survey. The only numbers, according to employees, were participation and engagement scores.
At 200 days since our open letter, we have the following statement. 2/4 #EndAbuseInGaming #ABetterUbisoft pic.twitter.com/nywe5eadHi
— A Better Ubisoft 🤍 (@ABetterUbisoft) February 14, 2022
“Instead there were vague statements like ‘you told us…’ or ‘we heard from you…’,” said A Better Ubisoft. “This gives employees no way of knowing whether the statement that ‘you have managers who are approachable and supportive’ means 95% feel this way or 51%—starkly different outcomes. We’re told in the video that several of the positive responses were ‘above the external benchmarks for general industry’ provided by Glint. But no context was given for these benchmarks, what they are, and what they represent.”
According to Grant, the information is still under analysis and she needs time to, “dig in to understand feedback from minority and under-represented voices.” Employees fired back that this survey needed to be done years ago, and that the information given was, “the legally required and already available age and binary gender data.”
The employee group appears to be getting exasperated by the tone of the statement issued. And they conclude their statement with, “We’re tired of having to repeatedly explain these seemingly obvious points to a management team who are either accidentally ignorant or simply don’t want to listen. We push on because we care about our work. We care about the people we work with, the games we make, and we desperately want to repair this company.”
There have already been many employees that have already left in the past few years. As it is, it may be possible that Ubisoft employees may go beyond signing letters or making Twitter statements- they may end up following the route of Raven Software QA department- that is, by walking out, and ensuring that the games they love stay incomplete.