Game publishing and development company Ubisoft is under fire again after many months of silence on issues of abuse within the company. Employees, naturally, have become extremely critical of the company's decisions.
Over a year ago, allegations that sexual abusers were in positions of corporate power at Ubisoft made headlines across gaming press. Since then, the situation has escalated with employee-led organization ABetterUbisoft at the forefront of campaigning for change in the company.
Several attempts to bring the company's executives to justice are ongoing; Ubisoft became the target of a lawsuit last year and ABetterUbisoft's campaigns have kept public pressure on. After exactly a hundred days have passed since ABetterUbisoft published its initial open letter, the organization is following up with a statement that none of its four main demands have been met by Ubisoft. A reply to the original post contains a reminder of what the demands actually are, focusing on the company's lack of punishment for abusive behavior and giving employees more power to help prevent abuse in the future. A new petition has also been opened for the public to sign as a show of support.
Ubisoft itself has publicly addressed the issue before, but has remained somewhat closed off about plans to stop the issues, even refusing to address them in Ubisoft Forward. Ubisoft Forward is one of the company's most highly publicized events and to address the problems in such a format could send a powerful message, but the company's refusal makes the approach clear.
Several executives may have resigned, but the impact at Ubisoft has reportedly been minimal. To see Ubisoft mostly operating as it did before is disappointing; with every case of abuse in the game industry comes an opportunity to set an industry standard for how to deal with the issues. Unfortunately, the industry standard seems to be rapidly becoming a method of symbolic firings and resignations while ignoring the issue.
Ubisoft's next steps were incredibly important when the accusations first came out and they are just as important now. Even with the public relations nightmare that should be coming from ignoring the issues, the company's games continue to sell very well and for the executives remaining little appears to have changed. Ubisoft seems to have long since given up on the notion of becoming a shining example of how to mitigate the abuse that runs rampant in the video game industry, yet the company goes on as it did before, even launching new projects like Ubisoft Originals.