Patrick Ploude has been a part of Ubisoft for about 20 years. He was the creative director of Child of Light, Watch Dogs 2 and Far Cry 3. Ploude announced earlier today that he will be leaving the company to work as part of an independent consulting agency. Ubisoft later confirmed that Ploude “will provide consulting to some of our creative directors, at their request, and to the Editorial team on certain projects”.
That said, it is very important to note that Patrick Plourde has been mentioned as being one of the key contributors to the toxic work culture, harassment, abuse, and discrimination that has been going on at the company. In fact, a group founded by many current and former Ubisoft employees, A Better Ubisoft, criticized the company late last year for letting Plourde remain as VP of editorial “despite the multiple misconduct reports filed against him”.
Whether Plourde’s departure will result in a better work environment for Ubisoft’s employees remains to be seen. However, A Better Ubisoft tweeted out a statement just a couple of months ago stating that, despite many departures in the company, change within Ubisoft have been very slow, and Ubisoft still hasn’t listened to the 4 demands that they have been repeatedly asking for.
As long as it doesn’t mess up the making of Mario-Rabbids Sparks of Hope while it is in R&D. Yall know me I don’t care who quit, got hired or fired. Just make the sequels to games. It’s bad enough I been waiting over 10 years for a sequel to Rayman Legends.
Headline treats these claims with too much credulity/authority.
I think there’s obviously stuff going on at Ubisoft, though it’s hard to take every claim at face value as there are plenty of people who benefit from upper parts of the business getting booted out. It frees up room for others to move up, which after doing so frees up their spots and so on.
The criticism wasn’t that there’s no way to know if anything is happening at Ubisoft. The criticism was that the headline and to a lesser extent, the article suggested that unverified accusations are a reliable way to come to that conclusion. Patrick’s listed as a contributor to the misconduct when the only way to conclude that is to take the claims of a group that dislikes him at face value. People are usually fine with this when they don’t care about the person being accused. How grossly unfair that is suddenly becomes a big issue when the person being accused is someone they like. See: American Presidents accused of rape.
So if I believe the rape and sexual assault allegations against several previous US presidents in a bipartisan manner, am I also allowed to believe allegations of sexual misconduct against various Ubisoft employees?
It’s not about what you personally believe, it’s about what a reporter can actually prove or verify. A news source (even a small one like this) has a professional ethical obligation not to conflate nebulous/unproven allegations or hearsay with authoritative facts.
Yeah. Could possibly count as slander. At least they should have kept themselves legally safe and used the word “allegedly” throughout the article
Now they just need the NFTs to leave.
Oh and locking a singleplayer game behind a Ubisoft account login screen. I ain’t signing up to that.
The link to the statement by A Better Ubisoft makes it seem more than baseless allegations. Over 1000 employees got on board and risked their employment status to say that things need to change. I tend to believe employees when they say they say their work environment needs a change, and try not to defend wealthy dudes accused of being jerks. Sure, false allegations are a thing, but 1000 employees? 1000 is enough for me.