Ubisoft Singapore Head Speaks Out About Changes To Studio Culture

Ubisoft Singapore had recently come under fire, as one of the latest studios highlighted for horrible workplace practices.

In a Kotaku report, anonymous employees mentioned a variety of things wrong with the studio- such as undervaluing local talent with horrible wage disparity, terrible treatment of women at the company as well as the “French ceiling”, limiting employees who weren’t at least fluent in French from making any progress in their careers.

They did this all while enjoying subsidies from the Singaporean government, which are usually given to promote more local talent, the report adds.

The allegations got cranked up a gear with a report by Gamasutra, which singled out Hugues Ricour as letting sexual harassment go unchecked, among the other problems with the Singapore-based studio. Ricour has since been removed, replaced with Darryl Long.

At a preview event for the upcoming Siege of Paris DLC for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Managing Director Darryl Long says its important that the studio acknowledge the problem as something that’s real.

“It’s very important that we do talk about these things and that we acknowledge what’s going on in our industry right now. At Ubisoft, our goal is to create an environment, a studio culture, that anybody can be proud of, that anybody can be proud to work in. Every member of the community already talks about this.. Like “people go in, and they already jaded”. That’s not what we want and that’s not who we are”, he says. “So we need to search and think the way that we perceive and also the way we act internally as well. We do not, and we will not tolerate any form of abuse, harassment or discrimination of any type. We can’t. Going forward, we have a zero tolerance policy to any kind of misconduct.”

Darryl also mentioned that changes were underway in the studio, promising to listen more to employees, with the approval of Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillermot. However, he didn’t clarify if those were the only changes:

“We’ve already made significant internal changes at Ubisoft and the Singapore studio to ensure that we are following the best practices in creating a safer environment for all our employees. Our CEO, Yves Guillemot, recently went through some of the changes and communicated some of the changes that are being rolled out all across Ubisoft. All of these have been implemented in Singapore. Since joining the studio (I’ve started back in January 2021 this year), it’s all about listening to the team, talking to people to understand and what are they facing, what’s important to them, what are their priorities and how can we all move forward together”, he says.

UPDATE: A previous version of this article had Ubisoft Singapore’s plans depicted in a future tense, when in fact they are measures already taken by the studio. We apologize for the mistake.

The Steps Ubisoft Singapore Has Taken To Change

He did however, clarify that the studio is working with a third party to facilitate whistleblower complaints, so employees could lodge complaints without worrying about corporate retaliation.

“My goal is to build a workplace culture that is based on caring, innovation and leading the industry. We need to be an exemplary place to work. I meant to provide an environment where the team can express themselves and feel safe to express themselves creatively so that they can make incredible games for all of our players. In the studio, we have been taking concrete actions to address first any type of misconduct”

“We formulate all of our processes for handling allegations of misconduct. We use an external third party to allow anonymous whistle blowing as well as the investigations themselves. Then follow the recommendation of independent third parties. It is a two-pronged approach. Plus the zero tolerance to misconduct, part of it is one side to the equation but the other is creating that environment where people feel safer so that they can do their best”

He also said that Ubisoft Singapore has taken steps to build a more diverse host of leaders in the studio. According to Darryl, the studio has made a pledge to the Singapore Women in Technology Initiative to improve the amount of women in key leadership positions in the studio.

“To me, that means that diversity and inclusion needs to be at the heart of everything that we do. Some of the commitments that we make, like SG WIT (Singapore Women In Tech initiative). We’ve pledged to SG WIT this year, which comes with some necessary obligations, to improve the diversity -specifically gender diversity, in our industry. Things like providing special learning paths for women to help move into bigger roles as quickly as possible is something that we are taking on in the Singapore studio as well as other initiatives like helping Singaporeans move more quickly to leadership and management roles for example. So these are some of the things we are doing to make a safe workplace.”

While the statement was presented by Darryl Long, the presentation itself was attended by the following members of the studio, as well as Singapore Games Association head Gwen Guo:

1. Joel Janisse, Narrative Director (Ubisoft Singapore)
2. Paul Fu, Content Director (Ubisoft Singapore)
3. Joan Hsu, Lead Animator (Ubisoft Singapore
4. Choogs Tan (Ubisoft Philippines).

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