Ubisoft CCO Serge Hascoet resigns in wake of sweeping allegations
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I have limited knowledge on these things; FD: I work for Ubisoft in their Massive Studio.
Ubisoft itself is incredibly silo'd; each studio and each function operates like a loosely coupled bundling of companies.
You can think of it like:
* Marketing has offices (or colo's in some offices) but has a completely seperate reporting structure all the way to Yves.
* (same for other business functions such as server hosting, exchange administration etc;)
* Studios operate with an entirely different culture from HQ.
* Studios develop games, those games are submitted for "stage gates" which is when Editoriale can say if something is fun, or if something needs to be cut or added.. Editoriale in HQ can only speak during those times (big milestones). Otherwise the Studio doesn't really talk to HQ. (save: marketing, I guess)
I can say that Massive is incredibly progressive, this isn't just a result of being Sweden, even some (not all) of the Swedes who work here think we're overcorrecting for progressiveness. We had Sarkeesian on site a few times to consult on games (and paid her handsomely for the privilege)
However.. and this is a big however:
There is also a culture of partying in the upper echelons, self-promotion, congratulatory/promotional incest and an "untouchable ego" that a lot of the upper management seem to have, this means that people at the top stay there, enrich themselves and keep others out. This doesn't apply to Yves himself, strangely, I've met him many times and is a fantastically humble, down to earth and generous guy. In fact he's made many moves that are directly against enriching himself in order to ensure that nobody can get the idea of shuttering a studio and putting people out of a job- and has actively worked (personally) against crunch culture.
--
What I'm trying to say is that: each "head" is responsible for the culture they create; and some people are given the freedom to abuse that culture.
Yves see's that ability to abuse as a failure of HR and that's why (I speculate) that Cecile has been let go.
As far as I understand Serge has had no allegations levied against him; however it's unconscionable how much power he had- and it would have been easy to abuse accidentally (an off-hand comment/joke being taken as an instruction). Not saying he's not guilty of anything but that kind of power should not have been levied.
Notably the Editoriale team (gatekeepers for games) was recently expanded to be more diverse.. that diversity was all middle-aged white french guys who came from the same school and had worked in that department before.. so.. not very diverse.
Now I will wonder who you are for weeks! xD
- homophobic behavior - drugging subordinates - sexual harassment - alcohol excesses in the workplace
as well as his direct reports (selling drugs at HQ, assault, harassment.)
As much as it pains me to say it, drugging subordinates (or, supplying drugs and perhaps peer-pressuring) and alcohol excesses in the workplace are not complete unknowns.
EDIT You know I should really read the article instead of relying on internal mails; I see now the allegations made against Serge - I am quite certain that nobody at Massive was aware; and certainly Yves himself was not made aware.. which doubly explains why the head of HR was let go..
So often people forget that leaders set the cultural.
> Notably the Editoriale team (gatekeepers for games) was recently expanded to be more diverse.. that diversity was all middle-aged white french guys who came from the same school and had worked in that department before.. so.. not very diverse.
This saddens me. I do wonder if tech will ever see a proper shift in diversity within teams and leadership. But, what exactly is diversity?
The only questions (to your point) are what traits you want to measure, and what distribution you desire.
For a product or service team, the traits you measure should be those that maximize product fit - that is, the chances that your target buyers will buy and enjoy your product.
And the distribution you desire should be a reflection of your target buyers.
This is overly reductionist. It makes me sad. Life is more than inputs in, product out, dollars in.
Humanity is also quite far from having the sophistication to properly design and construct the type of measurements you are talking about. If it is something we should even do in the first place.
The article I read right before coming to this comment page was the one currently on the front page about being “too efficient”. Very apt.
You seem to be saying your team should only be as diverse as your target buyers, but your target buyers are often only as diverse as your team.
If you try to ham-fist diversity by saying “oh, it’s representative of our customers” be prepared for somebody else to come along and snap up everyone you aren’t serving today.
Edit: I'm genuinely curious how these things happen, whether intentionally or compromises due to budgets or time constraints.
It's unlikely that she'd know, since closers tend to come in near the end, and artistic choices are usually finished long before - but I will ask.
If I had to speculate, and, remembering of course that it is purely speculation: giving people the opportunity to kill native americans might not have gone over well, especially with the rural american aesthetic.
Companies have "woke" consultants in to make speeches all the time but it's performative and it never changes anything.
After that the environment became so toxic that many people left anyways, and some clients went after this employees.
But if you consider that roughly 86% of the studio at that time was male, it would have been easy for something to slip through that could have been perceived as anti-women.
A great example is in the game Hitman; there is a moment where you're infiltrating a strip club and an option exists (although, is penalised) for murdering a scantily clad stripper. This was caught by Sarkeesian and used as an example of poor game development that allows for the objectification of women. (or, women as background objects)[0]
We didn't want that.
I would guess that genuine efforts are few and far between.
An “allegation” does not mean a groundless accusation. Any claim, even a very obvious and serious one, would be referred to in media as “allegation” until the accused is convicted.
The conviction does not always happen even in clear-cut cases, as the matter might not end up in court for various reasons unrelated to the truth of the claim.
The fact that measures were taken by the employer (some measures appear to be directly detrimental to the company, such as firing someone in charge of most of their products) shows that the allegations are likely firmly based in reality.
[0] “…a definition of workplace harassment that was updated in 2015 to remove the example of a manager sexually harassing a reporting employee”
And the term you decide to describe all of this is "allegation" and "public executions". Interesting choice of words.
I mean, if you had enough informations to prove that what Libèration and Bloomberg wrote is unsubstantiated, that would be quite a revelation. In France, that would also carry heavy legal implications. So, I think a lot of people would like to hear more about that. Especially those fired right now from Ubi.
Otherwise, in the off chance that you can't exactly prove that such journalistic investigations are false...just tell me, honestly, what are you arguing about?
19% of women report sexual violence to police. (1)
10% of those reports result in a conviction. (2)
So actually I was being conservative, it's actually
98%+ get away with it based on these two sources.
And we haven't even got to child sexual assault conviction rates.
(1) http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/056...
(2) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-14/why-do-so-few-sexual-...
Your first stats are 15 year old and are only applicable to Canada. You can't make broad generalizations like that. Different countries have different culture and very different legal systems.
I'm not sure who you were replying with as the cited data was not from Canada and was not 15 years old.
If you have a more nuanced reply with better data sources please do so.