Three Ubisoft chiefs found guilty of enabling culture of sexual harassment | Hacker News Reader

Three Ubisoft chiefs found guilty of enabling culture of sexual harassment

theguardian.com

52 pointsfreddier20 comments

This is a really badly written headline and should read "Three Ubisoft chiefs found guilty of sexual harassment and abuse".

Read the article! This isn't boys being boys- it's actual abuse.

Only one of them was found guilty of sexual harassment. If you're going to pull out the read the article bit... you know...

Pure misinformation. The article reports none guilty of sexual abuse.

The verdicts:

> Thomas François, 52, a former Ubisoft editorial vice-president, was found guilty of sexual harassment.

> Serge Hascoët, 59, Ubisoft’s former chief creative officer and second-in-command, was found guilty of psychological harassment and complicity in sexual harassment.

> The former Ubisoft game director, Guillaume Patrux, 41, was found guilty of psychological harassment

As someone who lives in the US, I was surprised to hear they’re facing jail time for this. In the cases I’ve heard, the company itself is sued and just has to pay damages to the victim. But I think it makes a lot of sense to hold the leaders of a company accountable for the culture they create and they should face jail time. I wonder why our laws don’t do that in the US.

A headline that should've happened for Sun Microsystems back in the day but never did. Mind-boggling abuse 2-4 decades ago never made headlines and was swept under the rug of history.

> The court heard that Hascoët bullied assistants by making them carry out personal tasks for him such as going to his home to wait for parcel deliveries.

Er, that's bullying??

> The former Ubisoft game director, Guillaume Patrux, 41, was found guilty of psychological harassment and given a 12-month suspended sentence and a fine of €10,000.

> The court heard he had punched walls

Psychological harrassment of walls. Good grief.

Punching walls is a sign someone has anger issues.

Anger issues is not harrassment.

Yes, abusing your position of power to use professional assistants as personal maids is bullying. Maybe that was okay in the 90s, but no, that's 100% not appropriate.

Also, I'm sure the psychological harassment isn't to the walls, but rather punching walls is a form of manipulation to intimidate people around you.

> abusing your position of power to use professional assistants as personal maids is bullying.

"professional assistants"? "personal maids"? You're making this up.

Making what up? This comment doesn't make any sense. Being an assistant is a job at a place of employment. It doesn't involve doing highly personal tasks that you would expect a maid, or more likely, yourself, to do.

It's one thing to ask one of your employees to go to the break room and make a cup of coffee for you. It's another to ask them to go to your literal house and do common household chores. That's very obviously not appropriate and it's kind of mind blowing I have to spell this out.

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