During today’s Ubisoft Forward livestream we’ll be hearing about games like Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Watch Dogs: Legion, and Far Cry 6. But Ubisoft won’t be using this broadcast to address the multiple allegations of workplace misconduct and harassment it’s currently facing, the company stated in a tweet today.
Ubisoft Forward will apparently make no mention of the allegations or the resulting resignations of several Ubisoft executives, which include chief creative officer Serge Hascoët, managing director of Ubisoft’s Canadian studios Yannis Mallat, and global head of human resources Cécile Cornet.
In a statement on Twitter, Ubisoft stated none of this would be “addressed directly” during Ubisoft Forward because the stream has been completely pre-recorded:
pic.twitter.com/VvDwBbrA3oJuly 12, 2020
It’s a weak statement and thin justification. There’s been plenty of time to record some sort of brief statement to include in the livestream—while the resignations are recent, harassment and assault allegations against Ubisoft employees were first posted publicly three weeks ago, and the company acknowledged it “must do better” on June 25th. It seems that Ubisoft simply doesn’t want to talk about these issues in the same venue it promotes its new games.
Even the above tweet simply references “a time of big internal change” and “the issues we’re currently dealing with” rather than specifically mentioning the nature of the issues.
“We still have significant work to do and are committed to this process,” the statement concludes. “We will provide more updates soon.”