Ubisoft is Reportedly Facing an 'Exodus' of Developers - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 April 2022 / 6,690 Views
Multiple key developers at Ubisoft have been confirmed to have left the company this year. This includes chief studios operating officer Virginie Haas, Far Cry executive producer Dan Hay, and Assassin’s Creed art director Raphael Lacoste.
A new report from Axios has revealed that far more employees have left Ubisoft in the past 18 months, according to current and former Ubisoft developers. Ubisoft employees have described the large number of people leaving the company as "the great exodus" and "the cut artery."
Five of the top 25 credited people who worked on 2021's Far Cry 6 have already left Ubisoft and 12 of the top 50 people who worked on 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla have left as well.
Ubisoft's Montreal and Toronto studios have also each seen at least 60 employees leave in the last six months.
Two developers told Axios that with so many people leaving it has slowed down or stalled the development of games.
A range of reasons from current and former employees were given as to why so many were leaving the company. This includes "low pay, an abundance of competitive opportunities, frustration at the company's creative direction, and unease at Ubisoft's handling of a workplace misconduct scandal that flared in mid-2020."
One former Ubisoft employee was disappointed by the directives given from Ubisoft's headquarters and said, "there's something about management and creative scraping by with the bare minimum that really turned me away."
Ubisoft management says it is on top of the exodus by hiring 2,600 people since April. However, in the previous two years it had hired over 4,500 people.
"Our attrition today is a few percentage points above where it typically is," Ubisoft's head of people ops, Anika Grant. "But it's still within industry norms."
LinkedIn reports the attrition rate at Ubisoft is 12 percent. This is lower than the 16 percent at Activision Blizzard, but higher than Electronic Arts (9%), Take-Two (8%), and Epic Games (7%).
One employee who left said they tried to work with the company to reform its culture as there were reports of abuse, discrimination, and more at the company. However, the employee was disappointed by what they heard from their bosses.
"They constantly emphasized 'moving on' and 'looking forward' while ignoring the complaints, concerns and cries of their employees," the developer said. "The company's reputation was too much to bear. It's legitimately embarrassing."
Ubisoft last week announced a Splinter Cell remake is in development at Ubisoft Toronto.
Ubisoft has greenlit the development of a Splinter Cell remake that will draw from the rich canvas of the brand," said Ubisoft in the announcement.
"Led by Ubisoft Toronto, the game will be rebuilt from the ground up using Ubisoft’s own Snowdrop engine—the same engine being used to develop Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, as well as Ubisoft’s upcoming Star Wars game—to deliver new-generation visuals and gameplay, and the dynamic lighting and shadows the series is known for."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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NFT crap, sex scandal crap, stock value plummeting, Ubisoft is just tumbling down at this rate.
60 people from the 18,000+ that really much of a loss
It depends on their positions and it seems concentrated on two studios in particular not really spread out.
This doesn't necessarily mean much. Just about every company in every industry is seeing record employee turnover the last 18 months. Why would we expect Ubisoft, or game devs in general, to be any different?
Doesn't speak well of industry culture that turnover is referred to as 'attrition'.
Ubisoft is just a crap company - just name one good game of them in recent years? Assassin Creeds, Far Cry, Watchdogs, The Division... all the same yawning open-world formula. If you play them a few times they are good games but they really becoming boring.
I used to look up to Ubisoft as the only big European game-publisher but I honestly don't think they can recover to becoming great again.
Mario + Rabbids was the only really different game from them in recent years.
Seems like they need to work up their corporate culture.
Surprised Pikachu face
Good!
edit: not even trying with this...
Because Ubisoft is a terrible gaming company that deserves to crash and burn, and these hard working developers are realizing that fact and are looking to find better employment rather than work in such a toxic environment. Ubisoft is learning the hard way when you don't give a crap about your employees, they leave. They're reaping what they sow, if you will
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