Ubisoft's "Great Exodus" [Dec 20, 2021, 9:18 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
A
report on Axios says that so many developers have departed scandal-ridden
Ubisoft over the past 18 months that the wave is being called "the great exodus"
and "the cut artery" by insiders. The article has a response from Ubisoft saying
the company's standing is in line with the competition based on surveys of
employees. As for the departures: "Our attrition today is a few percentage
points above where it typically is," said Ubisoft's Anika Grant. "But it's still
within industry norms." Here's how the report describes the impact of all this:
Signs of the exits are abundant.
- Top-name talent is leaving, with at least five of the top 25-credited people from the company's biggest 2021 game, Far Cry 6, already gone. Twelve of the top 50 from last year's biggest Ubisoft release, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, have left too. (A 13th recently returned.)
- Also out are midlevel and lower-level workers as headcounts drop, particularly in Ubisoft's large and normally growing Canadian studios. LinkedIn shows Ubisoft's Montreal and Toronto studios each down at least 60 total workers in the last six months.
- Two current developers tell Axios the departures have stalled or slowed projects.
- One developer recently said a colleague currently at Ubisoft contacted them to solve an issue with a game, because no one was still there who knew the system.
Bodolza wrote on Dec 21, 2021, 13:04:the company's standing is in line with the competition based on surveys of employees
So, in other words, all large gaming companies are horrible places to work.
It's certainly looking that way. Although EA seems to get pretty good marks from its employees from a harassment/ abuse perspective, so that might be the exception. Interestingly, EA seems clear-eyed about the issue you articulate:
EA exec says toxic environments are inevitable inside large publishers ‘but you have to take action’
EA has it's own issues of course. An interview with a former EA dev I heard said he left because the focus had gone from "How do we make the best game" to "How do we best monetize the game?" He said the vast majority of his planning meetings were around monetization. And that has born itself out in their game releases and the resulting player backlash.
If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Slava Ukraini!
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