It's been two years since the toxic work culture at Ubisoft was made public knowledge. In that time the company has made a number of changes – like letting go of a number of problematic employees, hosting awareness workshops, and even bringing in a chief people officer as well as a VP of diversity and inclusion. However, the transition has been "painfully slow" according to A Better Ubisoft, the employee advocacy formed to battle the toxic work culture.
Subsequently, the company held a briefing in Paris on Thursday to address the situation and talk about how Ubisoft plans to continue making changes to the culture (thanks, Eurogamer).
"Our goal is to offer the best working environment for them to thrive and reach their full potential," said CEO, Yves Guillemot. "In a context of [a] great reshuffle, we want to build one unique employee value proposition and bring changes whenever needed.
"First, we want to ensure an inclusive, rewarding and respectful workplace for all. Yes, we stumbled. And we have acknowledged that. We learned a lot along the way, and have made meaningful progress with concrete action plans led by our leaders together with Anika Grant, our chief people officer, and Raashi Sika, our VP of diversity and inclusion.
"Despite the attrition that impacted our entire industry during the pandemic, we hired more than 4000 people over the last fiscal year, including more than 600 people that were rehired, as well as senior talents coming from other leading companies."
Guillemot also took the opportunity to talk about Tencent's stake in Ubisoft's parent company, Guillemot Brothers. He revealed that the partnership helps them realise their plans of creating and expanding on triple-A mobile games. Tencent's monetary power, as well as its massive roster of companies, will surely help achieve that goal.
Finally, he gave a small update on Ubisoft's NFT program, Quartz. "We tested a few things recently that are giving us more info on how it can be used and what we should do in the universe of video games," he told Eurogamer. "So we are testing ground with some games that... we will see, if they really answer a player's need, [and then they] will happen on the market. But we are still in the research mode, I would say."