According to a report from Axios, there has been a wave of departures at Ubisoft being described as a “great exodus.”
Axios notes that a lot of the big-name talent at the company has left in recent months. As many as 25 of the biggest names that worked on Far Cry 6 have already left. And 12 out of 50 of the biggest that worked on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla have also moved on.
And it’s not just the bigger names that are leaving. Midlevel and lower-level employees are leaving, with LinkedIn reportedly showing Ubisoft Montreal and Toronto both being down 60 employees each. Two current employees have said that the resignations have stalled or slowed projects as well.
what are employees saying?
One former employee told Axios that “There’s something about management and creative scraping by with the bare minimum that really,” turned them away. Another who is recently leaving the company said that the company is “an easy target for recruiters” because of the issues at the company over the last year.
Anika Grant, head of people ops at Ubisoft, said that they’re on top of it. “Our attrition today is a few percentage points above where it typically is,” said Grant. “But it’s still within industry norms.” According to LinkedIn, with data provided by Ubisoft, the game developer’s attrition rate is 12%. That’s lower than Activision Blizzard’s 16%, but higher than EA’s 9% or Epic Games 7%.
All of this comes after a number of issues at Ubisoft over the last year. A Bloomberg report from 2020 alleged mishandling of sexual harassment cases. Employees launched a petition calling for public support in November. They did so after CEO Yves Guillemot failed to appropriately respond to internal criticisms from staff. It’s no surprise that Ubisoft is facing a “great exodus” of employees. The company hasn’t properly addressed any of the issues publicly since they came to light, and clearly more needs to be done.
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