It’s been a tumultuous year for Ubisoft. The company has found itself buried in controversy after controversy, almost all of them stemming from reports of toxic workplace place culture perpetuated by upper-level staff and management. Since then, there have been numerous key departures, apologies from Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, and massive missteps while trying to directly address the problem.
On the other side of the coin, Ubisoft’s upcoming game lineup is one of the strongest the company has had in years. It’s packing heavy-hitter titles like WatchDogs Legion and Assassin Creed Valhalla, while introducing new projects like Immortals Fenyx Rising. Even the company’s older classics are getting a breath of fresh air with Prince of Persia: Sands of Time’s remaster, which is bringing the old gem to modern systems.
Ubisoft is in a strange position. It simultaneously has to navigate multiple triple-a launches, each one with their own risks during a brand-new console cycle, while at the same time trying to address a public relations disaster. Of course, Ubisoft’s trouble is its own fault, so it’s difficult to be sympathetic with the problem itself.
For fans of the company, one of the biggest struggles is separating the business itself from the developers that are working on the games being released. Triple-a games are massive projects, often requiring hundreds of people working together to make one cohesive product. Those that have been fired from Ubisoft have committed indefensible abuses of power in many instances, but they represent only a small percentage of the people working on each project.
Ubisoft is full of talented developers, and that fact comes across in the diversity of its upcoming games. While most releasing in the coming months are new entries in existing franchises, they’ve each set out to change up their formulas in distinct ways. For fans of the company, that’s a positive. It’s difficult to ignore the problems that have circulated at the company, but the labor that goes into games stretches far beyond management.
Still, it’s an admittedly dark shadow over the company’s games, and one that won’t go away easily. All Ubisoft can do now is commit to real change internally, and wait to rebuild the trust of those both on the in and outside of the company. Having so many strong games will no doubt help speed that up, but it’ll be an interesting shift to watch for the next few years.
Hopefully, those changes come fast. The games industry is often a toxic place, so much so that it’s consistently a topic of conversation online, as it continues to struggle with diversity, representation, and labor issues. However, Ubisoft making perceivable changes internally could go a long way in the industry as a whole, and that may be the best way for the company to start rebuilding trust with its fans.
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