A year of investigation, around sixty witnesses, five police custody: the file of more than a thousand pages on sexual violence at Ubisoft, which The world was able to consult, reveals an almost systemic problem within the French group, number three in the world in video games. Around forty sexual assaults are mentioned over ten years, the overwhelming majority of which concern the editorial department, responsible for the creative supervision of video games.
But the atmosphere toxic “ seems to extend well beyond the “editorial” hub on the sixth floor of the company’s headquarters. The procedure for “sexual harassment”, “moral harassment” and “sexual assault” was launched by the Bobigny public prosecutor’s office following revelations made by Release in 2020. Complaints were filed in the summer of 2021 by two victims, as well as by the Solidaires Informatique union.
The affair had pushed Ubisoft management to part ways with its vice-president of the editorial department, Thomas (known as Tommy) François, in 2020, and the creative director and number two at Ubisoft, Serge Hascoët, had resigned in the stride. Maude Beckers, a lawyer specializing in sexual violence at work, had also filed a complaint against the company Ubisoft France, its CEO, Yves Guillemot, the global DHR and several people from human resources suspected of having covered up the facts.
The open space, a teenager’s bedroom
Finally, only Serge Hascoët, Thomas François and Guillaume Patrux, lead game designer, are officially summoned for a hearing with a view to a trial, Tuesday February 6, at the Bobigny court. “ This procedure should be for sexual and gender-based violence within a company what the France Telecom trial was for moral harassment,” underlines the union. Maude Beckers agrees: “I have been dealing with sexual violence at work for twenty-three years, this is the first time I have seen a case of such magnitude. » However, the lawyer believes that, by refusing to bring charges against the CEO and the company as a legal entity, “ justice makes individual people responsible for harassment that is systemic and sets aside the organization of a society that capitalizes and profits from all of this.”
The criminal investigation describes the atmosphere of the open space of the editorial department as that of a teenager’s bedroom, where certain “created” reigned supreme. They burped, insulted women, scratched their butts, played porn films on the loudspeaker and had shit delivered to them. Some employees, often the youngest and most precarious, were harassed, rated on their appearance and sometimes attacked. One of them recounts that, during a company trip, Tommy François arrived in the breakfast room and said: “ I jerked off all night, it was great! “, taking out his phone from his pocket, which is playing a porn film.
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