Ubisoft Forward and the Way It Was Covered Highlighted Everything Wrong about the Games Industry
Videogame companies have built a culture of forward motion. It isn’t always expressed in such literal terms; sometimes you may hear it as “the future,” other times a publisher may label their product as “a revolution.” It’s an expression acknowledging a hope to be remembered in history. That somehow this moment will break through and bring about a new era, leaving the old ways behind. However, there has never been a linear ideal of history that exists in this form.
When someone speaks about moving forward, there is always someone who is left behind. In a nation-state, moving forward can often be a call to ignore the history of violence the government has created in order for their narrative to be maintained. “We are moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago, and we are never going back,” Donald Trump said in his 2020 State of the Union address. This was said shortly before panic arose over the American government’s COVID testing blunders and just as ICE was given increased agency across the country.
In games, moving forward maintains corporations’ control over the violent structures of game culture. Where a new technological breakthrough is reached, exploited bodies are buried.
Consider the parts of gaming where this sentiment is heard the most. The hardware and software that paves this way forward is built on exploitedlabor and creates an unnecessarily large carbon footprint. Many big budget game production workplaces foster abusive and discriminatory work practices that put their workers, especially marginalized workers, in harm’s way. On top of this, many people who play these games celebrate and promote the products without a long-term critical eye towards the practice. This is especially true of games publications who will publish details on upcoming game releases, without any consideration for the harm game companies are bringing to people unless it’s scandalous.
Moving forward in games is a chimerical sales point, conjured to obfuscate the violent practices that bring games to form. Forward is also the label Ubisoft used for their work in their recent “Ubisoft Forward” conference held on July 12th. In the midst of abuse and harassment accusations, the company felt it was best to continue forward with their press conference as planned.
In the past month a wave of allegations came out publicly across the gaming industry, with Ubisoft as one of the companies with the most accusations. According to Liberation, over 100 reports of harassment and discrimination were made over the past two years, only to be ignored by what employees called “the silencing arm of Ubisoft.”
This finally changed with the recent wave of game developers publicly accusing abusers in the game industry. With workers going direct through social media like Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube, many stories of fear and pain came out attached to Ubisoft.
Many outlets reported how company culture had been harming employees for a long time. Consequently, many high-ranking employees stepped down for fostering that environment. Kotaku released a detailed report of many instances of abuse happening at Ubisoft Toronto where drinking culture and an exclusionary boys’ club culture lead to non consensual abuse. Bloomberg reported that two of the company executives overseeing worldwide development were stepping down after facing multiple claims. Motherboard reports that the director of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla was accused of concealing and lying about being in a relationship while pursuing another woman. Most recently Bloomberg published interviews with more than 40 employees revealing that Ubisoft has been aware of these problems for a long time.
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