Its official Tommy François has left Ubisoft, amidst allegations of sexual abuse and harassment across the company.
Tommy François was the VP for editorial and creative services, one of the most senior roles in Ubisoft. He was placed on disciplinary leave in June and has now been dismissed from the company along with VP Editorial Maxime Béland, as well as three further Ubisoft execs which followed him out the door, including François’ boss Serge Hascoët.
The news came in the form of a tweet via Business Insider’s Samuel Horti who had reportedly seen the e-mail sent by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot.
Ubisoft confirmed that François had “left the company, effectively immediately”. No other details were given.
He originally joined Ubisoft in 2006 and as Vice-President of editorial and creative services, he was in charge of greenlighting and developing new video game franchises within the company.
The Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot was recently asked how much he knew about what was really going on around him, he had this to say:
“Each time we have been made aware of this conduct we have made, actually, tough decisions and we made sure those decisions had a clear and positive impact, So that’s very important. It has now become clear that certain individuals betrayed the trust I placed in them and did not live up to Ubisoft’s shared values. I have never compromised on my core values and ethics and never will. I will continue to run and transform Ubisoft to face today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.”
Ubisoft had previously implemented an anonymous alert system from inside the company and within days of this, over a hundred cases were reported. These cases ranged from moral harassment to rape. The disturbing thing is that the HR department was already aware of half of these cases and a quarter of them involved the Editorial team.
The head of HR has reportedly said that “Yves Guillemot” is ok with a toxic management as long as these managers’ “results exceed their toxicity level,” giving second, third chances and more so long as they get results.
It is disturbing to see this trend within such a beloved company, but there is hope as Ubisoft seems to be addressing these issues seriously by dismissing the higher-ups accused of these heinous acts. Hopefully, this trend will deter future offenders and reduce the number of victims within the company to zero.