According to an internal survey of Ubisoft staff, 20 percent its staff members say they don’t feel “fully respected or safe in the work environment,” while slightly more, 25% of the survey’s anonymous respondents, say that they’ve observed or witnessed misconduct at work themselves.
This information comes from a recent Kotaku report, but the publication notes in its full rundown of the survey data that it wasn’t received via a leak.
Rather, Ubisoft PR reached out to Kotaku to share the results of the company-wide survey, undoubtedly as a response to the many stories of abuse and misconduct at Ubisoft studios that made headlines this summer.
Other revelations from the company-shared report note that non-binary employees are 43 percent more likely to experience, witness, or hear about discrimination than men. For comparison, women are only 30 percent more more likely than men to encounter those same discrimination-related incidents. Kotaku has more data from Ubisoft’s internal report over in its full writeup.
Ubisoft has, in that same PR reach out, outlined its plans to address these shortcomings internally. Those include bonuses for management that meet diversity objectives to other steps like setting up a new review committee for content and product marketing that ensures it is “aligned with our values of respect and fairness.”
But, as this year’s discussion of Ubisoft’s studio culture have revealed, the issue isn’t a lack of awareness when it comes to misconduct and inequality, but rather a lack of accountability or willingness from studio leadership to meaningfully address the issues at the core of the problems. While the report itself highlights areas where Ubisoft has failed its employees in the past, the true test of Ubisoft’s mettle will be how leadership uses this information to improve its studio culture and protect its employees from behavior that has no place in the workplace.
