Ubisoft receives lawsuit from French union over institutional sexual harassment
Ubisoft has been in the news more and more over the past couple of years, and it’s not always because of the games they make either. This time it’s because a French tech union called Solidaires Informatique has just filed a lawsuit against Ubisoft to get justice for those who’ve accused the publisher of sexual harassment.
According to the union’s website, the class-action lawsuit against Ubisoft was filed on July 15th. It directly names a number of Ubisoft’s past employees at the company – who did leave during the internal investigation that was carried out after allegations about the publisher’s toxic work culture was revealed online via Bloomberg last year.
The class-action from Solidaires Informatique has been raised against Ubisoft because, as stated in the report, “having established, maintained and strengthened a system where sexual harassment is tolerated because it is more profitable for the company to keep harassers in place than to protect its employees.”
The lawsuit also mentioned Yves Guillemot, the CEO of Ubisoft, as well as several people from the HR department. For Guillemot, the lawsuit is due to them being responsible for what happens at Ubisoft but for HR it is a far more damning description with the department being accused of “actively participating in covering up and concealing the acts of the harassers” that are believed to have taken part in sexual misconduct and harassment.
Ultimately, the lawsuit desires to ‘dismantle’ the “workings of this system” that has allowed sexual misconduct to flourish. Because of this goal, Solidaires Informatique asks for “all the people who have been victims of the Ubisoft group to join this action” and have listed ways for people to get in touch with them.
GamesIndustry.Biz reached out to Ubisoft to comment on this lawsuit, they were told that “do not have further details regarding the claim filed against Ubisoft.”
About The Author
