Video game company Ubisoft covering up abuse

[Dervel]

As much as in a gamer, and would usually defend my hobby this crap is not on:

For anyone not wishing to click the link, basically a AAA game publisher has been riddled with systemic abuse from powerful men within the company. Even going to move abusers around the company reminiscent of the Catholic sex abuse scandals. Also allowing prominent men to “resign” with all the benefits that entails.

I love my hobby but not at the expense of other people’s souls.

The Ubisoft perspective is that "women don't sell", women are discardable, and lesser life forms (apparently). I wish I had known that prior to consistently purchasing their games for so many years. I have spent a couple grand on their games over the years.

TC Division, TC GR Breakpoint, Far Cry (4+), Assassin's Creed (many iterations old and new) and more...

As an avid gamer this more than pisses me off it further shows that while they are happy to take my money I am insignificant consumer as I am not their target demographic.

I love reading and I spend a lot of recreational time doing so but my escape is gaming... when I can't quiet my mind to read I game.

The Ubisoft AC opening disclaimer has just gotten weirder and while it didn't use to really bother me it is now a point of contention due to their transgressions against women. Disclaimer mentions "multicultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations, and gender identities" but not sex or women or ya know anything that would make them consider females at all. With a disclaimer like that their entire team could be dudes and that disclaimer would be 100% true and in consideration of Gamergate you'd think they would get their shit together. If they want to be inclusive they could include the actual women that work there and consider their female consumers. And when searching the disclaimer online you encounter the masses of wokebros supporting Ubisoft and declaring that the aforementioned is completely inclusive and could not possibly alienate ANY of their fan base and that if you don't like the disclaimer you are a bigot.

The gaming realm is so saturated with women-haters that I avoid MMO games that require voice chat to play properly (unless in a party with friends) as I get harassed, degraded, etc all because my voice is markedly female.

More and more I feel like I am an alien on this planet.

The video game industry has traditionally always been incredibly masculine and toxic. I had an ex who worked for Eidos, and they told me that the two heads of department would have unbelievably crass dick swinging conversations about who made the most money (one was in charge of Tomb Raider, the other the budget range). I've known young, very talented people, not long out of uni who have been forced to work 70+ hour weeks for very little pay to get games out on time. I think the culture is massively exploitative of everyone involved.

I work in IT but am not a gamer. I helped a female friend break into that industry but she left after a couple of years. She made it clear all the shit I had read about the industry over the years was true which is why she left.

Funnily other much older friends of mine said their youngest neighbour who could afford to move into their street was an owner of a gaming company. He wasn't a nice neighbour.

Due to the large amount of people who see the industry as a desirable due to being gamers, staff are expendable so more senior people can act how they like to junior staff and be completely nasty and abusive to people. Some companies also use paid "volunteers" to do extensive testing.

There is no need to go on a trans rant as I suspect they are right about their diverse sex and multicultural statistics in any September (or whenever those newly recruited start their jobs). However if you look at who is middle and senior roles in the industry women and certain ethnic minorities are not present.

In the past I was acting interim CFO for a game asset developer (ending 6yrs years ago) that also designed certain physical products. In my time working with that company I was appreciated as the 'lone woman' but most of the developer/designers weren't gamers (even though they developed game assets). My dealings with the AAA game developers and studios involved a great deal of interacting with other women doing the financial and organizational work. But all the executives were all male and mostly white - not remotely surprising but still otherworldly to experience after being told over and over how women 'had come into their own' in the industry. I have experienced the toxicity firsthand in the boardroom and firsthand playing games. And I have experienced dealing with companies in the industry and others that wait to hire women to mitigate fire for higher positions until the men have burned the building down.

The Ubisoft situation is just another shitty thing that shitty men do to women, I appreciate Dervel bringing this to MN as I did not know all this was going on until recently and hadn't seen a great deal about it.

I just want to play fun games with rich storylines... looking over at my console and thinking about the 3TB of games and their data and having an epiphany that I have no idea how any of the developers and associated companies (Ubisoft aside) treat their female employees. Game shopping will now involve an additional time-consuming level of research but it is a small price to pay to ensure I no longer support companies that abuse their female staff and discard their female consumers.

I have been a gamer since 1998 but it has gotten more toxic with social media and wide internet use IME. It is so beyond frustrating that men (as a group) resort to covert or overt sexism regardless of setting.

This is part of why we can't have nice things.

/rant over