Another Strategic Reshuffling at Ubisoft

Hugues Ricour is the latest addition to a line of dismissals, resignations, or — in this case — careful restructurings of high-ranking Ubisoft personnel in the wake of wide-ranging investigations into abuse allegations at the company. Ricour was initially named in a Gamasutra article from August 14th of this year, the result of a spate of conversations and interviews with “dozens of current and former Ubisoft employees” who approached Gamasutra under the condition of anonymity.

Among multiple other high-ranking executive staff whose behavior was exposed at the time of Gamasutra‘s article, Ricour — then managing director at Ubisoft Singapore — was facing allegations from multiple sources of sexual harassment including, “making suggestive and inappropriate comments about [women’s] clothing during office hours, or encouraging them to kiss him at work events.” When confronted or questioned, Gamasutra was told that Ricour would, “retaliat[e] by using his influence to make their work-life miserable.”

More broadly, the Ubisoft Singapore office has garnered a reputation for a “bro culture” and a culture of “fear and oppression” that was both commonplace and upheld by those in management. Gamasutra wrote at the time that openly racist comments and behavior were mainstays at the office, as were sexual harassment and derogatory comments.

This week, just over three months since this Gamasutra piece was published, Ricour has been removed from his position as managing director at Ubisoft Singapore. Per an internal company email obtained by Kotaku, the outcome of a “leadership audit” conducted by external auditors over the past few weeks, “makes it impossible for him to continue in this position.”

Note that carefully crafted wording though, “impossible for him to continue in this position.” Indeed, a subsequently appended update from Kotaku cited a Ubisoft spokesperson as clarifying, “We can confirm that Hugues Ricour is both stepping down from his role as MD and is also leaving the Singapore studio, but will remain at Ubisoft.”

As discussed in a previous article on Ubisoft’s handling of the abuse allegations and investigations thereto, Ricour’s reshuffling is not the first rearrangement to be shrouded in ambiguity and carefully structured language. It’s unclear at present what role Ricour will hold henceforth or how much power he’ll have in the new position. Also, we do not know what, indeed, this leadership audit found.

It’s an easy assumption that this removal pertains to the wave of abuse and harassment allegations brought against Ricour and many others at the company, though this hasn’t been outright confirmed. However, as for a number of other well-placed, powerful white men at Ubisoft, neither Ubisoft’s decision-makers nor spokespeople have been willing to comment or speak of a termination.

Instead, Ricour’s professional standing and reputation are, it would seem, still being sheltered by just shuffling him out of the limelight. Meanwhile, those same decision-makers have the results of this “leadership audit” to cling to as evidence they are keeping their word about thorough investigations into the allegations at hand.