Hundreds Of Ubisoft Employees Write Open Letter In Support Of Activision Blizzard Employees

Fol­low­ing the com­pa­ny walk­out at Bliz­zard’s head­quar­ters in Irvine, Cal­i­for­nia, hun­dreds of Ubisoft employ­ees have writ­ten an open let­ter to com­pa­ny man­age­ment to sup­port those par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Activi­sion Bliz­zard protest. The let­ter also crit­i­cized Ubisoft­’s han­dling of work­place discrimination.

The open let­ter was shared with Axios, with near­ly 500 cur­rent and for­mer Ubisoft devs direct­ly addressed the Activi­sion Bliz­zard sit­u­a­tion. The group stat­ed it’s “time to stop being shocked” by the accounts of work­place harass­ment and gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion, since it is so fre­quent. They went on to say that “those respon­si­ble must be held account­able for their actions” and they plan to send the let­ter to man­age­ment, includ­ing CEO Yves Guillemot.

“We believe you, we stand with you and sup­port you,” the Ubisoft mem­bers penned in the let­ter. “It should no longer be a sur­prise to any­one: employ­ees, exec­u­tives, jour­nal­ists, or fans that these heinous acts are going on. It is time to stop being shocked. We must demand real steps be tak­en to pre­vent them. Those respon­si­ble must be held account­able for their actions.”

The open let­ter also takes a dig at Ubisoft for how it deal­ing with sex­u­al mis­con­duct and the accu­sa­tions levied against mul­ti­ple peo­ple at the com­pa­ny. The group is obvi­ous­ly frus­trat­ed, and wants to a seat a the table dur­ing com­pa­ny-wide deci­sion-mak­ing on how to move forward.

“We have stood by and watched as you fired only the most pub­lic offend­ers,” the group said. “You let the rest either resign or worse, pro­mot­ed them, moved them from stu­dio to stu­dio, team to team, giv­ing them sec­ond chance after sec­ond chance with no reper­cus­sions. This cycle needs to stop. […] This col­lab­o­ra­tion must heav­i­ly involve employ­ees in non-man­age­ment posi­tions and union rep­re­sen­ta­tives. This is essen­tial to ensure that those who are direct­ly affect­ed by these behav­iors are lead­ing the change.”

Activi­sion Bliz­zard has been in the hot seat since last week, when Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Depart­ment of Fair Employ­ment and Hous­ing filed a law­suit against the com­pa­ny. Of course, the com­pa­ny has been try­ing to con­trol the dam­age, with mul­ti­ple exec­u­tives issu­ing state­ments about inclu­sion. Even Activi­sion Bliz­zard CEO Bob­by Kotick promised com­pa­ny improve­ments fol­low­ing an ear­li­er, more con­tro­ver­sial state­ment from the company.