Heads rolling at Ubisoft

I don't know much of what's going on with Ubisoft, I really don't follow the social media or twitter, but to me integrity matters. I've stopped eating at Whetherspoons despite enjoying the place and the food, because the CEO was immoral and greedy when Covid rolled out and left hundreds of employees in the streets without sustenance, while everyone in was trying to be solidary to help each others out. I've stopped supporting any of Riot games after stories of misconduct, sexism and sexual harassment became public and notorious. And I definitely will stop supporting Ubisoft in any way considering some of these rotten behaviours, things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRhYT5Lgp98

As a consequence, I cancelled my plans to purchase Assassin's Creed Valhalla Collector's Edition preorder, and when the game is out I will simply subscribe to Uplay for 1 month to finish the game at minimum cost, to never look back.

I don't belong to any current of thought, sect or group, and I don't care to be represented by any because I am my own self. I don't care about making a difference or not, or getting a message across. All I care is about moral integrity, and my own satisfaction as a person, with the standards that I'd like to pass on to my children if we are to have a future we can be proud of as a species.

To me, it matters, and it's not just about making good games, movies, or being a genius. You also need to be decent. And at Ubisoft, some things aren't being half decent at the moment.

What you neglect to mention in your excellent post is that you are declaring that you'll be making moral decisions about whether to support XYZ company based on when you find out if the owners are immoral by your own personal definition, not that you actively try to investigate the moral standing of companies by your own personal definition prior to purchasing all products.

And in doing so are, essentially, putting yourself and your life in the hands of others. You will still be regularly supporting and financing people of different morals to yourself, but you'll only be being 'outraged' by it if someone else's moral bar it crossed.

In effect, this can make you feel as if you're acting morally, by whatever code you're operating by, but in reality you're making yourself merely a pawn in someone else's game. You will only ever be boycotting what other people want you to boycott, you wont actually be improving anything to the extent that the world will magically become 'as one with your own personal morals' just because you negatively react to someone else's agenda every now and then.

Me, personally, have considered the Ubisoft label a detriment to purchasing a game for near on 15 years now. Not because of moral pedantry, but because of the in-game content they have a reputation and record of producing. It doesn't matter to me at all if the CEO spends 95% of their time trying to feed poor people or if the CEO spends 95% of their time trying to have sex with poor people, the aspect that is of interest to me is the product.

If the CEO breaks the law while trying to feed poor people or breaks the law while trying to have sex with poor people, and s/he then continues in the position, then that might then warrant me making a token boycott of Ubisoft, but before that, Ubisoft is just a mass of people, all of whom have individual opinions and all of whom have families to feed. I can't help them if they don't provide a game I want to play, just as getting them all fired because you disagree with the CEO's morals doesn't help them.

But from my personal moral perspective, I'm not sure how boycotting Ubisoft if you enjoy Ubisoft's style of games helps anyone, least of all whatever moral stance you wish was imposed on everyone else. And if you don't want your own personal moral stance imposed on everyone else, what exactly is the point of being 'activist' about your stance, as in what is your 'activity' on the subject supposed to achieve?

You will be supporting thousands of companies throughout a few years, are you telling me you have the slightest idea what the 'morality' of any of them is? But you're happy to just dogpile some random company because someone else is running a campaign against them? Nah, as I say, that's not fitting my moral perspective at all, that's almost the opposite of my own moral stance, that of targeted bullying, increased chance of unfair dismissal, suppression of opinion, etc.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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I understand what you are saying, but I can only access the information that is made public. I try to utilise what intelligence I've been graced with to separate the weed (ie gossip, people with agendas, haters, etc) from actual information that I find relevant when making these decisions.

I do not want to boycott Ubisoft, I do not care. Ubisoft does not care about me either. I do not want to make a point, I just want my children to be able to differenciate between what's right and wrong, as my parents taught me. I simply act as an individual that utilises her own intelligence, for better or for worse, to maintain a moral compass that she can be proud of. I do not join bandwagons, campaigns, or horse-beatings, and there is not a single retweet or hashtag in my post history in the whole internet, because I could not care less about trend-setters, streamers, or people in general with their little struggles for significance or popularity as they lead their inconsequential lives fighting for a portion of whatever cake they feel is at stake.

And of course, it is possible that I've been all life consuming Heinz ketchup but the CEO is racist and homophobic or misogynist, it's just nobody ever decided to air it, or run a "campaign" against Heinz. That's fine, because I do not know it, and so I can not choose whether I should stop purchasing Heinz or not. Basically because my life and time are too valuable to waste it running CSI investigations on every brand that I consume. But the day something comes up in the media, I'll have a look, and decide whether I switch to another brand or not.
 
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… but to me integrity matters. I've stopped …

I'd be very careful about being upset of rotten behavior and boycotting companies, because practically ALL successful big companies do have some nasty skeletons in the closet: sweatshop workers, employee humiliation, ego-rattling, sexism, dubious business practices, tax avoidance, you name it.

Sadly, the so called success of the First World Society is built on blood, sweat and tears of "lesser society members" and/or "lesser societies".

If you want to fortify your integrity, you'd soon find yourself in the desert, because you have to dismiss everything around you.

Btw, this situation is nothing new: certain closed societies (e.g. the Amish) prefer self-isolation because of the supposed cruelty of the outside world.

So, although morally you are right -- but practically, your position won't stand as it cannot be sustained.

/indifferent
 
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Nereida’s position is perfectly sustainable, and is to a large degree what makes societies function – if you do something I find particularly egregious, and it comes to my attention, there will be consequences in terms of my response. We do not ignore the bad action that happens to be in front of us because we cannot address all the bad actions in the world.
 
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It's true. It wouldn't be sustainable if you were a DnD paladin, or Batman, and actively sought out to end all injustice. There is no place for that archetype outside of a fantasy book. But you can perfectly react to what's in front of your eyes. This also means that you're prone to be "manipulated", or that your attention will be diverted towards places while other places are getting away with worse. In the era of information (and misinformation) that's inevitable, and it's up to each individual to decide what to take and what to discard. One can only hope to be making the right choices.
 
The problem with boycotts is innocent employees get caught in the crossfire. Silence isn’t an answer either; ugly behaviours should be called out. The managers & CEOs of tomorrow hopefully make quiet notes on how they will take things forward when they have the power to do so. I also feel that if we blanket boycott everything that has a problematic culture/history there wouldn’t be much left on our hard drives.

Like Nereida, I boycott on a personal level where I can afford to, Weatherspoons Pub (UK) I haven’t been in for over four years. Where I do have the choice & knowledge I might make a gaming purchase decision based on ethics. Drops in the ocean but things gather momentum. Gaming culture has changed and will keep changing.
 
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And of course, it is possible that I've been all life consuming Heinz ketchup but the CEO is racist and homophobic or misogynist, it's just nobody ever decided to air it, or run a "campaign" against Heinz. That's fine, because I do not know it, and so I can not choose whether I should stop purchasing Heinz or not. Basically because my life and time are too valuable to waste it running CSI investigations on every brand that I consume. But the day something comes up in the media, I'll have a look, and decide whether I switch to another brand or not.

people can be racist or homophobic all they want. it isnt a crime nor really your business nor ill you be abl to change their mind. just like people can be biased and ignorant and believe bs like white privilege exists when i was called a pollack my whole childhood growing up in california. and no Poland did not own slaves so why should we feel any sort of white guilt? And just like people can believe that somehow equality of outcome is some attainable goal and affirmitavie action is good when these things are such a joke that sensible people dont buy it. people can also vpte for who they want hence why trump won so there are a lot more so called homophobic orr acist people than probably people like you guys.
 
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its not a crime to be racist and homophobic. so what u gonna do? You dont control anyon’s thoughts and in relaity youre in the minority of the world anyway.
 
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lol you are just a hypocryte. Its not racist if its against other whites like calling me pollack in high school or laughing wt me in their little groups because im white too so its ok lol its not racism. yeeey white privilege exists in your mind yeeey. What a bunch of lies theyf ed you. its ok to discriminate in usa in jobs or housing due to convictions or kangaroo courts or people having records but not for other reasons to you? how is thwt different? you are discriminating yourself and jsut as bad as these so called ceos by doing it on them. lol. so how is any discrimination better than another?
 
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Go take your meds and settle down!!
 
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A couple of interesting things I'd note about this one - he has way too much time on his hands, and, for some reason, this is all about making Myrthos and the Watch itself look silly.
 
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I have his number as well. It is an IP number, is it the same number that you have? :)
 
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He's not on my ignorelist as when gets grounded and uses time to troll sometimes it's more fun to read than any hollywood comedy.
In this case however he missed the forum section - most of stuff he posted belongs to P&R thread and is nohow related to videogames.

An example of an utter fail is the post about EU refusal to fund LGBT discriminationbased politicians in Poland. Forgetting, deliberately, that this is a videogames industry related thread and that the most famous game from Poland has a LGBT second lead (Ciri).

Oddly, noone posted anything about a new info on the topic emerged via Schrier who is now working at Bloomberg that the creative director who got sacked for misbehavior also cancelled a game from Dragon Age creator who went working for Ubisoft briefly.
Some might be disappointed hearing this, but I'm not, the game was not supposed to be singleplayer.
 
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Oddly, noone posted anything about a new info on the topic emerged via Schrier who is now working at Bloomberg that the creative director who got sacked for misbehavior also cancelled a game from Dragon Age creator who went working for Ubisoft briefly.
Some might be disappointed hearing this, but I'm not, the game was not supposed to be singleplayer.

Thankyou for the return to topic.
 
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And excuse me for somehow forgetting to add the link to the story:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ing-arthur-game-was-nixed-by-ex-creative-head

Here are some quotes so the post doesn't look "empty":
When Ubisoft Entertainment SA hired Mike Laidlaw, the well-respected designer of the Dragon Age video game series, in late 2018, expectations were high. Fans were excited to see what kind of game he might be dreaming up next.

But just over a year later, before releasing any games, Laidlaw quit.

According to current and former employees, Avalon was canceled by Ubisoft’s powerful chief creative officer, Serge Hascoët. Wielding an unusual amount of control over content at the French publishing powerhouse
The people who worked on Avalon said the project had been progressing well. It featured a cooperative multiplayer world similar to Capcom Co.’s popular Monster Hunter series. The game’s developers were shocked to see the project impeded simply because the chief creative officer didn’t like its setting
 
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Are you going to allow blatant and repeated anti-semitism on this forum, moderators? I can use ignore, sure, but I would think this would not be an individual's problem to deal with.
 
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