Numerous reports of sexual harassment prompted a round of departures from the company, but Ubisoft has remained under pressure ever since—even this week—from staff who believe the publisher hasn’t done enough. On Thursday in Paris at a briefing attended by Eurogamer, Guillemot described the moment as a “blunder” that the company has since acknowledged and learned from. Eurogamer Newscast: Sony Reluctantly Raises PS5 Price But Knows It Can Get Away With It “Our goal is to provide the best working environment for them to thrive and reach their full potential,” said Guillemot. “In a context of [a] great transformation, we want to create a unique value proposition for employees and bring change whenever needed. “First, we want to ensure an inclusive, rewarding and respectful workplace for everyone. Yes, we’ve stumbled. And we’ve acknowledged it. We’ve learned a lot along the way and made significant progress with concrete action plans spearheaded by our leaders along with Anika Grant, our Chief People Officer, and Raashi Sika, our Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion. “Despite the attrition that affected our entire industry during the pandemic, we hired more than 4,000 people last financial year, including more than 600 rehires, as well as senior talent coming from other leading companies.” During a wide-ranging discussion, Guillemot also touched on Tencent’s recent acquisition of more of Guillemot Brothers, which in turn gave her greater ownership of Ubisoft — though it left her without control of a board seat. company. “The goal is to do more business with mobile first,” Guillemot said. “We started four years ago and the games are coming and they’re very high quality. We think it’s going to really help the company grow, and so we’re also looking at new areas where we can do more business. That’s why we wanted to really develop our partnership … to grow the business and generate more revenue and make sure our brands are really everywhere in the world. We see that making AAA games on mobile is quite, quite difficult. So we do some of it internally. But we work together also with partners like Tencent to build some as well.” Responding to reports of a drop in the share price after the Tencent deal was made public, Guillemot suggested it was because the market saw a lower likelihood of investment for a quick sale and perhaps a reduced likelihood of working with other partners – something Guillemot said was inaccurate. “A great deal with Tencent [was] that we can have the right to do whatever we want… People feel that we are only with one partner, which is not the case, we are really open to anyone. But you know, in the short term our goal – and in the medium term – is to try to show what we can achieve at our studios and increase the share price by building projects that will be the best in the industry.” Ubisoft memorably faced a previous hostile takeover attempt from Vivendi, but over the past year has been the subject of numerous reports suggesting some sort of sale was more likely. I asked Guillemot if Ubisoft’s independence is still as important now as it once was. “Yes, it is,” Guillemo told me. “What we want is to be able to give a long-term perspective to all of Ubisoft’s employees so that they can truly create games that they believe will be the best in the industry.” While that didn’t rule out partnerships with other companies, Guillemot continued, Ubisoft’s future remains hers. “Our first intention is to be able to own our own destiny. That’s why we’re investing in new technologies. That’s why we’re looking at how we can use those technologies to create new brands and so on. Our goal is really to grow into that the industry, having all the tools to make our brands and our teams the most recognized in this industry. And I think we can do that.” As part of this effort, Guillemot has announced that third-party games will be made available as part of its own Ubisoft+ subscription, which will soon arrive on PlayStation and Xbox. This detail may shed new light on the company’s decision last year to begin labeling its own games as “Ubisoft Originals.” “Offering this content will help us be on all platforms everywhere in the long term, including all platforms – and mobile platforms as well. We’re proud to announce that we’re opening up to third parties now. Ubisoft+ will have third-party and indie games on the platform.” Finally, I asked Guillemot about the future of Quartz, the widely disliked NFT program, and what Ubisoft’s thoughts were on continuing to work with blockchain and similar technologies. “We’re looking at all the new technologies and we’re very cloud, in the new generation of voxels, and we’re also looking at all the possibilities of Web3,” Guillemot told me. “We’ve been testing a few things recently that give us more insight into how it can be used and what we need to do in the video game universe. So we’re testing the ground with a few games that… we’ll see if they really answer a player’s needs, [and then they] will happen in the market. But we’re still in the research stage, I would say.” Eurogamer met with Ubisoft at its Paris office this week, for which Ubisoft covered travel and accommodation.
