Yves Guillemot's Son Steps Down from Leading Ubisoft's Mobile Studio

Earlier this week, a report from a French newspaper revealed that Ubisoft employees were still incredibly dissatisfied with their CEO’s efforts to “rectify” the abusive and sexist problems that plagued the company for the past several years. Indeed, while Ubisoft did can a few executives and made it easier for people to report abuses, not everyone responsible was let go, and just because it’s easier to report abuses doesn’t mean they’re any more likely to do anything about it.

Well, perhaps as a response to this, we just learned that Charlie Guillemot, co-owner of Ubisoft’s mobile studio Owlient and son of Yves Guillemot, is leaving Owlient. He’ll be joined by the other co-owner, Rémi Pellerin.

All Ubisoft had to say on the departure was that they “wished him the best”.

While there have been no public accusations of abuse stemming from these two figures, they’re still controversial in their own right. Specifically, for using one of the icons of the Black Lives Matter movement as a symbol for a fictional terrorist organization in Tom Clancy’s Elite Squadron. It seems unlikely that this was done at the direction of the two co-founders, and indeed, could have been just a careless mistake, but either way it was something that someone should have noticed and stopped before it went live.

It’s also possible that he was removed simply because his hiring as a studio head was a clear case of nepotism, as he had no experience running a game studio before he was hired fresh out of university. In which case, I guess it would be a “too little too late” situation, since by now he’s already got 7 years of experience under his belt.

Anyway, I doubt we’ll hear any more about this, unless a Ubisoft employee decides to speak up. I wouldn’t hold my breath on it, though.