Serge Hascoët, Tommy François, and Guillaume Patrux are on trial for moral and sexual harassment starting Monday. But alongside them, the victims were hoping to see Ubisoft appear in court.
"Stop talking about this immediately. There's no problem at Ubisoft." This is the order a former employee of the French video game giant says he received when he tried, in 2017, to alert his superiors about moral harassment. "At the time of #MeToo, all companies tried, or pretended, to clean up. Not Ubisoft ," he laments in the investigation file consulted by franceinfo. The silence broke in July 2020, with the publication of a vast investigation by Libération. On the 6th floor of a building in Montreuil, home to Ubisoft's prestigious editorial department, the walls could no longer contain the hearty laughter, inappropriate remarks, and serial humiliations.
Five years later, the case reaches the Bobigny Criminal Court . Starting Monday, June 2, three former executives will have to answer for their actions: Serge Hascoët, the group's former number 2; Thomas François (nicknamed Tommy), former vice-president of editorial services; and Guillaume Patrux, former game director. All three deny the facts. For five days, they will be tried for moral and sexual harassment and attempted sexual assault, following accusations brought by six women, three men, and two unions.
The facts they are accused of are part of a system where "humiliations were commonplace" and where "any resistance was immediately broken , " concluded an internal investigation carried out in July 2020. How could such an omerta have taken root and lasted for almost a decade? Why did so many employees end up believing that they could "do nothing" other than "close their eyes or grit their teeth" ?
"We can no longer differentiate whether it's inappropriate or normal."
Behind the window of a creative and relaxed company, dozens of employee testimonies paint a different picture. "The victims' words (...) describe a department [Ubisoft's editorial department] in the hands of a group of immature men, who consider it their personal fiefdom and engage in all kinds of abuse there ," concluded the internal investigation conducted by the Altaïr firm in July 2020.
In this environment, the boundary between professional and personal life dissolves. Clarisse*, who held the position for six years, was unable to file a complaint, as the facts were statute-barred. However, she retains vivid memories of this stifling atmosphere. "I felt like I was always in a bar with constant flirting ," she told investigators. Crossing the open-plan office is a daily ordeal: pointed stares, ambiguous messages, barely veiled invitations...
"I felt like I was walking through a neighborhood alone at night."
Clarisse, former Ubisoft employee
facing the investigators
"It was so hard to get up in the morning, I was putting on makeup and crying at the same time ," the young woman confides. "We can no longer differentiate if it's inappropriate or if these things are normal," she says. In this microcosm, everything seems permitted under the guise of humor. Some meetings end with drawings of penises on flipcharts, walls, or post-its, several employees say. Games of "cat-bite" or "olive" are freely played in the corridors, according to the accounts of a dozen witnesses to the case.
Tommy François, one of the three defendants in the case, admitted during a hearing to having evolved in an "institutionalized (...) schoolboy environment" to which one had to adhere "if one did not want to be excluded" . When he arrived at Ubisoft in 2006, he remembers being given the nickname "the TV whore" because he came from the Game One channel or "the fat one" because of his "weight" . As for the "cat-bite", he says he "suffered" it as much as he practiced it, "as a joke" . "It happened between colleagues who knew each other well, always in a humorous tone" , assures the former vice-president of the editorial department.
Misogynistic and racist remarks become commonplace
On the 6th floor of the Montreuil building, the victims of these acts are often the same: women, interns, people of color... Juliette*, hired in 2010 as an intern for Serge Hascoët's assistant, is forced to work at an absurd pace: "Alain* [her manager, for whom the statute of limitations has expired] timed my responses to his emails and sometimes he would say to me: 'you took six minutes to reply to my email, but you're slow.'" She stayed with the company for five years: "I had just come out of a very precarious situation (...), I had to arm myself to hold out."
Nathalie*, who succeeded her in 2015, very quickly became the target of her managers.
"Alain told me that I needed to get a makeover and lose weight."
Nathalie, former Ubisoft employee
facing the investigators
She specifies that he forbade her from taking the elevator. Between Juliette and Nathalie, the name of an informal network circulates: "the bracelet community ," a group of employees who know "the truth" about the open space and help each other in hushed tones. These whispers ended up finding an echo in the Bobigny criminal court: the two young women will be on the benches of the civil parties.
The testimonies also report Islamophobic and racist remarks. Nathalie remembers a black colleague nicknamed "Bamboula" and comments about the size of his penis. The young woman , who is Muslim, also recounts that a manager asked her after the Bataclan attacks "if [she] planned to join Daesh ." She adds that her colleagues "amused themselves by changing [her] screen with images of McBacon" or putting sandwiches on her desk during Ramadan. Confronted with these comments, Serge Hascoët told investigators that he had no memory of such scenes.
An all-powerful "king" who "knights"
At the top of the pyramid, power was concentrated in the hands of a handful of "unavoidable and omnipotent" men . "Serge Hascoët had the power of life or death over projects ," summarizes an employee interviewed by the Altaïr firm. The creative director has the complete confidence of CEO Yves Guillemot. "To have the budget to complete the game created, you have to please Serge ," we can read in an internal investigation.
"When the king knights, he delegates his power ," emphasizes a veteran of the editorial department. This power is transmitted from one person to another, by affinity more than by competence, according to him. "There was no HR policy until 2020. Serge placed his knowledge ," notes the author of the internal audit on the department. Alain, his right-hand man for years, testified to this himself during his hearing: "They called me the king's son."
This privileged circle occupies the heart of a system where some can get away with anything. "The editorial department was the star department, and Tommy François was an untouchable personality. We couldn't say anything to him," recalls a former employee. On the HR side, the powerlessness is obvious. "It made him laugh a lot, me not at all," laments a manager, recounting a scene where Serge Hascoët and Tommy François simulate spanking each other while shouting "harassment!" in front of the human resources office. One of her colleagues admits that Ubisoft's number 2 "didn't like to follow the rules" : "I would even say that it amused him (...) to annoy us." During his hearing, Tommy François argued that "during [his] almost 14 years at Ubisoft, HR or [his] managers never notified [him] anything about [his] behavior . "
"Loyalty is a cardinal virtue"
Added to this omnipotence of managers is loyalty to the company and the fear of losing one's job. Ubisoft embodies the elite of global video games. In this "big family ," there is no criticism of the elders, much less those who hold the reins. "Loyalty is a cardinal virtue, even outweighing values," a Ubisoft employee said during an interview with Altaïr.
“My partner told me a while ago: 'Your company is a cult.' That's not wrong!"
A Ubisoft employee as part of Altaïr's internal audit
For many, reporting wrongdoing is not an option. "In the department's environment, it's difficult to speak out without risking reprisals or being ostracized," a former employee confided in 2020. More than 30 witnesses were heard during the investigation, but many of them decided not to file a complaint "for fear of reactions from the video game industry ," investigators point out.
Reputation weighs heavily. "Looking back, I think that at the time, it was a prestigious thing to join Ubisoft and Serge's team... Perhaps someone was willing to put up with certain things instead of speaking out," observed a human resources director during an interview. Because beyond the Montreuil studio, Ubisoft remains a key name in the industry.
Those who tried to resist found themselves alone. Bérénice*, who says she was regularly "humiliated" by Tommy François and "overloaded with work ," suffered a burnout in 2015. The reaction of Alain, one of her superiors, according to her? "Anyway, you have more than that, so we're taking advantage of it, you'll never say anything." Facing investigators, Alain declared that he had "nothing to say" about Bérenice and that he had "always found her very nice . "
She will be on the bench of the civil parties, just like Benoît*, for whom the years spent at Ubisoft as a 3D artist constituted "a downward spiral" which led him "towards anxiety, sleep and eating disorders" . He explained during a hearing: "This complaint is almost an act of desperation... In any case, I have nothing to lose since I will never return to a video game company."
“HR knew everything, saw everything”
At Ubisoft, many people point to the human resources department as a weak link in the system. "HR wasn't the allies of employees, but the protectors of abusers ," accuses a former employee. When Nathalie raises the alarm about a manager's sexist comments, the response is brutal, she says: "The assistant you're replacing lasted three years, it's up to you to adapt." Three human resources directors were indicted and interviewed by investigators, who ultimately dropped the charges. But their findings don't erase the image of a passive, even complicit, department. "I think everyone had pieces of the puzzle, but no overall vision ," admits one manager to investigators. "There was no disciplinary power in 2015 ," acknowledges another.
Bérénice describes a locked-down system and a broken chain of responsibility at every level. "HR knew everything, saw everything, and sometimes even joked with the harassers. Some played the role of stepmother, taking on the role of executioner to protect Serge Hascoët and Tommy François." Even medical appeals seem futile. Bérénice claims that "the occupational physician was 85 years old, she was no longer in her right mind. She asked people to undress and get dressed several times."
“We didn’t know who to turn to.”
Bérénice, former employee and victim facing the investigators
For his part, Yves Guillemot speaks of "a few toxic people" but denies any systemic abuse. This interpretation is contested by unions, civil parties, and defense lawyers. Jean-Guillaume Le Mintier, who represents Serge Hascoët, denounces the trial's scope as too narrow. "If we want to be consistent with the idea that harassment is systemic, everyone must be present in court," he argues.
"All management departments have encouraged this company policy."
Jean-Guillaume Le Mintier, lawyer of Serge Hascoët to franceinfo
"The alert tools still don't work ," laments the lawyer for the Video Game Workers' Union, which has filed a civil suit. She castigates a company "habitually doing this ," where "omerta has become a management method ." And concludes: "This trial should also have been Ubisoft's."
* First names have been changed.
) at the beginning of the summer. I had the privilege of facilitating a workshop with Emma Kidney about getting started in the Fedora Design Team. You can read Emma’s workshop recap 
), and I believe they turned out pretty great.
Dialog that gives detailed instructions for how to add G Code
comments? additions? reactions?
As always, comment on mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@nirik/115198218305728577