Earlier this month, Rayman creator and Beyond Good & Evil 2 lead Michel Ancel left Ubisoft in what appeared to be an amicable departure to retire from game development to go work in wildlife education. Happy ending, right? Well, no, apparently. Because Ancel was under investigation after employees at Ubisoft complained about his toxic leadership practices.

In an interview with French publication Libération, Ancel confirmed it himself, saying that he left during the investigation. According to the report, Ancel’s management style involved building employees up just to tear them back down.

Translation via Kotaku:

“He is capable of explaining to you that you are a genius, that your idea is wonderful, then to dismantle you in a meeting, saying that you are nothing but shit, that your work is worth nothing, and not speak to you for a month,” said one source.

Ubisoft has corroborated the report in a statement to Kotaku.

[Ubisoft CEO] Yves Guillemot committed back in July that any allegation will be investigated and no one will be outside of that process–and this would include Michel Ancel. And as Michel confirmed to the journalist at “Liberation,” he is under investigation. The investigation is still ongoing and we have nothing further to share as we respect the confidentiality of this investigation.

Props to the people who are still in Ubisoft trying to clear out all the rot happening in company as it continues the Me Too reckoning that has been ongoing for several months now. Meanwhile, the company’s public facing side has been doing its absolute damndest to push the scandal as far away from all its super cool video game product marketing. First by omitting it entirely from its first Ubisoft Forward presentation, then by releasing a lengthy statement from CEO Yves Guillemot a few hours before the second one so it wouldn’t have to include it as part of its super rad hype fest for interactive entertainment products that will be coming to a store near you.

More of Ubisoft doing some shit:

Following Ancel’s initial departure, Ubisoft released a statement that he hadn’t been directly involved with Beyond Good & Evil 2 in some time:

As Michel noted, he hasn’t been directly involved in BG&E2 for some time now, as the team have been hard at work building on top of the solid creative foundation he helped shape. The team’s collective strength has us well on our way to developing a flagship next-generation action-adventure game. We recently passed an important internal milestone, delivering a build that proves our Space Pirate Fantasy and offers hours of gameplay and an incredible level of freedom in a seamless online sandbox, building upon the promise of our tech demos shown at E3. I’m incredibly proud of the team’s perseverance, dedication to each other and ongoing commitment to developing an amazing game.

Fuck ’em.

Ah, So the Rayman Creator is a Shit, Too

The retirement was conveniently timed.

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