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.
More of Ubisoft doing some shit:
- Ubisoft Faces Backlash Over Clearly Fascist Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad Intro
- Ubisoft Unceremoniously Released a Female-Led Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Cinematic Trailer
- Report: The Last Two Assassin’s Creed Games Were Meant to Have Female Leads
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.
