Ubisoft announced today that Igor Mancea has been promoted to chief creative officer at the company. Mancea replaces Serge Hascoët, who resigned last year over allegations of sexual misconduct. Workers’ rights group A Better Ubisoft has issued a response to Mancea’s promotion.
Manceu is now a direct report to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot—who has also come under fire for his response to abuse allegations that Ubisoft employees say “wasn’t good enough.” A statement from Ubisoft says Manceau “will be responsible for defining and nurturing Ubisoft’s overall creative vision and guiding the creative direction of its games so that they are accessible, irresistible, and enriching for all players.”
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Manceau’s duties will also include working with company studios to “include diverse perspectives and sensibilities” on Ubisoft’s projects. His career with the company began in 1998 in business marketing, working on franchises like Far Cry, Rainbow Six, and Splinter Cell. Manceu’s promotion follows another statement from current and former employees in May, saying “nothing has changed” after the abuse allegations began.
A Better Ubisoft responded to Manceau’s new position, opening that the group of former and current employees were “looking forward to working” with him towards their goals, and directing the CCO to an open letter signed by over 1,000 colleagues. The letter called out Ubisoft’s poor response after a year of inaction from the company, saying employees received “kind words, empty promises, and an inability or unwillingness to remove known offenders.”
A Better Ubisoft hopes to see a “meaningful response,” but highlighted concerns that this hire does contradict Yves’ statement where he said editorial leadership would be redefined and the creative officer role would not be consolidated to one individual.
“There is no clear expression of the creative process, and there is a shocking lack of diversity in the VPs,” read the statement from A Better Ubisoft. Manceau, and the former executive he replaces, are both white men. The group notes that two more VPs were to be hired, and that Ubisoft failed to pursue further progress after it hired Bio Jade Adam Granger as VP of Ubisoft’s editorial team in February of this year.
“Currently, as it stands, the creative team at Ubisoft is composed of white people who are of uniform cultural backgrounds,” continued A Better Ubisoft. The group expressed its “lack of confidence in the future shape of the editorial team,” and reminded the company that VP editorial Patrick Plourde maintained his role after multiple reports of misconduct, and Serge Hascoët’s “former right-hand” was still involved with high-level recruitment.
Last year, after reports broke of alleged abuse at Ubisoft, France-based Solidaires Informatique announced it was preparing a lawsuit against the company for its “repeated acts of harassment and sexual assault, sexist acts, and discrimination.” After a lack of official acknowledgment for almost a year, Ubisoft listed an “occurrence of inappropriate behavior by employees” as a “moderate” risk factor in a document intended for shareholders.
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