Michel Ancel, creator of Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil Suddenly announced He left Ubisoft 30 years later to work in a game reserve. That was a big surprise. Ansel is the creative director of Beyond Good & Evil 2 and seems to have been passionate about finishing with nearly eight years of production. But today, the French News Outlet Liberation published Two reports Employees say Ancel created a toxic work environment and mismanaged the project. In response to the report, Ubisoft and Ancel confirmed that they were under investigation before resigning, but Ancel has since denied the allegations on Instagram.
With the first report of Liberation Ansel follow-up interview French, but user ResetEra Translated both articles. The first report describes a development nightmare persisted by Ancel, which allegedly forced the development team to abandon months of whimsical work. Ubisoft employees say Ancel frequently changes the creative vision of BG & E2 and even invents new features while talking to the press, which wasn’t communicated to the development team in advance. Burnout and depression are said to be common, Ancel is very volatile, and Ubisoft has had to separate him from development staff by a middle management layer.
“He can explain to you that you are a genius and your ideas are great, and you are part of the shit, your work is worthless and will not talk to you for a month I will disassemble you at the meeting by saying that, “an employee told Liberation ( Reset Era’s Orbulon). “He is someone who has a creative process based on erosion, erosion of his vision, and erosion of the people around him.”
Ubisoft did not reveal that Ansel was under investigation when it announced its resignation on September 18. The details were public only when Ansel confirmed in a follow-up interview with Liberation. The survey dates back to August. Shortly after the company was involved Large-scale controversy Following dozens of reports of sexual harassment and abuse involving several senior executives.
In that interview, Ansel avoided direct questions about his management and behavior. “Many people weren’t ready for that,” he said of the problematic development of BG & E. “It is possible to say that there are moments of suspicion and the direction I am taking is not understood or badly explained.”
After the interview was published, however, Ansel Post to Instagram Deny the accusation. “Such accusations are shameful, so I will fight for the truth,” Ansel wrote. “I worked hard on every project and always respected the team. The blame is wrong.”
Ancel’s post directly addresses some of the key issues raised in Libération’s first report. As director of BG & E2, he argues that managing the development team is not his responsibility, but “brings a vision” while “determining what, when and how producers and managers do”. To do. He also denied that he often forced developers to start work from scratch, especially the city that focused on the first release of BG & E2. “The news from liberation contains fake [information] Revealed by a few people [want] To destroy me and the project, “Ansel wrote.
In the statement obtained From Kotaku, Ubisoft confirmed that it was investigating Ancel, but did not specify whether the investigation was related to the same behavior as detailed in Libération. A Ubisoft spokeswoman told Kotaku, “Yves Gilmot promised that the allegations were investigated in July and no one would go out of the process, including Michel Ancel.” Told. “And, as Michelle confirmed to the liberation journalist, he is under investigation. The investigation is still underway and we will respect the confidentiality of this investigation and will not share it anymore.”
According to Liberation, Ansel said he left Ubisoft for his own convenience.
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