Ubisoft reportedly fire Assassin's Creed designer who spoke out publicly against return-to-office, as union reps call for CEO to resign

An Assassin’s Creed designer who publicly spoke out against Ubisoft’s return-to-office mandate claims the company have now fired him. Developer David Michaud-Cromp posted on LinkedIn last week that he’d been put on unpaid disciplinary leave after recently criticising the policy change on the social media platform.

If you’re out of the loop, Ubisoft have recently revealed plans to push remote staff back into offices amid a bloodbath of game cancellations, restructuring and voluntary redundancies. The company intend to have employees return to working in-office five days a week, with an annual allowance of work-from-home days. All of these moves have understandably not gone down well with French unions, who’ve subsequently called strike action.

This brings us to Michaud-Cromp’s latest LinkedIn post, in which the Assassin’s Creed Shadows team lead wrote he’d been “terminated by Ubisoft, effective immediately”. “This was not my decision. I won’t be discussing internal details or circumstances. I’m taking time to regroup and will share next steps when appropriate,” he added.

Asked about the firing, Ubisoft provided the following statement to Kotaku via a spokesperson: “Sharing feedback or opinions respectfully does not lead to a dismissal. We have a clear Code of Conduct that outlines our shared expectations for working together safely and respectfully, which employees review and sign each year. When that is breached, our established procedures apply, including an escalation of measures depending on the nature, severity, and repetition of the breach.”

Speaking to Kotaku, Michaud-Cromp offered more of his view on remote work, outlining that in his estimation nailing “fundamentals like clarity of goals, trust, documentation, tooling, and communication practices” often has more of an impact on the effectiveness of teams than how physically close their members are from 9 to 5.

Ubisoft’s decision to force staff back into the office, potentially costing those who can’t do so due to various personal circumstances their jobs, has been one of the main areas the unions organising strikes on behalf of Ubisoft staff they represent object to. A number of staff have reportedly been left feeling as though they’ve suffered a “betrayal” at the hands of top management they can’t trust. In that same article from Game Developer, two Ubisoft devs who serve as representatives for the Solidaires Informatique union – Marc Rutschlé and Chakib Mataoui – have publicly called for CEO Yves Guillemot to resign.

“I think Guillemot should move away at this point,” Rutschlé said. “I think the level of hate people have for him [means] he should move on. Then, we could build some sort of trust again.”