User:Sol Pacificus/Assassin's Creed Sisterhood

Assassin's Creed Sisterhood (AC Sisterhood) is a community initiative created by fans of the Assassin's Creed franchise with the aim to highlight women of the Assassin's Creed community, to achieve better representation for women and minorities in the gaming industry, and to establish a support network for women against workplace harassment.

Launched by Kulpreet Virdi in the summer of 2020, the movement came into being in the wake of a wave of allegations of sexual harassment at Ubisoft, the company behind the development of the Assassin's Creed games. Alongside this followed revelations that the pivotal roles of female protagonists were repeatedly cut by executive editorial decisions, presumably in the belief that women are less marketable.

While the network strives to combat the subordination of women in both media and in the workplace, it has also been active in amplifying the voices of other marginalized groups, such as those from the LGBTQ+ community, speakers of minority languages, and other victims of abuse regardless of sex or gender. Its members have emphasized its desire for inclusivity and has disavowed any goal of subordinating men to women in turn, only seeking fair and equal treatment for women.

Goals

According to their website, AC Sisterhood espouses three core missions:

1. "to highlight, appreciate and support women in the Assassin's Creed franchise, the community and Ubisoft’s development teams"
2. "to create a safe and empowering space for women and those who experience misogyny"
3. "to push for meaningful change by way of better representation in the Assassin's Creed games, and for better treatment of women and minorities within the company"

These goals have been further expounded upon by community leaders like Kulpreet Virdi and Lorena in various interviews and in the Sisterhood's podcast AC Sisterhood Speaks!

Community-building is a central and invaluable aspect of the movement which serves as far more than just a forum. In Lorena's own words:

"I think that one thing people really overlook is that women need a place where they can be safe. . .And I think that's one thing that we have to put out there: that we are here to support one another and to protect one another and that if this does happen in the future, that they have allies that they can turn to to support them, to try to help them do the steps that need to be done to get some sort of closure or justice or to make sure that the people who has done the wrong things get the punishment they deserve."

History

Background

In June 2020, numerous women took to Twitter by the storm to disclose countless incidents of sexual misconduct they had experienced with male Ubisoft staff over the course of their careers. The initial wave of allegations had a cascading effect as more and more women were galvanized into publicly divulging the abuses they suffered at the company for the first time. Many of the accusations were levelled at men in executive positions and ranged from misogyny to sexual assault.

As the testimonies mounted, more than a hundred employees at Ubisoft Toronto came together on 26 June to send a letter to their studio's administration conveying their dire concerns of the unsafe environment. Included among their list of demands were accountability against workplace harassment, greater transparency of the human relations department's handling of reports, and mandatory harassment training for all studio managers. That same day, Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier reported that Maxime Béland and Tommy François, two of the executives at the epicentre of the scandal, had been suspended—Béland's resignation would be announced on 3 July. On 29 June, managing director Alexandre Parizeau directly addressed the letter at a company-wide meeting where he promised employees that the procedures for dealing with future complaints about harassment would be audited by an outside firm.

Interviews by Kotaku and Libération

Nevertheless, public scrutiny of Ubisoft only heightened as the year moved into July. The video game website Kotaku followed-up on these developments with their own investigation, interviewing twelve former and contemporary employees of the Toronto studio to compile a report of the situation. Their article published on 6 July highlighted the structural problems within the company that abetted the culture of harassment against women. Interviewees cited an intense party culture rife with alcohol which fostered lax standards of conduct from senior employees. Multiple women recalled that executives would invade their personal space, make unwanted advances, and touch them inappropriately at these events in spite of their rejections and that these behaviours would be brushed aside by other co-workers.

In one notorious incident at a 2014 party to celebrate the release of Far Cry 4, a woman was spontaneously strangled by Béland. Her hesitation to file a report with HR was consistent with the department's alleged reputation for inconsideration and inaction. Kotaku noted that Ubisoft studios typically have policies advising that victims directly confront their own abusers, which effectively discouraged them from filing reports to HR in the first place. Notwithstanding this, concerns of conflict of interest became an additional deterrent when Béland's wife, Rima Brek, served as the interim head of HR. According to a coworker of the woman choked by Béland, her attempt to file a report on her behalf was denied by HR on the basis that the victim failed to provide an official statement of her own. Male and female employees alike emphasized to Kotaku the common fear of women that reporting incidents would mark them out as targets and ruin their careers, as has often occurred for them.

Meanwhile, the French newspaper Libération published their own findings in separate reports on 1 July and 10 July which detailed abuses on an even greater magnitude.