Kulturkampf

[Nintex]

Ubisoft developers on the company:
- Higher ups brush off any criticism ("toxic gamer talk")
- People end up meeting with HR because of harassment reports for using smileys or using exclamation points
- Editorial direction moved to "safe content" from boys club, Kay from Star Wars Outlaws is an example of this. The idea to use beautiful characters like Balders Gate or Uncharted was met with distrust
- Limited opportunity for gameplay because of safe content guidelines, couldn't depict a true criminal underworld with cruelty and drama for Outlaws
- One of the constraints for Kay was that she must never "punch down" that meant that for example a civilian ship could never be hurt by the player
- Culture of "Toxic positivity"
- Not allowed to make characters attractive, culture of fear and HR complaints
- Management is focused on financial targets from "casual gamer sales" not the "gamer community"
- Guidance from HQ and management(which has expanded) is corpo bullshit that isn't useful
- Ubisoft pushes out senior engineers in favor of promoting junior developers
- Dedicated developers leave, those that are going through the motions stay behind
- Designers working on FPS games that have never played an FPS
- Engineers who don't understand the feeling of the mechanics they are building
- Lack of passion and skill across the board

I've heard many of these things. In fact, I've heard worse things.