A screenshot of Star Wars Outlaws (2024), Ubisoft

An Ubisoft mentorship program titled ‘Develop at Ubisoft’ appears to discriminate based on one’s sex.

A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

On the official Ubisoft website, the developer says, “At Ubisoft, we want to build the most creative, diverse and inclusive teams, and that’s exactly what Develop at Ubisoft is all about: empowering and supporting under-represented genders.”

It then clearly states, “The program provides mentorship opportunities for women and non-binary individuals (students or fresh graduates with less than 2 years of experience), interested in video games to develop their skill set in Game Design and Programming. We want to empower you to learn, grow, and become the very best developer that you can be.”

The program is open to candidates from the United States of America, which one would assume it has to follow U.S. law which prohibits discrimination based on sex, something Ubisoft is clearly doing with this mentorship program.

Screenshot of Develop at Ubisoft mentorship program

If the above introductory paragraph was not enough evidence that Ubisoft is discriminating based on sex for this Develop at Ubisoft program, the company’s website makes it clear the one must “identify as a woman or a non-binary individual” in order to be eligible for the program.

Screenshot of Eligibility Criteria for Develop at Ubisoft mentorship program

As noted by YouTuber Dreadroberts, this program is not new and has been around for at least four years given a blog post about previous mentees and mentors sharing their experience states, “For the fourth year in a row, the Develop at Ubisoft mentorship program helped promising women and non-binary talents shape their dream career in gaming. Over the past months, 90 mentors from 19 Ubisoft studios welcomed 90 mentees who brought a fresh perspective and new ideas into Game Design and Programming and got to develop their own creative project.”

Ironically, Ubisoft’s Senior Vice President of Production Technology Guillemette Picard, who sponsors the program, talked about its importance by citing her own history of male and female mentors, “I’ve had great mentors over the years – men and women who helped me grow and shape my professional experience. Mentorship was (and still is) a rich and humbling journey. It allowed me to take a step back, challenge myself, seek new perspectives, and build my network. And I believe that it is as enriching for the mentor as it is for the mentee. That’s why I’m so enthusiastic about the potential of Develop at Ubisoft to empower women and non-binary individuals who are in the early stages of their professional life in our industry, a space where we are still underrepresented.”

Dreadroberts also discovered that this mentorship program appears to be part of something called Project Rise at Ubisoft. Ubisoft’s then Vice President of Global Diversity, Inclusion & Accessibility Raashi Sikka discussed this project back in September 2022 in an interview on Ubisoft’s website. Sikka is now the company’s Chief Diversity, Inclusion Accessibility, and Social Impact Officer.

When asked about what the key priorities of her team is over the next few months, Sikka replied, “We have several exciting key projects that are about to launch. The first is our first-ever global self-identification program, where we will invite team members to share additional information voluntarily and confidentially about their identity, such as gender identity, race/ethnicity or disability. This information will help us to understand the experience of each person from a much more inclusive lens and allow us to take actions that truly support our colleagues.”

She continued, “We know we have room for growth when it comes to the representation of racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity, both within Ubisoft and the gaming industry at large. With this in mind, we created a multi-year strategy called Project Rise to ensure that Ubisoft better reflects the diversity of our players, with a focus on racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity. Over the course of the next five years, we will focus on three key areas: talent acquisition, internal talent development, and external talent pipeline development.”

A screenshot from Watch Dogs: Legion (2020), Ubisoft Toronto

Sikka continued, “We know that different people experience life and the workplace differently – there are different opportunities and barriers that we all face. In the workplace, addressing barriers requires us to be specific, targeted, and focused in our actions. At Ubisoft, we will be focusing on four key dimensions: gender equality, race and ethnicity, LGBTQIA+ inclusion, and disability inclusion.”

“I would be remiss if I didn’t speak about our games, right? Over the past months, we’ve been working with the recently created Inclusive Games and Content team to build their roadmap focused on ensuring diversity and inclusion is at the heart of all our games. Thanks to our stellar accessibility team, we’re also continuing to work hard to make our games more accessible. Right now, the team is focused on bringing an ‘accessibility by design’ approach that embeds accessibility in our games from the earliest stages of development and ensures that more players can get the full experience of our universes,” she concluded.

A screenshot from Star Wars Outlaws (2024), Ubisoft

In fact, in the same interview Sikka revealed that this program had increased the percentage of female employees from 22% to 25%. She said, “Gender equality has been a priority at Ubisoft for a while now, both in terms of increasing the representation of women in the organization and supporting the development of women across different levels of leadership. Thanks to the great work of our talent acquisition teams and the investment of our HR leadership, women now represent 25% of our team members, up from 22% in 2020.”

She added, “A third of all hires over the last year were women. Additionally, we have 42% of women on our Executive committee and 45% of women on our board at Ubisoft.”

A screenshot of Skull and Bones (2024), Ubisoft

Interestingly, since Project Rise was seemingly rolled out at Ubisoft, the company’s stock has cratered. In the last 5 years it has dropped nearly 85%. In just the past year, the company’s stock has dropped nearly 60%.

A screenshot of Ubisoft’s stock price via Yahoo! Finance

This is not at all shocking given a Wall Street Journal report at the end of June revealed that woke policies do not lead to growth and that a study by McKinsey conducted back in 2015 touting the benefits of woke business policies has not been replicated and the firm’s methods to determine its results are being questioned.

James Mackintosh wrote, “Academics have tried to repeat McKinsey’s findings and failed, concluding that there is in fact no link between profitability and executive diversity. And the methodology of McKinsey’s early studies, which helped create the widespread belief that diversity is good for profits, is being questioned.”

He added, “Academics can’t replicate McKinsey’s study precisely, because it keeps secret the names of the companies it used. But a paper published this year finds that McKinsey’s methodology doesn’t show benefits from diversity for S&P 500 companies for a range of profitability metrics. It isn’t that a lack of diversity is good for profits either, it’s just there’s no link.”

A screenshot from XDefiant (2023), Ubisoft

What do you make of Ubisoft discriminating in this mentorship program and seemingly having multiple programs dedicated to discriminating based on sex and race?