A French court sentenced three former Ubisoft executives to suspended prison terms on Wednesday, July 2, for enabling a culture of sexual and psychological harassment at the gaming giant.
Thomas François, a former editorial vice president who was also convicted on a charge of attempted sexual assault, received the harshest sentence: a suspended three-year prison term. Among the three defendants, he faced the most damning allegations, including forcing an employee to do a headstand while in a skirt. Meanwhile, former chief creative officer Serge Hascoët was given an 18-month suspended sentence for psychological harassment and complicity in sexual harassment. A third executive, former games director Guillaume Patrux, received a 12-month suspended sentence for harassment on a "smaller scale." The court ordered François to pay a €30,000 ($35,340) fine, while Hascoët was fined €45,000 and Patrux €10,000.
During the trial, the court heard that François would greet employees using inappropriate names, attempt to touch people's genitals as part of a so-called "game" and try to kiss male employees by surprise. François testified during the trial that he "lacked perspective" during the incidents from 2012 to 2020, when he was aged from 38 to 46, saying he had, at the time, believed that he was "treating people with respect."
Hascoët told the court he was unaware of the harassment happening outside of his glass office. Yet he also instructed his female assistants to perform personal tasks for him, which were not linked to their qualifications, such as picking his daughter up from school or crossing Paris to buy him peanuts, justifying the behaviour as something typically "seen in movies."
During the trial, the defense lawyers insisted that their clients had never received any disciplinary warnings from the company's human resources department. Ubisoft only started internal investigations after media outlets reported the claims, leading to wider criticism of the gaming industry in France. Hascoët and François left the company in 2020, along with Patrux, after the investigations.