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A new report by Stephen Totilo of Axios claims that there's currently an exodus of staff at troubled publisher Ubisoft.

According to the report, at least five of the top 25-credited people from the company's biggest 2021 game, Far Cry 6, have already left Ubisoft's ranks. Furthermore, 12 of the top 50 staffers on Assassin's Creed: Valhalla – 2020's biggest Ubisoft game – have also departed.

It's not just at the top-level where the exodus is being felt; LinkedIn shows that Ubisoft's Montreal and Toronto studios have shed at least 60 workers between them in the past six months.

Axios has been in contact with Ubisoft developers about the problem, and two current employees have admitted that departures have "stalled or slowed" projects in production. One dev even said that a Ubisoft co-worker got in touch with them recently to solve a problem with a game, primarily because "no one was still there who knew the system."

Another veteran Ubisoft developer explained that the company's current woes – such as dealing with accusations of misconduct and its support of controversial new revenue streams, such as NFTs – has made the firm "an easy target for recruiters". A former Ubisoft staffer who spoke to Axios added: "There's something about management and creative scraping by with the bare minimum that really turned me away."

Another former staffer said that Ubisoft's upper management had "constantly emphasized 'moving on' and 'looking forward' while ignoring the complaints, concerns and cries of their employees" and that "the company's reputation was too much to bear. It's legitimately embarrassing."

Ubisoft's head of people ops, Anika Grant, told Axios that the number of staff leaving was "within industry norms", but admitted that "our attrition today is a few percentage points above where it typically is."

[source axios.com, via eurogamer.net]