Rayman Creator Michel Ancel Confirms Involvement With New Ubisoft Project

That's not a good thing. This man is known for poor and toxic management (please look it up before replying, it's really easy to find.) Also has accusations of much worse, although those claims seem to be much less substantiated.

@Bigmanfan last I heard he was gassing up AI Rayman art on his insta so yeah. not helping his case.

aint this dude a sex pest or smth

@Bigmanfan None of the claims are substantiated actually. It's all hearsay with a single quote from a single person that articles parrot represent multiple people. And the only reason why anyone thinks he's involved with sexual misconduct is because Kotaku carelessly tied the complaints towards him to all the sexual harassment / rape allegations made after the initial Gbinigie allegations.
There's also been no follow-through since other than Ancel's response to the initial Libération article, so take that as you will.
You can think whatever you want about the situation just don't pretend there's some rock-solid case against him, because there isn't.

Finally more Rayman goodness. 2D or 3D is not really important to me. Please just take your time and enjoy what you are doing.

As a user with a Rayman avatar, I approve of a new Rayman game anytime!!

I was interested in Rayman Origins but slightly less so with Legends. Nowadays I’m not sure the world of Rayman is any bit interesting to me.

UBI can only do mostly low budget games now.

@Bigmanfan Key word is consultant. Man apparently became a zookeeper after he left Ubisoft.

Chances are, he's just gonna get builds for the game, and advise what could be better and leave the creatives to do the work.

@Kingy just as Kingy said, I would like to remind everyone that Kotaku is not the most trustworthy news outlet.

@Bigmanfan So many people are accused of horrible things. He has denied the accusations and he is innocent until a sentence says otherwise.

@JohnnyMind "I'm so tired of people being cancelled because of accusations without follow-through in general, not just in his specific case..."

Me too! These people should imagine being popular and being cancelled before a court proves that the accusations are fair.

Considering he's unapologetically posted AI generated content on his social media, not sure I can really trust him back in any sort of creative role, especially for a series so reliant on human imagination as Rayman. You know, even aside from the accusations of him being a horribly toxic leader.

It's interesting how they are trying to transition the lost crown dev team to working on a ray man project 🤔, but hey there's potential for a good title here considering the fact that this very dev team brought the prince back from the dead mabye they can do the same for ray man as well?

@Kingy I disagree that there's no evidence. After all, toxic management would be a pretty obvious reason for the Beyond good and evil 2 debacle. Plus the suspicious timing of his departure and the accusations. I just can't give the benefit of the doubt in this case.

@Bigmanfan
That's conjecture, not evidence.
The only thing our super credible media outlets (Kotaku and Liberation) provided was a "trust me bro, it definitely happened".

@Kingy Except for the fact they said it happened, while at the same time the game he was working on was in development trouble and he left the company under odd circumstances. I'm not trying to put the guy in prison here, but clearly he is not good at managing projects. His involvement isn't a positive. That's the point I'm making here. You can agree or disagree, but I have listed the reasons for why I believe it, and I don't think you're changing my mind.

Ubisoft is the scum of gaming nowdays... it's a sinking ship.

@Bigmanfan I know your mind's already made up, I'm just here to notify people that you're basing this decision off a single dubious quote parroted by two untrustworthy news sources.

@Kingy So, you're French then right? Or else where are you getting the notion the newspaper that covered it was untrustworthy. And Kotaku, sure they have a poor track record, but all they did was translate the article. So yes, believe it or not I'm going with the theory that when there were reports of wrong doing, on a project that seemed to be taking way too long, at the same time the guy under fire left the company, and his defense was saying "fake news." Believe it or not I'm going to trust the reports. What an outlandish thing for me to do truly.

@Bigmanfan Yes, it is outlandish. The reports of wrong-doing are incredibly thin, have been sourced by a single quote that is NOT corroborated (at this time, 4 years after the fact) by anyone that was working under Ancel at Ubisoft. Kind of strange considering that as soon as the sexual harassment allegations against Gbinigie came forward plenty more staff followed with their own.

I can't find much of relevance on Liberation magazine but it doesn't seem like they have an amazing reputation among French readers. They are #10 for most-trusted media brand in France and have been reporting losses since 1998. Here is a single quote I found relating to the Ancel article.

• fyi here in France, Libération is often known for being on the "gotcha journalism" side. Several journalists from it have been accused to go as far as harass people online. - some redditor

This is hardly much to go on to reach a conclusion of Liberation being a bad news outlet, but it's as much 'evidence' as you have to say Ancel is a bad person.
You can believe whatever you want to believe just don't spread misinformation like Kotaku and claim there's more evidence than there actually is. You're conjecting, that's all.

If you want my conjecture, Beyond Good & Evil 2 isn't out and will never be out (at least not as it was originally advertised) because it was an overly ambitious project created by one of the most infamously disorganized companies known to man. But I couldn't tell you that as a fact because I lack evidence.

@Kingy Lol okay. That was a whole lot of nothing. "Some redditor." Do you even listen to yourself? Yes, a newspaper giving info that has some weird coincidences around it is much less trustworthy than "some redditor." Give me a break. Thanks for wasting my time.

@Bigmanfan Again, it is as much information as you have and you're the one making all the definitive claims.

@Kingy It is objectively less information. Go ahead, give me one reason my logic is flawed. Cause so far you haven't.

@Bigmanfan The theory you've concocted in your head is formed by a single unsubstantiated quote from four years ago and that's it.

@Kingy Thanks for still saying nothing to disprove anything. I could say your theories that the claims are false are also concocted in your head. Just stop. It's embarrassing.

@Bigmanfan The only one embarrassing themselves here is you. For a start, he's not saying they aren't true, just that there's not enough proof to say they are true. You're the one that has the burden of proof here, not him.

@Bigmanfan I never made the claim that it was true or false. I agree, it would be embarrassing to come to a definitive conclusion with such little information on hand.

@Kingy If I remember correctly, there was a first news about he leaving the company and after just one day, or two, another news regarding he doing all that harassment etc.
I found it weird the latter news because if he was actually doing this kind of stuff why it wasn't 'public' earlier?
Sometimes these types of news should be taken as grain of salt.

Anyway, if he is actually involved for Rayman then it better be something new and not a simple remastered.

@Simone93 Right, it's just so little to go off in a very short span of time.
As for the new project, they only have him as a consultant but if the people involved are the same guys who did Origins and Legends it should be a good one.
I suppose I would be interested what they would do with a remake of the original Rayman (I think that's what was rumored earlier last month) but I agree, I'd prefer something brand new and preferably 3D.

Everyone here talking about michel (though it does make sense since this article is talking about him so…) while I’m over here hoping for a rayman remaster/remake trilogy. 😅

I will always be thankful for Michael Ancel's involvement in the creation of Rayman 2: The Great Escape. That was and still is one of my favorite platformers ever. It was so different in comparison to everything else I was playing back then.

Very excited to see what will happen with this! Rayman 2, as well as Origins and Legends, were amazing games.

This guy gave us Rayman, Rayman 2, Beyond, Good & Evil, Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends. His track record is impeccable, and he is one of the key designers of the modern classic era. I am glad that he is back in the game creation game.

@Kingy Sorry for the late reply. Thank you for the clarification and the info regarding his position. We can only wait and see what we will get.