Splinter Cell director Maxime Beland resigns over sexual misconduct allegations

Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed director Maxime Beland has resigned from developer Ubisoft following a large number of sexual harassment allegations. 

A founder of Ubisoft’s Toronto game studio as well as the original design director for the Assassin’s Creed series, Maxime Beland has been a substantial figurehead at Ubisoft for decades. However, after a wave of sexual misconduct claims spanning many years, Beland has left his position at the company.

Ubisoft issued a statement to games publication VGC last week stating that Beland’s leave would be “effective immediately”. Despite his leave, the investigation of Maxime Beland has not been stopped at Ubisoft and the developer will continue to look into the multiple claims.

Ubisoft’s battle against sexual harassment is going to be a large problem for the studio. As the games industry rises up against the rampant amount of unacceptable behaviour committed by a number of established industry veterans, Ubisoft has seen a large number of its creatives accused of harassment. Many of these employees have been put on leave.

To try to help combat the issue, Ubisoft has announced that they will be creating an in-house anonymous complaint platform for employees at Ubisoft to report unacceptable behaviour of sexism, racism, harassment and abuse.