Ubisoft’s upcoming pirate game, Skull & Bones, has lost an associate game director. Long-time staffer Antoine Henry reveals on LinkedIn that he left the publisher at the end of the year, and that he’s “on to new exciting adventures very soon”.
As Henry documents on LinkedIn, he initially joined Ubisoft in France back in 2007 as a game designer. He worked on projects such as Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 and Just Dance 4 for over five years before working on a cancelled project for close to two years as a senior game designer. He then jumped to Ubisoft Singapore to work on Skull & Bones for three years as a lead game designer before becoming associate game director in 2017. Henry also worked on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and played a role in creating the Isu’s language.
Skull & Bones was initially revealed at E3 in 2017. While Ubisoft originally pencilled it in for a 2018 release, it’s been delayed numerous times. Creative director Elisabeth Pellen confirmed in 2020 that development on a new version was in “full swing” before Ubisoft bosses explained in a 2021 financial call that the game would release during the fiscal year beginning in April 2022.
Alongside a lengthy development, Ubisoft Singapore has also had to contend with an investigation by a national watchdog over alleged misconduct last year. As reported by Kotaku, staff at the 500-plus studio have allegedly been subjected to sexual harassment, racial pay disparities, and bullying from “toxic leaders”.
The events follow another Kotaku report from the year before alleging that Ubisoft Singapore’s former managing director Hugues Ricour was removed from the position following a “leadership audit”.