Unfortunately, according to Bloomberg sources familiar with the project, Avalon was canceled by then Ubisoft Creative Director Serge Hascoët. Hascoët was apparently suspicious of the fantasy genre and told the team that if it was a fantasy game, Avalon had to be “better than Tolkien”, referring to the sacred Lord of The Rings franchise.Sources in the report noted that Avalon was “making good progress” prior to its cancellation and that it featured a “cooperative multiplayer world similar to Capcom Co.’s popular Monster Hunter series.” In an effort to salvage the project, the stage was reshaped into Greek science fiction and mythology, but Hascoët was not yet ready to approve it, and it was canceled in 2019, and Laidlaw left the company soon after.
This is not the first story we’ve heard about Hascoët’s involvement in rejecting launched projects: The executive was also allegedly at the center of eliminating or minimizing female roles in multiple Assassin’s Creed games. Hascoët recently resigned from Ubisoft after allegations of sexual misconduct and toxic culture at the company and was named as “playing a central role in the company’s cultural problems” in a report by the French newspaper Liberation.
Ubisoft recently chose not to directly address the aforementioned abuse allegations during its Ubisoft Forward conference earlier this month, but it has committed to “major changes” after multiple reports of abuse and harassment within the developer studios.
Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
