Ubisoft Employee Not Fired Over PewDiePie Comments, Issues Statement

Yesterday we ran a report indicating that an Ubisoft employee may have lost her job over controversial comments directed towards Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg, suggesting that the game industry "end" him over his recent support of a controversial anti-Semitic YouTube channel and enraging a number of his die-hard followers. However, it turns out that this is not the case.

In a follow-up to that report, Dianna Lora, who works with the team at Massive Entertainment on the forthcoming sequel The Division 2, posted a brief statement confirming that she's still with the company.

Though she's kept her Twitter account on private, she was able to share her response to the matter, which is as follows:

"Hey y'all! It's been (a) pretty wild week. To clarify, I am not a ComDev and my social media accounts reflect my personal opinions, not the opinions or positions of Massive or Ubisoft. I'm shipping a game right now, and it'll be the holidays soon, so I'll be taking a break from social media to refocus on my work, my family and my cat. Happy holidays, lovelies."

It's great to see Dianna talking about how her comments are kept separate from her work, as well as a cheerful holiday message to boot. She's since gotten an outpouring of support from a number of people within the industry, including myself.

That said, PewDiePie's followers may show ire over this decision, possibly proceeding with their boycott of The Division 2 and other Ubisoft games. That seems a bit futile, because they would be missing out on that sequel and other good 2019 releases from the company, like Skull and Bones and (possibly) Beyond Good and Evil 2 if they chose to take that route.

It's the holidays. Let's move this aside and get back to loving video games like we normally do, yeah?

Tom Clancy's The Division 2 is currently set to ship on March 15, 2019 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.