When I was at Ubisoft most of my friends were too. They gaslit me about my experiences bc that’s how abusive environments work. As I quit and found my voice, some of my friends and I found ways to continue to love and be loved by each other despite our different perspectives.

I’m very grateful for that learning experience as it taught me both compassion and solidity and how human perception works and how love works. Holding space for some of my friends as they come to realizations these past weeks has been very meaningful.

At first when I left Ubisoft my friends distanced themselves to protect themselves. This hurt as I questioned my own perceptions.

In the months following, every time I came back to MTL different women at Ubi would ask me for tea and confide in me about their abuse. This hurt too but I was there for it. I listened and shared as best I could. I used my growing network to help some of them find jobs elsewhere.

As years passed and this continued, and I watched the trajectories of certain people, it became clearer to me that what happened to me was part of a larger pattern of toxicity. That made me so sad for my friends and anyone who was losing themselves and slowing their potential.

These past few weeks I’ve learned that it was worse inside Ubisoft than even I suspected. And I‘ve learned that one specific thing that happened to me that was wildly bad and deeply traumatizing was not even unique to me and was a pattern.

When that happened to me I confided in a few colleagues and they minimized it and distanced themselves.

Being embedded in a toxic system causes cognitive distortion. My experience caused cognitive dissonance for my colleagues, which takes time to resolve and usually involves stages of denial and projection and other psychological defence mechanisms.

I was lucky that around that time I also had a brunch with my friend Ed, who is an architect and not in the games industry at all and not subject to its delusions.

I was telling him my strategy for maneuvering around what happened to me and he put down his flatware and took the conversation to another level.

He cut through, pointed out toxic patterns I had been dealing with for years, and told me to go. He pleaded with me. It was impactful because he is a quiet and tolerant person, never bossy or pushy.

I’m so grateful. I didn’t waste any more years there or accrue any more trauma or become a person I wouldn’t want to be.

I’m grateful that despite the pressures on my friends in Ubi to scapegoat me and the pressures inside me to blame my friends for not doing more, we kept showing up authentically and solidly and they were able to eventually see my situation.

This is the realization that is shorthanded as “believe women”. It’s not always easy to get to that space when you grew up a nerd and now have a cool identity in a cultish organization and your livelihood depends on that identity. But it’s good to get there.

It’s good to get to a place where you can accept the complexities of life. We all engage with toxic systems that hurt people and it’s not helpful to ignore the toxicities just because your livelihood or identity depends on the system.

That we all have to do continuous calculations of how we engage, with what systems, for what ends, minimizing our harm along the way, and taking responsibility for the harm we do cause, inadvertent or otherwise.

Marginalized people who’ve been traumatized by Ubi have several networks, frameworks, processes, systems and etiquettes for supporting each other through trauma processing.

In the past weeks it’s become even more clear that privileged men have a lot of catching up to do here. They’re starting from almost zero.

Some men I don’t know have DMed me wanting support and I’m not there for that. I’m there for marginalized people or for my friends who were there for me. I do direct my men friends to help those men.

Culture changes, and calling out abuse is important and this is part of our culture now and is a good part of our culture. This is very good.

I’m curious to see what changes this brings next. What paths to responsibility and healing will the games industry find? How much pressure will marginalized people have to keep putting on those in power to force them into taking responsibility? Will they?

Will we now develop not only networks of support but also justice? Healing? Is that what marginalized people are achieving now for the benefit of all? How many years will it take? How much work will some of the privileged men take off the shoulders of marginalized people?

Most women I know are very exhausted right now. They’re still the ones putting their careers on the line, spending as much energy as they possibly can, thinking about maximizing justice and minimizing harm as they navigate complex situations, and doing the learning and the work.

Especially women of colour are doing this work. Especially women of colour.

These women are our leaders in many ways and will potentially be our leaders concretely and by title in the future, if we choose healing and not choose continued abuse. If we choose love, justice.

You may not see marginalized people as leaders because you are in a capitalist system and look to money and titles when you think of who is powerful. But there are many forms of power and influence.

And when we look at rates of change, at direction, rather than at the current state, we can see who is potentially driving culture now and where we might potentially go. I’m inspired that we’re here, we’ve made it this far, and that we have momentum.

This is why I have compassion for my friends at Ubisoft who gaslit me. Not because I’m some kind of infinitely patient or masochistic person, but because I see the direction, and I know I’m leading when I bring them along with me.

Their healing gives me energy and more of an army, and then I can continue to support the marginalized people who need my support who are leading me.

I am most grateful for the strength and leadership of marginalized people who, under all the oppression they face, and who may not even want to have to lead, continue to lead us.

Love comes in many forms. Love is not a state, or a single act—it’s a direction. It’s towards healing and justice. It is not weak and can involve acts of warfare.

As we continue to shift from white supremacy and patriarchy to something else, the ways in which we engage with harmful systems will become clearer to each of us and they will be painful. But we each have a choice how we orient ourselves as we learn. What leaders will you serve?