As if Ubisoft’s public image – as well as one’s collective faith in humanity – could stand another such disappointment, a new exposé centering on the Assassin’s Creed Shadows development support team at Brandoville Studios has alleged the Indonesia-based company to be a hot bed of leadership-fueled employee abuse, with alleged offenses ranging from the physical, to the mental, to even the financial.
Per archives of the Brandoville Studios website made just before they ceased operation, in addition to Ubisoft’s aforementioned Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the company also produced work for such noted production houses as Disney, Sony, Naughty Dog, Warner Bros. Games, Sega, Xbox Game Studios, Zenimax Online, and NetEase Games.
Compiled by video game industry-centric investigative YouTube channel People Make Games and shared with the public on January 7th, the report was primarily based off of the recollections of one Christa Sydney, a former employee who claimed to have suffered a long string of abuses during her time with the studio, with a handful of other employees either supporting her story or offering their own.
According to Sydney, her troubles began after finding herself facing a potential firing, at which time she caught the attention of one Kwan ‘Cherry’ Lai, the wife of Brandoville Studios CEO Ken Lai, who claimed that “God talked to her” and encouraged her to take the struggling employee under her wing.
But rather than offering her any real help, Cherry allegedly treated Sydney, as well as other studio employees, as her personal fiefdom, keeping them under a strict schedule and dictating everything from when they could drink, eat, or sleep, and which religion – Christianity – they should practice.
Cherry also allegedly made abusive comments to employees, attempted to divide them via gossip, gaslighting them into trusting her or being suspicious of their own families, and blew up over minor issues or failures.
Further, when the studio first caught the attention People Make Games in 2021 following a similar investigation into the absolutely abysmal ‘crunch culture’ conditions found in south Asian support studios, Sydney claims that she was ordered by Cherry to not only sign her name to a self-dictated and overtly positive denial to the allegations, but also record a similarly-themed video, which was to be sent to any organization that threatened to blacklist Brandoville Studios over their involvement in the scandal.
In offering a specific example of the woman’s alleged tyranny, Sydney recalled that at one point immediately prior to her attendance of a work conference, she was only allowed “minutes” of sleep, with Cherry using the screen-sharing feature on her computer to ensure that she was awake.
Things only got worse for Sydney when she arrived to the actual conference itself, during which Cherry controlled who she could talk, bombarded her with abuse over WhatsApp, and after she accidentally appeared in a photo in a spot meant for Ken, ordered her to write one-hundred self-deprecating sentences as punishment.
It was this nightmare of an event, said Sydney, that she found herself hitting her breaking point and finally built up the nerve to try and quit Brandoville Studios.
However, her resignation was reportedly rejected by Cherry, who then claimed that the many gifts and hours of mentorship she had given to Sydney over the years (the latter of which Sydney claims was “basically nonsense) were not given out of charity, and thus she was expected to pay her back in full for everything.
Cherry then followed up this reveal with the likewise shocking news that Sydney’s paycheck did not actually belong to the employee, but rather was a sort of ‘allowance’ given to her by leadership which they held final say over and whose every use had to be approved by them.
After this conference, Sydney claims that Cherry’s began to grow ever-more extreme, eventually coming to encompass such behavior as demanding pictures of how she was dressed every morning in order to perform “quality control” over her appearance and ordering her to endure painful and punitive stress positions for hours on end, all while instructing the studio’s other employees to learn “strength” by ignoring her plight.
This eventually culminated in arguably the worst abuse of all, wherein Cherry is said to have regularly told Sydney to slap herself in the face until she bled or until she reached 100 total strikes, whichever came first, lest she receive even more egregious punishment.
As seen in clips shared by People Make Games, Sydney was forced to record these videos for Cherry’s viewing, being expected to be on alert to record them at the drop of the hat.
In one case, Cherry recorded a video of Sydney apologizing to her. Sydney claims she looked groggy and unfocused in the video because she had “concussion-like symptoms”, having slammed her head into the door-frame as hard as she could, at Cherry’s insistence.
Sydney’s abuse eventually came to a head in September 2024 when, after finding herself convinced to follow Ken and his wife to their new LaiLai Studios following Brandoville Studio’s closure the month before, Cherry took to outright physically beating her, with one of two reported incidents seeing her punch, slap, and kick the employee for not having a document ready for a meeting and the other involving her delivering multiple slaps in response to items she requested being placed in the incorrect spot outside of hotel room door.
After that, Sydney both finally fled from Cherry’s influence and reached out to People Make Games to share her story.
Unsurprisingly, Sydney is far from the only former member of Brandoville Studios to allege abuse at Cherry’s hands.
As recalled by ex-employee Caesarion Balthazar, not only was he subjected to the same ‘paycheck gatekeeping’ as Sydney, but when he finally attempted to quit, Cherry allegedly refused to give him a sum of back pay which he himself had requested be withheld and also hit him with a 200 million Indian rupee invoice (over $12,800 USD) for a supposed training program she claimed he took place in, but which he himself denies ever attending.
All in all, not only does Balthazar say that he lost roughly a month’s pay amounting to 5 million INR ($276 USD) to Cherry’s refusal to pay him back his withheld funds, but that he also paid roughly 7 million INR ($429 USD) back towards his ‘training fee’ before he was ultimately fired.
Another damning story came from Brandoville Studios’ business development manager Syifana Afiati.
Afiati says that during her pregnancy in 2022, despite the already wild stresses that the process was putting on her body, Cherry still overworked her, having her attend meetings that lasted well into early morning hours and even responding to her suffering of complications by demanding that she immediately either return to work or work remotely.
Like the others, Afiati eventually found herself fed up with Cherry’s behavior and attempted to quit, only for the woman to respond by berating Afiati’s husband before allowing her to go on a ‘temporary leave’
Sadly, when Afiati’s son was born, he was done so prematurely – and unfortunately for Afiati, not only was she asked to return to work just a month later, but also had her requests for a lighter workload and additional time to see her son fully rejected, with Cherry even going so far as to constantly bombard her with phone calls even while she was visiting the baby.
Unfortunately for Afiati and her husband, four months after being born, their son succumbed to his condition and passed away – but rather than compassion, Cherry is said to have immediately begun making moves to ensure that HR did not pay her for any of the time she would be taking off work, declaring “No way we pay for her currently sad mood or anything.”
A few months later, Afiati would put in her resignation notice and attempt to put Brandoville Studios behind her.
As explained by People Make Games contributor Chris Bratt in the outlet’s video, thanks to Sydney’s efforts in trying to get her story out into the public, the Indonesian police have opened an official investigation into the matter.
Per Bratt, the reason it took so long for any real attention to be brought to Brandoville Studios’ problems is that, as explained by the local phrase ‘No viral, no justice’, the people of Indonesia have little trust in their police and law enforcement, thus crimes need a mass outcry in order to actually spur action from authorities, and it was not until she first came forward with the initial reports of her abuse in September 2024 that those in the relevant positions of power would deem her concerns as noteworthy.
When reached by Bratt and offered a chance to explain herself, Cherry thanked him for his 2021 report on Brandoville Studios’ crunch conditions and declared, “To me my part of the story is not important, as long as my team are good and safe now. However, I will love to meet a new friend if you can make it to Hong Kong.”
Interestingly, when Bratt subsequently explained any meeting between them would be recorded, Cherry stopped replying to Bratt’s emails.
Conversely, Ken did not reply to any of Bratt’s attempted communications.
When asked by Eurogamer if they had any response to the allegations, a Ubisoft spokesperson asserted, “We are deeply disturbed by the recent reports surrounding Brandoville Studios. We strongly condemn all forms of abuse, and our thoughts are with the affected employees.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft, who previously tagged Brandoville Studios to help work on Age of Empires IV, did not reply to the outlet’s requests for comments.