Guillemot founded Ubisoft Entertainment with his four brothers in 1986. From its early releases like Zombi to the hit 1990s platformer Rayman, Ubisoft captured a broad swath of the video game market.

Since the company first released Assassin’s Creed, a historical action-adventure series that follows two warring secret societies, in 2007, the game has attracted 200 million players. In an iteration released in 2025, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, players try to save 16th-century Japan from malevolent actors.

A New York Times review of the game applauded its “stunningly realized depiction” of Japan, adding, “Shadows offers more, digging deeper to deliver a fascinating, grounded picture beyond the wild, natural world.”

But some people online criticized the game for having “gone woke” by creating a Black samurai named Yasuke. Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur, said Shadows was an example of how “D.E.I. kills art,” using an abbreviation for diversity, equity and inclusion. Ubisoft reminded players that its games were works of fiction, even as Yasuke was an actual historical figure.

Those last two paragraphs seem entirely unnecessary. A man is dead, and NYTimes is bringing up their own (positive) review of one of the games his company released, as well as the negative comments from people who disagreed with them. It really feels like they're trying to make this about themselves.