Ubisoft Montpellier

History

Ubisoft Montpellier's founding story begins not in an office but in scattered homes and a bulletin board system. In 1987, Frédéric Houde met Michel Ancel — then a teenager — at Informatique 2000, a technology shop in Montpellier. Ancel joined Ubisoft as a graphic artist at seventeen after meeting game author Nicolas Choukroun, and by 1992 he had begun work on his first project as lead designer: a limbless character that would become Rayman. In 1994, Ubi Soft formalized the arrangement by establishing a new studio under the name Ubi Pictures. Ancel moved to Carnon in the Montpellier area, and he and Houde hired three additional people — Eric Pelatan, Alexandra Steible, and Olivier Soleil — forming a core team of five. All five worked remotely from home, exchanging data through bulletin board systems. What would later become one of Ubisoft's largest studios began as five people in separate rooms, uploading sprite sheets overnight.

Rayman debuted on September 1, 1995, originally for the Atari Jaguar and PC, later arriving on PlayStation and Sega Saturn in 1996. The game's protagonist — a character with no visible limbs, only floating hands and feet — was designed by Ancel as an elegant workaround for the technical limitations of animating connected limbs on early hardware. The character's expressiveness and the game's hand-drawn aesthetic established Rayman as a recognizable mascot. After the game's release, the team grew, and Ubi Pictures moved to its first proper office on Rue de l'Ancien Courrier in the center of Montpellier in 1995. Development on Rayman 2: The Great Escape began immediately, and the studio expanded from its original five to a staff that would eventually reach the hundreds.

In late 2003, when the studio was still known as Ubisoft Pictures, Ubisoft acquired Tiwak, a Montpellier-based developer, and consolidated it and its 17 employees into Ubisoft Pictures. The merged entity was rebranded Ubisoft Montpellier. The studio adopted the Ubisoft Montpellier name legally in March 2011, formalizing a brand that had already been in informal use for years. The consolidation reflected Ubisoft's strategy of centralizing its Montpellier-area properties under a single banner.

Beyond Good & Evil, released in 2003, was developed over more than three years by a team of roughly 30 spread across Montpellier and Milan. The game was originally conceived as an open-world project, but pressure from Ubisoft management to scale back led Ancel to concentrate the story on a single city — Hillys. The game's protagonist, Jade, was a photojournalist investigating a government conspiracy while protecting a group of orphans. Ancel and lead artist Florent Sacré identified the project's visual reference as '2000% Miyazaki,' citing Studio Ghibli films as the primary aesthetic influence. Composer Christophe Héral spent two years weaving music from dozens of global traditions into a soundtrack that defied geographic boundaries.

Beyond Good & Evil released the same week as Ubisoft's own Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which received the bulk of the marketing budget. The game sold poorly — retailers cut its price to as low as $14 within weeks — but it earned nominations for Game of the Year and Excellence in Game Design at the 2004 Game Developers Choice Awards. Journalists and players continued to reference the game long after its commercial failure, and it grew into a cult classic. The first official Japanese-language release came only with the 20th Anniversary Edition in June 2024, twenty-one years after the original launch.

Ancel announced Beyond Good & Evil 2 in 2008, re-revealed it in 2017, and continued to lead the project through the following years. Development was marked by repeated expansions of scope, re-works, and internal stress. In September 2020, Ancel announced that he was leaving the video game industry to work at a wildlife sanctuary. One week later, the French newspaper Libération published an investigation alleging that Ancel's management style during the development of Beyond Good & Evil 2 had been toxic, marked by constant scope changes and dismissals of completed work. The investigation reported high levels of exhaustion, depression, and burnout among team members. Ancel denied the allegations, calling the report 'fake news,' but confirmed he was aware he had been under internal investigation by Ubisoft. Émile Morel, who had taken over as creative director following Ancel's departure, died in 2023. As of 2026, Beyond Good & Evil 2 remains in development without a release date.

On September 17, 2019, Ubisoft Montpellier inaugurated a new 4,500-square-meter building known as 'Le Monolithe.' The studio employed 350 people at the time and planned to reach 500 within three years. That expansion trajectory slowed significantly. In October 2024, the studio reportedly disbanded the team responsible for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a 2024 sidescroller that received strong reviews but failed commercially. The Montpellier studio continues to work on Beyond Good & Evil 2 and co-development projects for larger Ubisoft titles, including Star Wars Outlaws, Assassin's Creed Mirage, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. The studio that began as five people exchanging sprite sheets over dial-up has survived creator departures, commercial failures, and repeated restructurings. It remains active, still tied to the name Rayman and the unfinished promise of a sequel that has outlasted its director.