Ubisoft's Frag Dolls disband

Ubisoft's all female professional gaming team, the Frag Dolls, is no more. Today the group announced it was disbanding after close to 11 years in the industry.

"The most precious moments - the ones most likely to earn ugly crying tears of gratitude at our desks at work - were when our simple existence as a team of professional gamers gave other female gamers reason to question assumptions they'd made about themselves," the Frag Dolls posted online.

"Those assumptions about what kind of things that they, as women, should love, how they should spent their time, the careers they should dream about. Through 11 years and an ever-changing roster, we were united and spurred on by those messages from other women thanking us for inspiring them to try something new, to start their own team, to play in a tournament, or to pursue a job in the industry."

The Frag Dolls also established the Cadette program that helped female gamers find work experience in the industry. The scheme supported over 80 people who went on to work with EA, 2K, Wargaming, Blizzard, Nintendo, Obsidian, Riot, Bungie, Twitch, Microsoft, Oculus Rift, BioWare, Machinima, Astro, and Ubisoft.

"Ubisoft deserves our deep gratitude for their 10+ years of support for the team. They could have shut us down after the first year or two as a fun marketing experiment. But instead, they continued to say "OK' to our ideas and give us the resources we needed when we needed them most."

The Frag Dolls brand was founded in 2004 with seven members, Brookelyn, Eekers, Jinx, Katscratch, Rhoulette, Seppuku, and Valkyrie. Teams were later also established in the UK and France.