The last few years have seen a toxic culture reckoning in the games industry. It began when the California Department of Fair Housing and Employment filed a lawsuit against Activision/Blizzard, citing a toxic culture.
Since then, other companies like Ubisoft have been accused of creating a poor environment for their employees. Last week, Bungie became the latest studio to be called out for issues in their building.
Last Friday, IGN published an article entitled, The Battle for Bungie’s Soul: Inside the Studio’s Struggle for a Better Work Culture.
Inside the body, the Chicago company is accused of having it’s own toxic culture. Like Activision/Blizzard, Bungie is accused of creating a toxic frat-boy like environment where sexism runs rampant, employees are overworked and human resources is protective of those accused of wrong doing.
Recently, Bungie’s CEO, Pete Parsons, responded to the report. He wrote in a statement:
“I am not here to refute or to challenge the experiences we’re seeing shared today by people who have graced our studio with their time and talent. Our actions or, in some cases, inactions, caused these people pain. I apologise personally and on behalf of everyone at Bungie who I know feels a deep sense of empathy and sadness reading through these accounts.”
Parsons continued, “As CEO, it is my job to factor both the past and the future and be accountable for all of it, here and now. Speaking with the team at Bungie, reading the stories, and seeing both known and newly surfaced accounts, it is clear we still have work ahead of us.”
One thing some employees from Bungie do feel is different about their situation, is that there is an attempt to fix these issues. Whether those attempts are successful or not remains to be seen. Read the full IGN report here
