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Bungie plans on doing better for its employees.
Bungie
A report from IGN published on Friday interviewed 26 current and former employees for Bungie, the developer of the Destiny series and the early Halo game. Not long after its publication, the Bungie CEO published his statement apologizing to his employees and saying the company will do better.
The group interviewed by IGN provided accounts of senior-level managers who abused employees, sexual discrimination and intense periods of game development referred to as crunch. Most of these claims were from years ago, and many of those responsible for the bad behavior have since been let go of from the company, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons said, adding the company has made strides in recent years to improve but there’s still more to do.
“I’m heartened by the progress we have made, but it is not enough, and it has taken too long,” Parsons said. “It also does not sweep away the bad experiences people have had at our studio. 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.”
The report detailed several instances of a toxic work environment. In one instance, leads of the narrative team for Destiny continued requiring last-minute revisions to the game’s story, causing longer periods of crunch time even though the company was making efforts to limit the amount of crunch that employees would face. Members of the narrative team asked for help from human resources and the CEO, but received no responses until multiple writers resigned or threatened to quit, which included every woman on the team. Bungie eventually fired the leads responsible for the situation.
Women interviewed cited examples of being ignored, and were questioned about their abilities to perform their jobs. There were also details of male employees harassing and getting into the personal space of women while also saying racist and sexist remarks.
Parsons says there have been strides made to increase the number of women and those in underrepresented groups among the company employees and leadership. He also said the Bungie Diversity Committee was reformed, and multiple employee-led inclusion clubs have been created.
Bungie’s former publishing partner, Activision Blizzard, has received a huge backlash in recent months following a California lawsuit claiming the company had a “frat boy culture” causing multiple allegations of harassment and discrimination. Company CEO Bobby Kotick came under fire in November when a report confirmed he was aware of these allegations for years.
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