Although much of the spotlight these days is clearly pointing to Activision Blizzard, Today we confirmed that the situation at Bungie Studios is also far from good.. There have been recently complaints about toxic work culture in the company, and today the one who until now was the director of human resources of the company, Gayle d’Hondt, has resigned from her position, while confirming that it was also there have been cases of harassment in the company.
As we can read in The Verge, in the accusations from last week, in which several incidents were mentioned that pointed to the figure of the managers (at least part of them) of the company, supposed committees dedicated to diversity and inclusion that in reality in the best of cases did nothing (in worst acting against the people they allegedly represented) and in many cases of harassment of company employees, Bungie’s human resources department was also accused of having acted to protect employees accused of wrongdoing.
Gayle d’Hondt would have resigned from her position at Bungie via email, in which in addition to assuming her share of responsibility as head of human resources, also makes a surprising revelation, stating that she herself has also experienced «deeply challenging interpersonal conflicts” regarding “a man, an executive, and someone who thought he was a friend of mine at Bungie, which caused the studio itself to fire him«. In this case, at least, it appears the company acted appropriately, firing the stalker.
The problem is that he would not have done it on as many occasions, and that at least part of the managers would have been promoting a toxic culture and harassment in the company for some time, in addition to having led to cases of crunching, another of those attitudes that is becoming more and more evident that they are a constant in the video game industry. The problem, of course, is that in these circumstances, the departments that should be dedicated to preventing this from happening, in many cases act as accomplices, thus allowing those responsible for this type of action to act with impunity.
Every day it is more and more clear that there is an endemic problem in this sector. It’s something that seems to come from far behind, and that therefore it has become standardized in the industry. However, just because something is wildly common does not mean that it is normal, much less that it should be allowed and maintained. Now it’s Bungie, Activision Blizzard last year, Ubisoft last year… the time has come for this to change, and better if it is before public institutions have to act, as has happened in California.
However, seeing how Executives like Bobby Kotick stick to their jobs, even having been aware of what was happening in their companies, and even in some cases having allowed it. I am not comparing the case of Activision with that of Bungie, because at the moment we know much less about the latter, but what we have known so far does not look good at all. Hopefully, at least in this case, measures are taken to end this situation immediately.
