Bungie workers speak out against workplace collisions and toxicity
A few months ago, Bungie tweeted a response to what followed the break Activision Blizzard scandal. It appears to be separate from Activision – a company it spun off recently – and supports Bungie’s zero-tolerance policy towards a toxic work culture.
“We don’t pretend that Bungie is perfect and that no one has ever been harassed while working here”, Bungie Written, “but we will be zero-sum and will confront it head-on. And we will continue to work every day to get better.”
Now, thanks to a report from IGN, we’re finding out how far Bungie has come and it still needs to go further. In conversations with 26 former employees, IGN revealed a history of sexism, flirting and a “boys club culture”, as well as a human resources department that seems to only protect abusers. use rather than prevent them.
Much of the reporting focuses on Bungie’s narrative team working on its pivotal game, Destiny, and how a host of team leaders abuse, racist and homophobic. One even threw a chair out the window. Turnover was rampant, and 60- to 100-hour work weeks were the norm. These were Bungie’s days at Activision, and just like today, it seems company leaders have made it difficult to hire anyone other than contract workers to ease the burden on an overworked team. strength.
In addition to the confusion, the narrative team also had trouble convincing the bosses to create more encompassing stories in Destiny. Team leaders often try to remove references to homosexuality for fear of being excluded from foreign markets or rewriting female characters according to harmful stereotypes.
Requests to Human Resources against overbearing and abusive team leaders were ignored. Only after every non-male member of the team threatened to quit did the Bungie leadership finally step in to get rid of those leaders and start over.
A recurring theme of the report is that HR is unwilling to listen to complaints, and even abusers are protected. Many former employees said they had to increase their medication, therapy, or both while working at Bungie. Some have even reported suicidal thoughts.
However, unlike some companies seem reluctant to change their ways, Bungie at least seems to have been different. Many of the stories recounted in the report ended with the manager eventually being fired – too late to prevent harm but still terminated. Bungie has been quietly cleaning the house over the past few years, removing the toughest elements of the old guard and starting Employee Resource Groups like Black in Bungie, Women in Bungie, Transition in Bungie and Accessibility in Bungie. A Diversity & Inclusion director was hired just this year, and According to CEO Pete ParsonsBungie’s workforce diversity has never been better.
However, as many people who spoke to IGN noted, most of those bad actors will simply move on to new jobs at different companies, where they will continue to act bad. Although Bungie ended the mandatory arbitration clause in September, a non-discrimination agreement still prevented the sacked leaders from being named.
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https://www.thegamer.com/bungie-crunch-toxic-workplace/ Bungie workers speak out against workplace collisions and toxicity