If one thing can’t be denied, is that toxic workplaces suck: name calling, finger pointing and accusations are the order of the day at toxic companies, and so is having to work an inordinate number of hours to get that blasted project out of the door…
So is true for video game companies, with employees at Riot Games walking out earlier this year to protest poor working conditions, Rockstar game devs complaining of having to work too long on Red Dead Redemption 2, and other cases.
And earlier this year rumours emerged that French developer Quantic Dream also wasn’t a nice company to work for… Accusations of sexual harassment and racism were put forward, and also that a collection of pictures which portrayed Quantic Dream staff in less than flattering ways were doing the rounds in the office.
This led to a former employee taking Quantic Dream to court over images which portrayed her as a “Super Nanny” amongst other things. The employee in question was demanding a six-figure compensation for the aggravation, but now a French judge has ruled she’ll have to settle for much less.
According to a Gamasutra translation of the verdict (via GameSpot), the judge has ordered Quantic Dream to pay 7,000 euros (about 7,800 US dollars) to the disgruntled ex-employee, but did not choose to reclassify her firing from Quantic Dream as an “unfair dismissal” as she’d wanted…
Quantic Dream, meanwhile, has said it has no plans to appeal the judge’s decision, and said in its defence that the “images were created outside of regular office hours”, adding that “no complaints were made” about these in a Twitter statement.
The judge did not have nice words about the images showing the employee in particular though, saying these were “homophobic, misogynistic, racist, or deeply vulgar” and that they could not “be justified by the ‘humorous’ spirit prevailing in society”.
And since these images had supposedly been doing the rounds at Quantic Dream without the company lifting a finger to remove them from circulation, it seems fair that the French studio has been hit with the judge’s hammer over this one.
And if this leads to an improvement of working conditions over at Quantic Dream all the better too… Nonetheless, it would be a great thing if the French studio (which is behind releases like the top-notch adventure game Detroit: Become Human) kept making and releasing great games, especially now that it’s no longer a PlayStation-only outfit and has began publishing its games on other platforms like the PC too.
Read more: Detroit: Become Human is heading to PC this December