Pokémon Go creator Niantic accused of ‘systemic sexual bias’ in lawsuit
By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.
A former Niantic employee filed a lawsuit against the AR gaming company on Friday, alleging that it devalued the work of female employees and women of color, denied equal pay to women employees and women of color. The lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, accuses Niantic of creating a “boys club.” The employee was laid off as part of last week’s job cuts at the company, which affected about 230 staffers.
The employee, who is an anonymous Jane Doe but is described in the complaint as an Asian female, started work at Niantic in February 2020 with a salary of $70,000, the complaint says. Later that year, she was promoted and received a raise to about $84,000, but in “approximately” 2021, she learned that Niantic was paying a male colleague more money even though she had a higher job title and more responsibilities than he did.
In 2022, he was allegedly paid $127,000 per year, but she was paid $105,000 per year despite being one job level higher. In or around spring 2023, she received a raise to $115,000 per year, still below her male colleague.
She learned she was being paid more than $10,000 under her job’s pay range
Around that same time, the employee also saw that Niantic posted the pay range for her job title and level — as of 2023, California employers with more than 15 staffers have to share pay ranges in job listings because of a pay transparency law — and saw that she was being paid more than $10,000 less than the bottom end of that range.
The employee discussed her concerns with other female staffers, and sexism and equal pay were brought up
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