Sony Takes Bungie Toxic Workplace Culture Report 'Very Seriously'

gamerant.com:

This morning, Sony announced it is acquiring Halo creator and Destiny 2 developer Bungie for $3.6 billion. Many details about this specific deal have since released, including how future Bungie titles will remain multi-platform, how PlayStation wants to utilize Bungie’s live-service expertise, how this acquisition speeds up Bungie’s plans (likely for other titles alongside Destiny 2), new TV/film prospects for Bungie, and more.

Some also saw this news as a “response” to Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but as deals like these take time, there’s no real way that’s true. Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan said as much when he confirmed that the Bungie acquisition had been in the works for months. There is one important similarity though: just as many expect Microsoft to clean up Activision Blizzard’s workplace culture, there were questions raised about Bungie’s workplace culture too.

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Ryan, as well as Bungie CEO Peter Parsons, recently discussed last year’s IGN report about Bungie’s workplace culture in an interview with gamesindustry.biz. This report followed how a September announcement from Bungie which sought to establish and reveal several pro-worker company policies, like allowing anonymous HR reporting and ending forced arbitration. IGN spoke to 26 employees that work at Bungie within the last decade, going as far back as 2011 and as recently as 2021, that detailed Bungie’s toxic workplace culture.

Now, it should be stated that these changes are indeed positive, but that does not mean the experiences of these individuals should be neglected either. So, gamesindustry.biz raised the question of