Sony Hits Back Hard at Bungie Lead's $200 Million Lawsuit

@Ultimapunch I'm missing the context for your comment.

Oh this should be fun.🙄

@Northern_munkey I mean generally I think Japanese devs seem to make better games. But more pertinent to this article, I don't hear a lot about how the people running Japanese studios are super awful people. I do seem to hear it not infrequently with western devs though.

@Northern_munkey I think that might be over-simplifying the power dynamic - especially if they were direct reports to him. Edit - reading the articles more, this person wasn't a direct report however.

Of course there's the salacious nature of the story (which I think people don't need) - but in terms of gamers, it goes more to the corporate health of Sony... and whether they end up taking another big L for the Bungie acquisition (they really can't afford too many mistakes at this point IMO). Edit - and yes, as other people have said, it's good for us to understand - and stand with - the people making the games we love.

Jeez, those texts... 🤢

@Ultimapunch you don't hear it because Japanese people live in a society that is designed to not talk about it. It's pretty simple.

@Northern_munkey the option was to report him so he was fired for inappropriate behavior in the working place and it happened. You expected for the victims to just keep quiet about it? lol.

@Ultimapunch Yet Kingdom Come 2 is one of the best games this Gen.

@Ultimapunch implying Japanese people don't have really creepy aspects of masculinity and patriarchy in their society just shows me you are ignorant to what goes on in Japan

@Northern_munkey blocking your boss doesn't work on bosses worth blocking- you're gonna get punished somehow . They have the power...

@zhoont Weebs usually are, they think Japan is like how Anime depicts it.

@Ultimapunch I can’t speak for the current day but it’s quite well known how awful the working environment was in the past at Konami and various other Japanese developers between the 80s and early 2000s. That doesn’t mean it stopped, it just means people have had the freedom to talk about it in the years since.

This is why HR exists and this guy was fired. Let's not go down the path of "how could they let this happen?". Well, it only got so far, it was reported, and he was fired.

@DennisReynolds how anime depicts it? Isn’t that just as creepy if not more so than these texts 🤣

Those texts alone indicate some creepy conduct, I can’t imagine what else the dude sent. I feel like these being shared in this manner is an attempt to get him to drop the suit, but if he wants to go ahead and ends up buried that’s his loss.

@Ultimapunch aaahh got you..I see your point.

@GymratAmarillo missing my point entirely..block your boss so he/she/them can't contact you and report them at work via the appropriate channels..its that easy really.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare the whole procedure of dealing with malcontents is as easy as you wish to make it for yourself. Personally seeing as this hasn't been resolved as of yet I think it's unprofessional and inappropriate of Sony to be publishing anything that pertains to this until its been settled. Even though the guy appears to be a bit of a wrong 'un this is pure character assassination on sonys behalf and makes the whole thing look like a very,very expensive game of tit for tat. I feel sorry for the victims caught in the crossfire to be perfectly honest.

@GymratAmarillo incidently where did I say I expected them to keep quiet about it?

@Lowdefal That's fair

@Ultimapunch Japanese loves western games like Ghost of Tsushima and Minecraft over Japanese games like Balan Wonderworld and Left Alive. They have open mind that their games not always good.

@Northern_munkey maybe I missed the point you had in your head but what you wrote can be easily interpreted as victims should just ignore abuse against them and keep working.
You also ended with a little "this doesn't affect us gamers". Well I'm not so sure I'm a gamer because I do care about the people who make the games I like. This is the aftermath of the situation.

That also answers your second mention.

@Northern_munkey they didn't publish it - its part of the court documents. Now, of course, they could also have anticipated news outlets publishing the court documents.

Edit - also... Barrett is the one who is sueing Sony for 200M... Sony just fired him for what they believed was inappropriate behaviour. I'm not sure that Sony is the perpertrator - or certainly, they are not the ones that creating a court case that will specifically target Barrett's character - Barrett is (we'll see how it all lands in court). I also think perhaps calling him "perhaps a wrong'un" makes the issues relating how professionals interact seem a little trite. Whether he should be fired or not - is different to if this was acceptable behaviour from the lead of Bungie.

Unless they got anything more damning, the characterisation “VICTIM 3” is pushing it.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare I find it odd that any information is made publicly during an ongoing case. Its not how HR works here in the UK. In any investigation involving employees you are told that there is to be no discussion with anybody involved at all. That includes outside of work too and not just the people directly involved...anybody you work with. Not sure how it works in oz or anywhere else but that's how it is here. Certainly where I work anyway.

I still can't believe Sony bought and overpaid for this dumpster fire of a studio which also included all their baggage. I hope Sony wins their case and maybe they can sell this worthless studio to Microsoft or Tencent.

@GymratAmarillo I'm sorry I didn't make myself clearer. If this is affecting you as a gamer then I'm sorry to hear that. My sympathies fall with the victims who probably didn't want to be in the media spotlight but are now.

He should just pivot to become a culture war personality and suck up to Musk, then he’s essentially untouchable because if he loses the case it’s the ‘deep state’.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare @GymratAmarillo I just want to say before I toddle off to work for the day that I'm not arguing with you guys and I've enjoyed this early morning discussion and I also acknowledge your opinions even if I don't fully agree with them but they are your opinions and I respect those. Sometimes I don't think we as gamers conversing discuss things enough to understand the others points but I would like to think we managed in the end..

@Northern_munkey I think that this relates to it being a civil action - and once again, it's likely to be related to Barrett's original suit/claim relating to his deparature not relating to his character. I'm not that familiar with the US legal system, but my understanding is that it's pretty open (in general). Also, I think that it's likely to be contestable whether certain documents need to be redacted (clearly some identifying elements were redacted).

I just think no one should get hung up on proclaiming him guilty - however, I just think we need to not minimise impact and seriousness about allegations.

Wanting to flirt or Flirting with someone whos in a relationship is a no go. I hope He gets nothing aside from ridicule from this

Never heard of this Barret guy before but based on the text messages he's VERY creepy. Sony's 100% in the right here.

By those text messages? Yeah this lawsuit is getting shut down.

@Northern_munkey you’re one of those nothing people that doesn’t know anything about the law but will pretend and lie that you do.

Best not to post anything when you obviously don’t know anything pertinent

@Ultimapunch You would never see a complaint like this from a Japanese Studio because women in Japan are trained to take this kind of harassment and never complain by their oppressive patriarchal culture. Also, pretty much every studio in Japan forces all employees to sign NDAs that makes it illegal to talk about anything within the work culture.

So, only anonymous reports exist and mostly Japanese studios are still the worst in the world for crunch culture(in Japan it's considered very rude to leave the office before your boss) and the average wage is about 50% of a US/UK dev. A Japanese new graduate at a big developer(Capcom, From, bandai namco etc) actually makes less than the UK minimum wage, so less than someone working in macdonalds.

@Northern_munkey Sony didn't publish it themselves, it's a legal filing that has been found on a website that logs these filings

I hope Sony win simply because I don’t want them to take a big financial hit that might impact the amount or quality of games they make, but I’d need more evidence than is shown in this article. Maybe I’ll read around elsewhere. But those types of messages from someone who is NOT your boss are not strong enough to get someone fired. At least not without clear indication from the “Victim” that they are unwanted. I’m not going to defend him until I see more as there could be genuinely horrendous messages, but the fact that this one was picked would indicate it’s the most controversial of the bunch, and it’s just not enough in my opinion.

@themightyant I'm not sure about wanting to fire him, because they specifically put those offers together to retain key staff and he was the director of Marathon.

Unless Marathon was going poorly and needed a rethink then it seems he was one of the staff they deemed important to them.

Is bungie the worst gaming acquisition ever? I bet Sony wish they didn’t touch it now, especially for the massive price they paid.

@thefourfoldroot1 So the context is that a very senior person in the company is directly communicating with junior staff to suggest sexual encounters, sharing sexual information, constantly hitting someone up, or insinuating that they should do something behind their partners back... what isn't a law-suit waiting to happen? How is that NOT a sackable offence? You cannot treat junior (any staff) like that. I'm not trying to say anything in this specific case (I don't know what happened with him specifically) - but you seem to be suggesting on principle that what was suggested (maybe read some of the links) isn't on it's face sackable. Maybe things are different in the UK... but you'd be on your bike in Australia.

He wasn't "their direct boss"... however... he ran the f'ing company as far as the workers would have felt. How is that NOT inappropriate. Why are there so many people lining up to make excuses for the guy (whether he was guilty or not, there's a lot of "well it's not like he..." about this. We don't know what he did, but if he DID do a lot of the stuff that's coming out, he should be held to account.

Edit - and yes - I very much appreciate the guilty-in-the-court-of -public-opinion doesn't equal guilty - so no one should say whether he (as an individual) is guilty.... but we can comment in general, if someone did that - it is entirely sackable. What do you need a person to do, in terms of putting pressure on someone to offer you sexual favours? Whether they did or not, isn't the point.

I think everyone deserves their day to defend themselves, but the generalisation that you can just go around doing that sort of thing to junior staff is not only unprofessional (at least in Australia) would be illegal. Once again - this isn't me saying he DID to that... just that if he DID the things that were being suggested (here and elsewhere), I don't think there's court in Australia (unless they were paid off) that wouldn't think that unacceptable.

And yes - people do stuff they regret, and know better than to do again - ALL the time. However, it seems he showed a patterm, and without any remorse or ownership of what he did. We can however thankfully leave it to the courts to decide... but we should note this IS a civil case, so other than money and reptuation, there's not a lot riding on it.

In that filing, for example, his lawyers state that “behavior that was known at Bungie included:

“A very senior Bungie executive texted Barrett and others sexually suggestive material, including lewd photographs, texts about his sex life (including graphic descriptions of particular sex acts), and texts concerning the appearance of women working for Bungie;

And

Bungie maintained an email channel that shared lewd and semi-pornographic content to the entire studio. Those images were occasionally shared on a projector at studio events;

I f**king love this level of stupidity. He's essentially saying "I didn't do the inappropriate things I was fired for allegedly doing, but if I did, everyone else was also doing it". Well which is it Chris? Bore off mate.

@themightyant true, I suppose it’ll be easier to answer my question when we see how well marathon and gummy bears does!

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare
I appreciate that, but I only had time to form an opinion on what we presented in this one article. I presumed it as the worst example of what he did (because media) and without knowing the dynamic of the relationship and relative seniority I wasn’t going to knee jerk a reaction.

Here is my guess. Sony knew they would have to pay a huge bonus to the developer so they hire a private investigator to dig up dirt on the said developer so they could fire him with cause and avoid the bonus that was due. Likely everything Sony did was legitimate, so they could make there case.

I wonder if the publishing of private documents has to do with Sony being a publicly traded company and investors needing to know what lawsuits pertain to. I honestly don't know, but am just split-balling.

No doubt the situation is more nuanced than any spectator party would be able to see at first blush. I've personally found that a lot of workplace misconduct could have been resolved if the victim confronted the accused directly. I understand that that isn't always possible and is much easier said than done, but there are a lot of situations where the victim's perceived power/status imbalance caused things to get way out of control, due to remaining silent and taking it, when they could have been more direct.

If this victim didn't report to the accused, than there may not have been a direct risk of retaliation. I also think that a lot of these accused are just socially naïve and really don't know where to draw the line, rather than being evil abusers. So much of popular culture tells us that persistence wins the lady and that "no" means "try harder."

If this happened to multiple employees, than there could definitely be a pattern of behavior and if Barrett was told to knock it off and just didn't comply, than this is a whole other can of worms.

We just don't know enough to come to any conclusions.

@chrisPatsox Oof. As a lawyer I think when people misunderstand the law you educate them. Not be dismissive and arrogant. The general public’s misunderstanding of the court system and application of the law is a huge issue.

@wildcat_kickz if you are referring to the text messages he put the “private documents” at issue by filing his complaint. Almost nothing would be private during the discovery process. It’s one of the first things a plaintiff’s attorney tells a new client (or should). Everything will come out.

Edit: I defended a client on a slip and fall and everyone found out about the plaintiffs STDs. My firm didn’t use that information because we arnt horrible.. but everything comes out. I’ve had large cases with 300,000 plus emails produced during discovery and you would not believe what people talk about in work emails 🤣

They got him, context or no. Massively creepy and unprofessional
He needs to just take the L. and retreat

@IamJT Yeah, that was part of my assumption, but wasn't sure if different rules apply to discovery when both parties are private. If the suit was between two private parties (i.e. neither being a publicly traded company), would discovery be publicly available or just available to the parties involved?

@wildcat_kickz generally it would be yes. During discovery everything that isn’t a privileged document can be used in court filings so that neither party is prejudiced. There are exceptions of course but texts like these definitely wouldn’t count.

@IamJT Makes sense. Thanks for the info!

Buying this garbage studio was one of the biggest mistakes Playstation ever made

Is there anyone normal amongst the execs, leads, etc. in the video game business?

Years ago I did an internship at a crappy video game dev (since acquired by ubisoft, lol) and both co-CEO were absolute nutjobs who regularly ruined the code because they thought they were competent. And at least one of them had affairs with female employees.

@Rodimusprime13 the greediest devs/company ever

I hope Sony has better than those example texts, otherwise they're gonna lose

@thefourfoldroot1 @Oz_Who_Dat_Dare
Its very hard, and I fail more often than I like, but I try not to comment or judge based on articles like these.

I always try to go down the route of 'innocent until proven guilty', and what we always lack in things like this is context.
eg was there a consenting relationship (even if ill-advised) and how far did that go; how did they usually speak to each other and what was the nature of 'victim3's messages which are not included; the "later in the conversation" also removes context.

On the face of it it does not look good - but that may be through lack of context.
I will add that I cant remember reading anything other than what has been presented in this article.

Too many peoples lives get wrecked by untrue accusations, but I will say it at least looks like Sony investigated the matter themselves at the time, as opposed to just going on accusations, due to them having copies of these messages.

@DogPark it's likely PushSquare posted the tamest of the messages. There's info in the suite that says this guy shared semi-pornographic images in group chats.

I work in an office of 8. Seven women, and me, the lone male. I'm the boss and I'd never dream of saying anything like even what PushSquare posted here. Even what's posted seems to overstep.

@Rhaoulos in my experience there's often a problem with a large portion of execs who like this believe they can do whatever they want because they have all the power for 8 plus hours a day it really goes to their heads.

This is clearly gross and straight up misconduct but how was it allowed to go on for so long victim 3 in this example but how many in total. I bet if any of these victims were to push back they would be fired or demoted.

Personally I got out of the rat race long ago nice been consulting for years now and the further away I get from office power dynamics the more I can see how abusive they are

@Rich33 so I think there is something a little simpler in all this... he was a person in an extremely power-imbalanced situation - within a company where he could exert that power. What a person does in their own time (as long as it's legal) is between them - however, once it falls within the sphere of a corporate environment, in general, there needs to be very strict guard-rails, because it CAN get abused so easily.

If you're in a position of power - don't look to f around with your own coprorate staff. That's a choice to try to pick up company staff, and it's generally a bad one. As for what's the line... that's always a hard one, but it's often about how the victims feel they have been treated - not whether he was too insensitive to think it was targetting and bullying staff to gratify him. So I don't actually jibe with the "context" thing... it sort of doesn't matter whether his advances were being reciprocated, because he could never know if that was because they felt threatened or pressured (whether they did or didn't). Edit - and it also doesn't allow us to understand whether victims were targeting him to seek advantage. It leaves the company very vulnerable.

The other thing I'd say, is the number of 'victims' would be bad enough if it was 3... there are more. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's all true, but it means people should be very careful about running the 'we should be careful not to ruin a persons' reputation...'. After all - he's the one taking the legal action against Sony, and I assume that this is going to bring in all the alleged victims into this court-case, whether they like it or not... and part of the legal case against Sony will likely be about destroying the reputation of the accusers (such is the way these court cases go).

It's true the guy could just be an a-hole, rather than a predator... but there seems to be enough of a whiff about this whole thing that we should be careful. Unfortunately, the industry is full of people that were and are definitely predators. As is many other industries to be fair.

@ChrisDeku @GymratAmarillo @Oz_Who_Dat_Dare in regards to my I'll conceived post yesterday I would like to apologise for my seemingly flippant and in some part ignorant attitude towards my handling of this topic. It was not my intent to deliberately try and marginalise the victims in this case or imply that Sony were deliberately trying to paint this miscreant in a salacious manner. I didn't think before replying properly and even though what I was trying to put across in my head appeared fine and straight forward it obviously did not come across that way. Again my sincerest apologies.

Lot of keyboards warriors here going off on tangents. Anyway, the ridiculous amount he's suing for makes me think he's wanting Sony to settle, which may happen just to avoid the publicity of the charges. But those out of context texts that were leaked are pretty.... *****, tbh. Not professional at all.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare
You raise some good points, as usual, and its true im looking at things in a very generalised sense (ie innocent
until proven guilty) and purely based on the info in this article.
3 victims, and if you have read further (I haven't) and there are more does sound highly suspicious to say the very least. Having only read the article, I also dont know if there is any prior history to consider, or what was being said to the other victims.

I also take the point as I said before that Sony do seem to have investigated the case at least on the face of it, and that he is sueing them so is inviting them to disclose the information to the legal system (which sounds pretty public in this case).

But I am also wary of the number of times recently I have read (im in the UK) about people being accused of various crimes, having their life ruined or severly damaged by the threat of jail / losing jobs etc / 'court of public opinion', only for a court etc to find them innocent.

I am also wary due to the number of times I have seen 2 people of (sometimes way) different seniority within a company, genuinely form a relationship - it may be ill advised due to the points you raise, but I have seen genuine examples.

At least if this gets to court (unlike a poster above, I doubt Sony will settle), the full extent of his behaviour will hopefully get exposed (no cheap pun intended).

Edit: For anyone thinking I approve of the behaviour he is accused of, I do not. Neither am I defending him. I just try to look at things from an 'innocent until proven guilty' point of view.

@Rich33 I get the whole innocent until proven guilty ... I'm just super wary about unintentionally becoming part of the passive complictness... we've seen so many 'celebrities' get away with so much, because people don't stand up (without a conviction). Once again, I don't think most of us know about the real specifics of this case, but also sometimes 'not guilty' doesn't necessarily mean guiltless. There's generally a good kernal of truth in all of these stories. (Sometimes) it's just the tip of the iceberg.

And sometimes it's also just corporate ass-covering.

Yeah, Sony is going to win this.

Greedy capatlist fighting greedy catalysts. Let's not forget immature, both of them.

@Northern_munkey I didn't see your original comment but good for you.

On topic - It's very clear there was scumbag behaviour going on here. No one in a position of power should be texting those kind of things to their subordinates.

@Lyrick7 not to defend the corporation but how is Sony being immature here? They fired a guy for what seems to be clear gross misconduct with female employees and responded to a lawsuit.

Would you have preferred Sony retain someone like this? Would that have been the “mature” thing to do?

Almost feel like some of these articles just are begging to cull the forum users.

@mountain_spider The only real important context is that he is a very senior employee. There is no reason he should be texting people from his job like this. Even if the full conversation absolved him it’s ridiculously unprofessional and inappropriate and could easily be cause for termination.

@mountain_spider From a liability analysis… no company should be as lax as you describe. Too many risks.

@nessisonett Right? Like I wonder if he will ever look in a space mirror and realize that he IS "the deep state." Guy's literally a supervillain. Fun times!