A Look at Toxic Culture in the Videogame Industry
Earlier this week I wrote about my first impressions with the PS5. It could, quite fairly, be read as a rather glowing review of Sony’s latest machine. And then, the day after I posted it I read about the following news.
In November last year, a former employee at the Sony Interactive Entertainment headquarters in California filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the company, alleging that she was wrongly terminated because she is a woman and that this is just one example of Sony’s misogynistic workplace culture.
Last month, Sony claimed the lawsuit “fails to identify a single policy, practice or procedure at [PlayStation] that allegedly formed the basis of any widespread intentional discrimination or had a discriminatory impact on women.”
In response, just last week, the testimonies of eight more women were added to the lawsuit, detailing “a range of behaviors across multiple U.S.-based PlayStation offices, including demeaning comments, unwelcome advances, a lack of attention paid to their work or ideas and, most frequently, a sense that it was harder for women to be promoted in the company.”
The last quote is from this Axios article by Stephen Totilo, if you want a few more details. (There is also a more recent update, but only to report on Sony’s acknowledgement of the new claims.)
First up, let’s put this in context.
2021 was an important year for the games industry. Ubisoft (Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs) and Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Diablo) found themselves embroiled in scandals over sexual harassment and gender discrimination.
But let’s zoom out even further.
Last year’s scandals (and, indeed, Sony’s current lawsuit) are far from anomalous. Another huge games company, Insomniac (Rachet & Clank, Spiderman 2018), faced similar accusations in 2020. In 2018, Riot Games (League of Legends) received the first of two lawsuits that resulted in a $100million settlement just last year. These examples are indicative of widespread issues across the industry. Many times, when scandals like these break, it isn’t exactly new information, but instead a case of journalists finally getting corroboration. If people speak out, they do so at serious risk of losing their jobs or even their careers.
Gender discrimination and sexual harassment, as well as discrimination against people of colour and queer people, are rampant in what was described during the 2018 lawsuit against Riot Games as the industry’s ‘bro culture’. This culture is present not just at these AAA studios but also at smaller independent developers. Scandals broke last year about Scavengers Studios and Fullbright, and I would not be surprised if there were more that I missed. It is hard to overstate quite how bad the situation can be. Many testimonies are shocking to read, so much so that I don’t wish to repeat details here without a trigger warning. There are plenty of sources to find that information, including this Jimquisition video.
This abusive culture, sadly, also permeates the players. Of course, I am not saying that gamers have systemic toxicity in the same way companies do – gamers, after all, are not organised along comparable structures. However, if you know anything about the ad hoc hate campaign ‘Gamergate‘ you will have an idea of the hostility that can be tapped into in gamer culture. Even without using such an abhorrent example, it is perhaps enough to know that the last person I asked about online gaming expressed their disinterest because of the high likelihood harassment. And then there’s the live-streaming gaming industry, which has its own awful stories of harassment and abuse. There is certainly an interesting relationship between toxic gamer culture and toxic games workplace culture, presumably converging over certain types of videogame experiences, but that would be another story.
2021 was an important year for the games industry, but not all the news was bad. Indeed, the very fact that so many accusations are coming to light represents the beginnings of a shift towards accountability. There have been big steps towards unionisation within the industry, which is quite possibly the only viable next step towards change. Previously, most workers’ rights activism for gaming came from the independent group Game Workers Unite (IWGB Game Workers in the UK) but in 2021 (thanks in part to GWU co-founder Emma Kinema), Vodeo Games became the first union in the US videogame industry. The only other previously formed unions that I could find in the world are Nexon in Korea (2018), and Paradox Interactive’s Sweden HQ (not applicable to their many overseas studios; 2020). In January of this year, Raven Software, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, one of the biggest developers in the world, formed a union, Game Workers Alliance, but their parent company has thus far refused to recognise GWA. More on GWA here. More on GWU here. More on unionisation in games in 2021 here.
That’s the context.
Sony Interactive Entertainment is the latest company being taken to task for its harmful practices. We probably have to wait a month, until after the mid-April hearing, before any more news emerges, but it is not unreasonable to speculate that Sony will continue to dismiss the accusations and that more testimonies will emerge until they cannot deny the obvious.
Is there anything we can do about this situation?
Kotaku ran a piece by Ethan Gach last year about the idea of boycotting Activision Blizzard. The question is really about whether you draw a hard line and refuse to give the company your money, or whether you think playing the games is more respectful to the hard work (in bad conditions) put in by the developers. Can you boycott the company without also effectively boycotting the workers? If you consider this question in a different context, for an industry that is not artistic, the answer may seem obvious because other workers might have less personal investment in their means of production. A better comparison might be the movie industry.
Total Film this month has a piece on’ cancel culture’ by Kevin Harley that includes an example of the most typical response. Accusations of sexual violence against Armie Hammer emerged after Death on the Nile finished production. Director Kenneth Branagh is quoted as having said, “It’s a very entertaining movie, with a lot of people’s work wrapped up in it.” Edgar Wright gave a similar response after Kevin Spacey, star of Wright’s Baby Driver, was accused of sexual harassment and abuse: “I don’t want to appear insensitive in any way, but I really have to celebrate the incredible work of my cast and crew. I would be nothing without them and I don’t want them to be tarnished by the private actions of one person.” It is possible however, to draw more of a hard line and Harley’s Total Film article includes an example of an alternative response. Ridley Scott re-shot All The Money to remove Kevin Spacey. Scott is quote as saying, “You can’t tolerate any kind of behaviour like that. And we cannot we cannot let one person’s actions affect the good work of all these other people. It’s that simple.” Aside from the obvious gulf of opportunity – Scott was able to re-shoot, Branagh and Wright were probably not – it’s this second response that I find most compelling. Both responses centre the creative work by the innocent parties, but the first ignores the toxicity while the second removes it.
Does boycotting PlayStation help remove Sony’s toxic culture? Am I even prepared to do that anyway? Am I going to cold shoulder the £500 sci-fi tombstone that I just bought?
If I consider my position, two things strike me. The first is that I am not remotely close to boycotting Sony. I think it would be reasonable to call that a shortcoming of mine – my reasoning, at the end of the day, is mostly selfish. The second thing is that I wrote a ‘glowing review’ of the PlayStation 5 this week.
Making this my second blog post was an obvious decision. I think that one of the most important things we can do is make talking about accountability central to gaming. It is the same in every area of social life: whenever people are involved, we must consider how they are treated.
Horizon: Forbidden West came out two weeks ago today and features one of the only contemporary female protagonists in gaming, Aloy. Two days before its release, Sony published this video, a roundtable discussion with four female athletes, hoping to associate some of their badassery with Aloy. The speakers talk divertingly about their own lives and practices and the host tries clumsily to relate the real life stories to Aloy’s. Playing the opening hours of Forbidden West, Aloy actually behaves quite contrary to the inspirational discussion and the attempts to position her as a role model get increasingly desperate. But there is a much darker side to this cringeworthy marketing.
When Guerilla Games first started development on the original Horizon, Sony was unconvinced that a female protagonist would sell. Cut to now, and we see the same company sitting in front of a lawsuit and growing complaints. No amount of retroactively endorsing an iconic female character can wash away the writing on the wall.
It is hard to live in a time when mainstream culture is coming to terms with accountability, as part of a generation that has taken accountability very much to heart, in a world that is still mostly largely under the thumb of capitalism. It is hard to do this when one of my main passions is artistic media produced by a large scale industry.
I may love the PS5. I may love Horizon and Aloy. It is crucial, however, to remind myself that these products come from a company that I cannot love. Probably, it being a company, motivated by profit, it is not an entity I can ever love, but at the very least Sony needs to fix up and do right by the employees who have faced discrimination. It needs to remove any toxicity from its culture. It needs to do better.
Ben Jackson 
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