As Bungie celebrates its 30th anniversary this week, a new report depicts an unpleasant portrait of the company’s internal work culture and details Bungie’s recent internal efforts to reform itself.
Fighting for Bangui’s soul was published in the media on Friday morning by Rebecca Valentine, a long-time Olympic reporter. It contains the accounts of 26 current and former employees in Bellevue, Washington – headquartered in Bungie to discuss the obvious systemic problems they encounter in the company.
It is reported that these include toxic leaders, forced overtime (known as “austerity culture” in the game industry), poor communication, naked gender discrimination, and a human resources department that actively protects bad actors, especially long-term members of the company.
In response to the ign article, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons was at bungie.com on Friday afternoon Net. The letter begins with an apology to current and former employees who “have experienced any unsafe, fair and professional working environment in Bungie”, and then details the steps recently taken by Bungie to solve the problems raised in ign article.
This includes better planning the release dates of major destination 2 extensions (such as shadowkeep and beyond light) to allow developers to work at a reasonable speed without forced overtime; Reform of the internal Bangui diversity Committee; Hire more women and people from underrepresented communities. Parsons previously wrote a news article in September to disclose and discuss Bangui’s continuous efforts in diversity and inclusiveness.
Bungie is the latest video game developer to come under attack for systemic problems in its internal culture. In the past few years, similar allegations have been made against many studios and personnel in the game industry, such as Ubisoft software (distant legend, assassin creed), Paradox Interactive (StarCraft, Crusader king), riot games (legendary alliance), quantitative dream (Detroit: becoming human), Fullbright (home, Tacoma), and lab zero games (indivisible).
The most common allegations include harassment, salary discrimination, the “old boy club” culture in which long-term employees of the company can enjoy impunity, and stories of misconduct in the workplace.
This issue has surfaced since 2018, but the situation changed when California filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, the combined development studio of call of duty and world of Warcraft, in July.
The California Department of fair employment and housing conducted a two-year investigation into Activision Blizzard and then filed a lawsuit. The lawsuit said that Activision and blizzard had cultivated a “universal” Brotherhood boy “workplace culture, and female employees were” continuously sexually harassed ”
The charges at Bungie’s house are obviously much milder than the vortex of dysfunction caused by Blizzard, which is not a high standard. The main difference seems to be that when Bungie’s problems were made public, Bungie had made a series of positive attempts for several months to solve these problems.
Although Bungie seems to be in the worst state during the production of primitive destiny, the respondents in the ign article feel that Bungie’s workplace culture is slowly improving. Measures taken include the use of city hall meetings to raise anonymous questions to the company’s leadership; Adopt agile development; Diversity and inclusiveness; And deliberately avoid problems that may lead to crisis.
Parsons wrote in his article: “we have not become the studio we have the potential to become, but we are moving forward.”. “We will not stop or slow down these efforts because we recognize that an inclusive, diverse and equitable journey is in itself the goal we all strive to pursue. It is important to realize our vision and the potential of a welcoming and equitable home of creative and technological excellence.”
Bungie is probably best known for the studio that originally produced the halo series, which is often regarded as the hero of putting Xbox on the map. Bungie was founded in 1991 and acquired by Microsoft in 2000. In 2001, it launched halo: combat as the release name of Xbox. It became independent in 2007. After the release of Halo: reach in 2010, it stopped developing halo games.
Its current project is destiny 2, a large multiplayer online shooting game. Bungie began to release itself as early as 2019. This is clearly a profitable move for Bungie, who announced a major expansion plan, including a new headquarters in Bellevue, Washington., Earlier this year.
Independent population trackers estimate that 38 million players log in to destiny 2 every month. Its next major expansion, the witch queen, is scheduled to launch in February, and a new trailer will debut at the 2021 game awards.