Following the news of a lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing against Activision Blizzard for the harassment and discrimination practices conducted by some of its employees, former partner Bungie took to Twitter to speak against these practices and explain the company's efforts to combat them.
Bungie is built on empowering our people no matter who they are, where they are from, or how they identify.
We have a responsibility to acknowledge, reflect, and do what we can to push back on a persistent culture of harassment, abuse, and inequality that exists in our industry.
It's our responsibility to ensure this type of behavior is not tolerated at Bungie at any level, and that we never excuse it or sweep it under the rug.
While the accounts in this week’s news are difficult to read, we hope they will lead to justice, awareness, and accountability.
We have a zero-tolerance policy at Bungie for environments that support this toxic culture, and we are committed to rooting them out to defend those who are at risk.
Women, POC, and underrepresented communities have nothing to gain by reliving their trauma. We believe them when they come forward with reports of abuse or harassment.
We don’t pretend that Bungie is perfect and that no one has experienced harassment while working here, but we will not tolerate it and will confront it head-on. And we will continue to do the work every day to be better.
Our goal is to continue to improve the experience for everyone working at Bungie and do our part to make the gaming industry as a whole to be more welcoming and inclusive.
As you might recall, Activision Blizzard served as Bungie's publisher for the Destiny franchise for nine years. That partnership ended in early 2019 when Bungie took back the publishing rights and went fully independent once again.
In addition to continued Destiny 2 updates and expansions (the next major one, The Witch Queen, will be unveiled on August 24th), the studio headquartered in Bellevue, Washington is also working on a new IP funded by NetEase and scheduled to launch before 2025.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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