Quantic Dream, the French studio that made Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy and is at present engaged on PlayStation unique Detroit: Become Human, has been accused of getting an abusive work atmosphere, in accordance with reviews within the French media. A joint investigation by Canard PC, Mediapart and Le Monde spoke to former workers who made accusations concerning the studio and its head honchos, David Cage and Guillaume de Fondaumière, each of whom deny the allegations.
The accusations vary from basic toxicity to racism to senior employees members making inappropriate remarks about feminine colleagues.
One of the foremost complaints issues the invention of a cache of photoshopped photographs through which pornographic photographs have been spliced with the faces of workers (you may see a semi-SFW pattern of those photographs on French web site Canard PC). Many of the photographs are accompanied by homophobic, racist or sexist textual content.
There are over 600 such photographs, a few of which date again so far as 2013. A proper criticism was made about these in early 2017, when an IT supervisor, who was a topic of one of many photographs, noticed certainly one of them in an electronic mail and found the remaining on a freely-available work server. However, bosses Cage and de Fondaumière say they hadn’t seen the “worst” of those photographs till that time. Although they admit that they had seen some which they stated “were funny or more or less amusing”.
This will not be the one criticism made by former workers. Cage is claimed to have overworked his employees, and made racist jokes in addition to inappropriate remarks about a number of the feminine actors starring within the studio’s video games, in accordance with Eurogamer, who’ve translated the French reviews. According to Eurogamer’s article, right here’s how one worker described working circumstances beneath Cage.
Cage can also be accused of a scarcity of consideration for feminine colleagues, and of constructing insistent soiled jokes, smutty remarks within the presence of his spouse, and inappropriate remarks about actresses in his video games.
“David Cage has a very particular viewpoint on how he runs his studio, which in his own words he sees as a private, or a semi-private, space,” stated one former worker. “He feels he has the right to say whatever he wants, it’s his place.”
Others have apparently witnessed homophobic or racist jokes. One incident concerned a housebreaking caught on CCTV. After watching, Cage allegedly requested an worker of Tunisian origin, “Is that a cousin of yours?”
Cage denied the allegations, calling them “ridiculous, absurd and grotesque” and saying they have been made by “ranting” former workers.
“You want to talk about homophobia?” he informed Le Monde. “I work with Ellen Page, who fights for LGBT rights. You want to talk about racism? I work with Jesse Williams, who fights for civil rights in the USA… Judge me by my work.”
Yesterday, Quantic Dream, which employs over 180 individuals, responded to the accusations with a tweetment.
“We categorically deny all of these allegations,” it says. “Inappropriate conduct or practices have no place at Quantic Dream. We have taken and always will take such grievences seriously.”
“We value every single person who works at Quantic Dream.”
Fifty workers left the studio within the years 2015-16, says Le Monde.
“Some employees, with medical certificate as proof, talk about burn out and depression…” says the paper. “One year and an half later, they don’t want to hear again about Quantic Dream.”
The public prosecutor’s workplace of Paris has opened a preliminary investigation into the corporate for harassment and discrimination, says Le Monde. The article’s writer additionally describes assembly Cage within the studio as a part of his investigation.
“In the meeting room, where Le Monde met him, David Cage swore twice that Quantic Dream ‘wasn’t a rugby changing room.’ Just behind him, on a board, was drawn a phallus whose testicles were dropping a fart.”
