Sexual Harassment at Rocksteady; Company Accused of Lack of Reaction
The British studio Rocksteady, responsible, for example, for the Batman: Arkham series, has been accused by its employees of not acting in any way on a sexual abuse cases within the company.
The gamedev community has been showing its less flattering side recently. In July the heads of many respected Ubisoft employees rolled in connection with accusations of bullying. One of our newsmen explained the context of the situation in an extensive text referring to an article by journalist Jason Schreier.
As reported by The Guardian, the London-based studio Rocksteady is now facing similar charges. The case goes back to November 2018, when 10 out of 16 then employees of the company (there are 239 people employed in the company now) sent a letter to the management, in which they reported inappropriate behavior of men in in the form of "unwanted advances, leering at parts of a woman’s body, and inappropriate comments in the office", "discussing a woman in a derogatory or sexual manner with other colleagues", as well as "slurs regarding the transgendered community".
The situation was told behind the scenes (for The Guardian) by an anonymous Rocksteady employee who signed the aforementioned document. It turns out that the majority of the letter's senders no longer work for the company because they still had to face sexist remarks. The management did not react in any way to the official message of their subordinates (the exception was a one-hour seminar on sexual harassment). Nevertheless, Rockstead's ececutives insist that the letter from 2018 reached them and appropriate preventive measures were taken immediately.
The employee decided to summarize the following words:
'I think a good outcome [of publicizing the letter] is basically showing the games industry in general [that] no matter how big your company is, how much you promote it as supportive of diversity, if you keep putting your head in the sand you will eventually be outed.
I’d say 97%-98% of the developers there are incredible people, and it’s so unfair that this will land on them because a few people weren’t managed properly.'
Rocksteady is one of the UK's largest video game developers. Recently its new title, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, was announced. We will learn more about it during DC FanDome on August 23 at 12:00 PM PT.
