Bungie is cracking down on toxic work environments, but there is still a long way to go


Bungie is also struggling with toxic work culture.

IGN spoke to 26 current and former Bungie employees about how the company’s work culture has evolved over the past few years. The resulting article shows the problems employees had and are struggling with. In many areas, this includes a toxic working atmosphere, characterized for example by crunch, discrimination and abuse of power. The company is now tackling the problems, but according to the statements made, there is still a long way to go before a really positive working atmosphere is achieved.

Toxic work culture

It’s all about this: In the last few months there have been an increasing number of reports of difficult to unsustainable working conditions at various companies in the games industry. Problems such as sexism, racism, abuse of power and crunch seem to be deeply anchored in the work culture. Destiny developer Bungie is no exception, reports show.

IGN has spoken to 26 current and former employees and draws all in one detailed article an extremely complex picture of everyday work in the company. Problems are being addressed, but the statements made indicate that it is a lengthy process.

These are the problems that are at stake

There was probably a particularly toxic working atmosphere in the team responsible for the story of Destiny 1 and Destiny 2, but there seem to have been – or still are – similar problems in most other areas. The following situations have been described:

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Leadership style: IGN exemplifies how ruthlessly several superiors may have treated their employees. One person regularly had uncontrolled outbursts of anger, up to and including a chair being thrown into a window. Women were systematically “ignored” and their qualifications and positions were assigned inappropriate tasks.

In one case, Bungie authors on Reddit were massively attacked and even threatened and instead of standing behind them, this was used against them by an executive.

Rock star culture: There was a “rock star” culture in the company, in which charismatic popular men in high positions got away with their wrongdoing – such as the aforementioned outbursts of anger, drunkenness at work or repeated racist and sexist statements – for a long time. And that even though, according to the company policy, something like this should not actually be tolerated. Dismissals were made far too late and mostly “quietly” without addressing the problems.

Suppression of diversity: Bungie struggled with diversity both at work and when writing stories. For example, Devrim’s queer relationship was initially canceled. The change in his dialogue, which only calls his partner “Marc” without giving context to a relationship, was inappropriately referred to as a “bug fix”. Trans people were also discriminated against in the company.

Crunch: Another big problem seems to have been massive overtime with up to 100-hour weeks. Sick employees also came to work. In one case, a person who was doing so badly that someone else had to do the typing for them.

A long way

The situation described mainly describes the last seven years, i.e. the era of Destiny 1 and 2. For about three years now, Bungie has been taking measures to counteract these problems: More action is being taken against toxic managers and there are various support groups, for example for Women and People of Color. A new working time model should also reduce crunch. In addition, CEO Pete Parsons admits the mistakes in a statement.

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So have all the problems been resolved? No. This is clearly shown by the statements made to IGN. The magazine puts it this way:

From our sources, there is a feeling that Bungie is well on the way to a truly safe, inclusive place to work, but that it is still a long way to get there.

Parsons also recognizes:

I’m proud of the progress we’ve made, but that is not enough and has taken too long. In addition, it doesn’t clear up the bad experiences people have had in our studio.

Also, one issue with the process Bungie is going through, according to IGN, is that many people would like to seek change but have not yet figured out how to do it. In addition, educational work often gets stuck with minorities. A source says:

People want to learn, but wouldn’t it be nice to be somewhere everyone already has [über Themen wie Diversität und Respekt] Know?

Current conclusion

How do employees and former employees rate the changes? There is no single answer to this question. While some respondents welcome the innovations and say that a lot has changed, some others feel left behind.

Ultimately, it can be summarized that it is right and important to recognize and address the mistakes of the past, but there is still a lot of work to be done for Bungie – and not just for Bungie, but for the entire industry.

We all love video games, and many who work on them are passionate about them. So we can only hope that the current attention ensures that games will in future also be produced under healthy working conditions and that in the future there will no longer be so many dark shadows over many of our favorite titles.

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Reference-www.gamepro.de