A whistleblower has reported alleged sexual harassment at Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising developer Cygames. According to a Japanese whistleblower site LeakPress, the company operates “an abusive working environment”.
It is claimed that when employees report cases of sexual harassment from a superior to HR, instead of taking disciplinary action against the superior, the employee who was harassed is redeployed to a different department.
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In one particular incident, the whistleblower was invited by her boss to check out a restaurant they would use for social gatherings and they eventually ended up eating and drinking. Eventually, he would invite her out where they would be alone together and eat and drink.
In one instance he told her how he “had recently been having an affair with a woman” around her age. On another occasion when he was drunk, he told her, “I can’t help but find you adorable”.
It escalated to texting her private information, including texting her personal line saying, “Yesterday was fun. I drank too much, so I’m going to skip today”.
Feeling uncomfortable, the employee reached out to the HR department and was suddenly transferred from the in-house tool development department to the game development department. According to the report, this is just one of many allegations of power and moral harassment at Cygames.
The accuser published a personal note that detailed more cases of power and moral harassment at Cygames and you can read the note here.
Cygames is a Japanese video game developer established by CyberAgent in 2011. The company develops games for mobile and consoles. In 2012, DeNa acquired a 24% stake in the studio while Nintendo acquired a 5% stake in 2018. CyberAgent holds a 69% stake in Cygames.
From crunch culture to outright sexual harassment, the working environment in many video game companies has continued to deteriorate. Sadly, it has gotten to the point where many normalize them. Companies should learn to do better!
