Bungie fired its former Marathon recreation director after a number of allegations of misconduct by feminine workers, in response to a brand new report.
Earlier this 12 months former Valorant recreation director Joe Ziegler introduced that he had taken over as Marathon recreation director, amidst experiences that former recreation director Christopher Barrett had left the corporate.
A brand new Bloomberg report now claims that Barrett was fired by Bungie after being accused of inappropriate behaviour.
Barrett – who had beforehand labored as an artist, artwork director and recreation director on the Halo and Future video games – was assigned as recreation director on Marathon earlier than leaving the corporate in March, as per earlier experiences.
Nevertheless, Bloomberg’s sources now declare that the rationale for Barrett’s departure was a termination following an inner investigation, through which at the least eight feminine staff raised complaints that he had behaved inappropriately in direction of them.
In accordance with the report, Barrett was stated to have informed lower-level feminine staff they had been enticing, requested them to play Fact or Dare, and urged that he might assist them to advance their careers due to his wealth and energy within the studio.
In an announcement to Bloomberg, Barrett stated of his two and a half a long time at Bungie: “I really feel that I’ve at all times carried out myself with integrity and been respectful and supportive of my colleagues, lots of whom I contemplate my closest buddies.
“I by no means understood my communications to be undesirable and I’d have by no means thought they may probably have made anybody really feel uncomfortable. If anybody ever felt that means about their interplay with me, I’m actually sorry.”
Bungie’s mother or father firm Sony Interactive Leisure didn’t give a touch upon the particular case however stated it took “all complaints of misconduct very severely”.
Earlier this month, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier (the writer of in the present day’s new report) claimed the temper at Bungie relating to Marathon is “not nice”.
“There’s a motive that it was deliberate for this 12 months and slipped a complete 12 months, and those who I’ve talked to are just a little pessimistic about it even hitting its present deliberate deadline,” Schreier stated. “However we’ll see. I don’t know precisely when that’s, someday in 2025, I’m undecided.”
He added: “Yeah, the sentiment, I’ve heard, isn’t nice round it, at the least of some months in the past.”