From the #MeToo movement to unionization: how certain voices allowed the video game industry to start a transformation
In recent years, the video game industry has been won by its equivalent to the #MeToo movement. The first waves had stirred it already in 2019, but it was in June 2020 that the movement really became a magnitude, with the testimonies collected, anonymized and relayed by the narrative designer Meghna Jayanth. Cases of rape, assault or sexual harassment are denounced in several video game studios, including Ubisoft , a giant of the market, whose "toxic system" is very often quoted. The scandals are relayed by the specialized press, but also by the general press. The similarity of the denounced cases suggests a more systemic dynamic than simple isolated facts, and thus gradually take shape the contours of inhospitable corporate cultures towards women and minorities. Several testimonies in press articles compare with a culture of Fraternities of US campus ("frat boys’ Culture "in English). It is this systemic dimension that Marius Chapuis describes at the end of his article in libération, one of the first articles on the subject in the French -speaking world in June 2020:
This wave #MeToo emerging in video games is not only a reflection of a social evil that affects all sectors. It testifies to the very culture of an industry where sexism is deeply rooted, and which has the greatest difficulty in doing its self -criticism (Chapuis, 2020)
However, as much in the industry as in the public, no one is really surprised. In 2014, the "Gamergate" - "un debate on journalistic ethics [which] S was transformed into a harassment campaign against women and progressives of all stripes who came to corrupt this good men's (white and hetero) things that was supposed to be the video game, according to a large fringe of players whose links we then discovered with the emerging American alt-right "(Chapuis, 2020)-had already brushed the table of" toxicity "which could reign in the middle, both among the players and players and among some members of the industry, who supported this movement.
What surprises is that under the cover of "cool" corporate cultures that take the form of "boys" club, abusers' protection systems are at work in the very structures of the studios.
It there are men of power who allow themselves everything and who must be dismissed from the company because they harm women. And there is a global system around them which endorses these behaviors and protects them by preventing any recourse. A system that makes it helpless because anyway, video games are fun, we laugh, we can do everything, say everything, because nothing is serious (cario & chapuis citing a testimony, 2020)
The Human Resources Wall
In the case of Ubisoft as for other studios, the Human Resources Department is cited as playing a central role in the protection of abusers.
It's human resources to do the dirty work, Alice says. They work under constraints, with the aim of retaining talents. It is absolutely not that they leave, it is necessary to treat this image of "Great Place to Work" [a label after which the HR runs, note], to retain people. So when cases of sexual or moral harassment arise, there is an omerta. We sacrifice the little ones. We protect the big positions, even if it means moving the most toxic cases. HR ironed babies and take advantage of the fact that Aubisoft is made up of different companies. (Cario & Chapuis citing a testimony, 2020)
The reason behind this "HR Wall": creatives called "talents" seen as "Au Coeur de the creation of value of the video game industry", in the words of the CEO of Ubisoft Yves Guillemot In a financial report, and that should be kept at all costs.
Added to this is a distrust of unions in industry that has only one handful. A testimony in the article by Cario & Chapuis teaches us as well as the prospect of a unionization of its employees scares Ubisoft, and that we make them understand to these in works council that "sis someone Syndiquité, it would be resolved with the lawyers ”(Cario & Chapuis citing a testimony, 2020).
The Activision-Blizzard wave
A year after this #MeToo wave in the video game industry and the Ubisoft scandal, a new wave is formed following a complaint filed by the california Department of Fair Employment and Housing against Activision Blizzard , another giant of the giant Video games with several studios, for cases of violation of the california fair employment and housing act and california equal pay act. The 29 -page document depicts, after investigation, a work culture qualified as "Frat Boy Culture" with a wage disparity men/women and several cases of sexual harassment, including one having pushed an employee to suicide during a business trip. Again, human resources are at the heart of the debate, these being seen as on the side of the abusers: the affected employees being, according to a testimony, " discouraged to complain since the human resources was known to be to be Close to the alleged harassors ”. In an open letter in reaction to these new revelations, five hundred employees and employees still in office or not of Ubisoft have expressed their support for the workers concerned and criticize the insufficiency of the measures implemented in their own business since scandals of the previous summer. The Californian DFEH also seized the judge concerning Riot Games who, in a similar case, had a confidentiality clause signed for his employees and employees deemed illegal. In Singapore, tartitite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices aims at the local antenna of Ubisoft for other facts of discrimination and sexual harassment.
All these events highlight "toxic systems" that seem to be the norm in industry to the point of being a component of the corporate cultures of many studios, and in particular market giants. That said, the smallest studios are not foreign there either. Meghna Jayanth reacted on Twitter in August 2021 to other revelations on "toxic culture" concerning this time Fullbright, an independent studio: "It are the self-employed, it is the triple-a. It's all the damn video game industry. ". The presence of such a toxic culture in the world of video games, even in schools, can be explained by its "demography" and its history. In its survey on video game schools, the newspaper libération notes three constituent elements of this toxic culture: the institutionalization of survail (called "crunch"), ambient sexism, and a lack of professionalism.
Union advent
So what to do in a deleterious production context? As for Activision Blizzard, workers have judged that the solution should be collectively. They and they thus created the collective Abetterabk which organized protest marches and quickly evoking the possibility of syndicating, in other words to train in an institutionalized group to defend the interests of workers. This collective has made it possible to expand the demands of employees and employees of Activision Blizzard and to be joined by other struggles, in particular those concerning the working conditions of the testers. This is how game workers Alliance, the first union in a listed video game company, and only the second union of the video game industry in the United States.
This created an impetus in the video game industry. According to the #MeToo waves, it would seem that a wave of unionization, still small, travels the sector. After Vodeo Games and Raven Software, it is the turn of testers working on dragon Age IV in a group mandated by Bioware to reveal their intention to train as a union. Discontent is also heard at Nintendo of America where an employee recently raised the question of unionization during a meeting a few days before being dismissed, supposedly for violation of a non-divulgation contract. Workers are often faced with an unconted distrust of their employers towards the unions. They then engage agencies with clearly anti-union practices such as the Aston Carter agency for Nintendo of America or the Cabinet Reed Smith for Activision Blizzard. These practices consist for example in "_du Gaslighting, manipulation, and the creation of voluntarily stressful work environments to demoralize the supporters of a unionization" (Polygon, 2022).
But the transformation is started, encouraged by the reactions to the various scandals which recently crossed the industry, but also by the Pandemic of Covid-19 which has brought new claims concerning telework. Thanks to the people who dared to denounce what was going on at the heart of the video game factory, and the unshakable activism that followed, the lines begin to move. The waters of the video game industry continue to wave and sometimes a new wave. That of unionism may be amplified to set up on the wall in the face of different forms of exploitation.
It will then be useful to remember how the voices of women, minorities, discredited workers, made the swamp an ocean.
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