Former Marathon reboot director Chris Barrett has filed a lawsuit towards Bungie and Sony for “deliberately destroy[ing his] reputation by falsely, and publicly, insinuating they had ‘investigated’ Barrett and ‘found’ he had engaged in sexual misconduct,” and to keep away from paying him a $45 million fee.
Barrett was reportedly fired by Bungie earlier this yr following an inside investigation into inappropriate behaviour towards feminine colleagues. In court docket papers, Barrett’s legal professionals counsel his former employer “did not care that none of it was true; they had blatant motivations for their brazen scheme,” solely eager to “shift blame for and deflect consideration away from their large enterprise failures.
“And to achieve those corporate objectives, they were willing to sacrifice Barrett,” the papers asserted (thanks, VentureBeat).
“Barrett was by no means requested whether or not he had ever engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct, whether or not he ever despatched inappropriate sexual or pornographic supplies to a co-worker, or whether or not he ever retaliated towards a co-worker for rebuffing his advances or discriminated towards a feminine colleague on the premise of her intercourse.
“Barrett was not asked those questions because Barrett did not engage in, and has not been accused of, any such conduct,” the papers added.
Three weeks after the investigation, Barrett alleged he was let go through Microsoft Teams for gross misconduct.
“They then completed the Machiavellian trifecta by providing wildly misleading statements to Bloomberg designed to: (i) deflect blame for Sony’s poorly performing $3.6 Billion acquisition of Bungie and delays in video game production by casting shade on Barrett for his role on Marathon and (ii) shift blame for their own public #MeToo problems by falsely insinuating that the accusations of severe misconduct had been directed at Barrett, when they had not,” the lawsuit added.
“[Barrett] has been the subject of harassment and public ridicule, has lost friends and professional opportunities, and has seen relationships with family strained,” the papers defined. “His lifelong dream of launching his own video game company (once within reach for a respected designer of multiple legendary games) has been crushed.”