Insomniac Games respond to allegations of sexual harassment within studio

Insomniac Games, the developer behind Marvel’s Spider-Man and the Ratchet & Clank series, has issued a statement in response to allegations of sexual harassment against a trio of former and current members of the studio.

We are a workplace family that has actively promoted diversity, inclusion, representation and equality for our entire existence. We will continue to do so every single day. (2/2)

— Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) June 23, 2020

They wrote, “We were aware of the allegations made in a former employee’s tweets today and had taken numerous steps to address them. For legal and privacy reasons we will not respond to individual allegations about specific former employees. We are a workplace family that has actively promoted diversity, inclusion, representation and equality for our entire existence. We will continue to do so every single day. “

The statement comes following accusations made earlier this week that the company failed to act on the reports made by those affected by harassment in the workplace.

One claim posted on Twitter states that “I have a list in the double digits of women who were harmed by the actions of this company – some so much so that they declined to speak about it to me at all,” and that, “Insomniac has throttled careers of great women, left them no option but to ‘resign’ and protected sexual predators.”

She continues that there were “at least three” at the studios that she was aware of, of which one left, one was fired and one remains at the studio “despite there being a mountain of evidence to get rid of him.”

Other former employees of the studio have also stepped forward to support these claims, and should be concerning to Sony, who acquired the company in August 2019, and Insomniac to revisit the allegations and work to improve the manner in which they are handled.

This is just one case is a flood of allegations across the games industry in the last few days, as people speak out about abuse. A number of Twitch Partner streamers have been implicated, with the streaming platform issuing a statement that they are actively investigating the allegations, a number of game companies have distanced themselves from games writer Chris Avellone, and numerous Ubisoft employees have been accused, with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Game Director Ashraf Isamil stepping down after allegations of infidelity.

We endeavour to take these matters seriously at TSA and will be keeping an eye on all of these cases. We will not support those who abuse others and will always stand by those affected by the abuse and are considering how we handle our reporting of such allegations, and our interactions with those implicated by them.