It seems like all is not well at Scavenger Studios. While the studio announced Season at The Game Awards 2020, a title lauded for its premise, beauty, and diversity, the culture of the studio was apparently not reflective of the ideals in the game. Nine current and former employees of Scavenger Studios were interviewed by gamesindustry.biz anonymously, and their accounts of their time in the studio were of a toxic work environment including alleged affairs, a "boy's club," and verbal and sexual harassment. Sadly, harassment appears to be a common issue in the gaming industry, with 1 in 4 Ubisoft employees seeing it in their workplace.
Scavenger Studio's co-founders, Creative Director Simon Darveau and his romantic partner CEO Amélie Lamarche, stand accused of fostering the toxic work environment employees had to deal with. Examples of events included the belittling and even groping of female employees, sexist remarks, and drunken behavior in the office. Darveau himself allegedly compared himself to a dog in heat, and unable to control himself when asked about his behavior.
Unfortunately for the victims, going to HR was not an option. Scavenger Studios is relatively small, with only 30 to 40 employees. Because of their size, there is no formal Human Resources department for complaints, with only one person serving as the go-to for issues. The problem with this is that the go-to person was romantically involved with one of the biggest offenders in the studio. It isn't hard to see why many of the sources said that this had an impact on the conflict resolution and their willingness to step forward with problems.
Only once were external investigations done and actions taken. Unfortunately, these actions seemed weak to the sources, since it only limited alcohol at company functions and disallowing Darveau to drink at all during them. A meeting to discuss harassment events was called at one point but was basically "just Lamarche reading government bullet points." Rocksteady has also been accused of failing to properly address harassment.
When asked directly about these allegations, the studio itself said that they "had some cleaning up to do." One of the biggest issues through these events was not only just that they were allowed to happen at all, but that leadership in the company did little to nothing to stop it. Scavenger Studios later went on to try and improve its culture, but the sources stated that most of the steps were unclear or unsatisfactory.
Unlike Ubisoft firing its Creative Director, Scavenger Studio took no such steps at the time of the events. The two designated employees who were hired to deal with complaints are no longer at the company, even though a recent policy update stated to take problems to those two, and Lamarche was the only person empowered to take action regarding HR disputes.
Game developers are no strangers to public harassment when their games don't live up to expectations. Just look at the threats and harassment sent to The Last of Us 2's director on Twitter. The in-house kind of issues though don't always see the light of day, but in the case of Scavenger Studios, it seems the dirty laundry isn't done coming out yet.
Source: gamesindustry.biz