Ex-Bungie dev Chris Barrett sues Bungie and Sony for "falsely destroying his reputation"
Lawsuit asserts Barrett was terminated to avoid $45m payment
Former Marathon reboot director Chris Barrett has filed a lawsuit against 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 avoid paying him a $45 million payment.
Barrett was reportedly fired by Bungie earlier this year following an internal investigation into inappropriate behaviour against female colleagues. In court papers, Barrett's lawyers suggest his former employer "did not care that none of it was true; they had blatant motivations for their brazen scheme," only wanting to "shift blame for and deflect attention away from their massive business failures.
"And to achieve those corporate objectives, they were willing to sacrifice Barrett," the papers asserted (thanks, VentureBeat).
"Barrett was never asked whether he had ever engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct, whether he ever sent inappropriate sexual or pornographic materials to a co-worker, or whether he ever retaliated against a co-worker for rebuffing his advances or discriminated against a female colleague on the basis of her sex.
"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 via 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 explained. "His lifelong dream of launching his own video game company (once within reach for a respected designer of multiple legendary games) has been crushed."