Written by Dante Uzel on 13 December 2024 13:59
Chris Barrett, the former director of Bungie's Marathon reboot, has filed a lawsuit against Bungie and Sony, alleging that they deliberately damaged his reputation by falsely claiming they had investigated him and found evidence of sexual misconduct. Barrett is also seeking a $45 million payment he says he is owed.
Barrett was reportedly dismissed earlier this year following an internal investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior toward female colleagues. However, the lawsuit claims that Bungie acted maliciously to protect its corporate interests, asserting, "They did not care that none of it was true; they had blatant motivations for their brazen scheme," and aimed to "shift blame for and deflect attention away from their massive business failures."
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The court filing alleges that Barrett's former employer never directly questioned him about allegations of misconduct. "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 document states.
Barrett says he was terminated three weeks after the investigation, via a Microsoft Teams call, for gross misconduct. The lawsuit further accuses Bungie of making misleading public statements to Bloomberg, aiming 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.”
Tags: Sony
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