Examples of Damage Control in Gaming: Quantic Dream vs. the Press Before Detroit

Quantic Dream has been in the gaming news cycle quite a bit lately, though not for entirely good reasons.

While most of the headlines have been for previews and videos of upcoming game Detroit: Become Human, they’ve also been embroiled in a scandal involving misconduct accusations at the workplace. The allegations were gathered in several articles from the French press, and went into detail about the incredible level of harassment that occurred under the noses of the bosses. The company was described as a frat for adults, and while that can be fine for some employees (even though it’s odd — they’re adults here), they ignored the feelings of those it made uncomfortable.

The accusations included inappropriate photoshopped images shared among employees featuring others, some of which referred to them with racist and homophobic slurs and more. The former employees also accused director David Cage of being a pain to work with. Cage and fellow head of the studio Guillaume de Fondaumière viciously defended themselves against the accusations and proceeded to list activists they’ve worked with, an unconvincing retort given how some weren’t activists as they worked for them. Their PR response was also eerily similar to Naughty Dog’s from a while back. They also promised to take action against the publications that ran the stories, a threat largely written off as bluster.

As it turns out, they were serious.

Quantic Dream is suing both Le Monde and Mediapart, both of which are newspaper and website partners, respectively, who published the stories. The company is egregiously claiming the allegations levied against them are false, and called it a “smear campaign.”  William Audureau, who wrote one of the articles, claimed his story was written sincerely after a “a well-documented, thorough investigation,” and believes that “both sides must be heard.” He’s sticking with the information he posted in the face of this lawsuit.

Carnard PC was also involved with this, the publication that detailed the images distributed among the staffers. But they’re currently not being targeted by any legal actions. This could be an acknowledgment that they know the images are real and don’t have much of a chance of fighting them in court, but it’s also possible the lawsuit simply hasn’t reached them yet. We’ll have an answer soon.

It’s tough for me to tell how this lawsuit will go, because I’m not sure if France’s free speech laws are as strong as America’s. If they are, the onus will be on Quantic Dream to prove the stories are libelous, which will be difficult when Audureau eventually explians the depth of his information gathering to the court. But winning the case is likely not the point of this lawsuit, as it could be an attempt to scare publications from posting more stories like this about them and potentially other companies. They could also be using this as an attempt to get them to reveal their sources. Either way, this could have chilling ramifications down the line, even if they don’t win the case.

It doesn’t help that they have several gamers who enjoy their titles cheering them on, even though Quantic Dream is at no risk of being forced to change their business habits. It’s amazing how even the mere thought of workplaces changing their atmosphere is enough to make even those with only tenuous affiliation with these organizations feel threatened.

This fiasco has left a cloud over the release of Detroit, due for release on May 25th. I can’t recall a time where a developer was viciously fending off harassment allegations while they had a highly-anticipated game in the pipeline, but this was bound to happen now that these incidents are being exposed in several workplaces around the world. Interestingly, Sony has remained silent, despite being the publisher. Given how forgiving gamers are of this behavior, they probably won’t comment.

What makes this even more interesting, and a little humorous, is how Detroit was previously dealing with an issue of its own regarding how political it is. Cage notoriously said during E3 last year that it wasn’t political, in a likely attempt to prevent the same “keep politics out of games” facet of the gaming audience described above from getting upset. It was funny because the game is clearly political, given its themes of delving into how human androids can be, and whether they can fit in within society. This topic hasn’t come up in a serious manner since then, and likely won’t until people determine how political it is after they’ve played the game.

If you’re curious about Detroit despite everything unfolding around it, or want to see how this experience could measure up to previous games Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, a demo was recently uploaded to PSN. It lets players experience part of the “Hostage” section, where android negotiator Connor has to diffuse a perilous situation with players making the best decisions along the way. It’s not too big of a download at 2.3GB, which shows how it’s indeed only a small sampling. Beyond will also be available as a PlayStation Plus game on PS4 next month.

In the meantime, there’s potential for the lawsuit and harassment issues to unfold in a disgusting manner, but hopefully the outcome is good for those who were allegedly (though likely) abused.