Quantic Dream Suing French Media Over Reports of Toxic Workplace

Way back in January of this year, we reported that several employees – apparently disgruntled from some workplace drama – accused Quantic Dream of being a terrible workplace, where sexist, racist, and generally toxic attitudes prevailed. While the accusation was extremely messy, they were not without merit, and Quantic Dream was quick to come to its own defense in the most awkward way possible, and said that they would take “all possible legal action to defend their honor.”

Well, now they’re putting their money where their mouth is, as Kotaku has reported that Cage and his legal team are now suing French media outlets Le Monde and Mediapart, who first reported the news. Apparently, this wasn’t revealed to Kotaku via a proper press release or anything of the sort; it was an accident when his meeting with Le Monde journalist William Audureau, who helped break the report and has since been blacklisted by Sony, was canceled due to the legal proceedings. A quick follow-up lead to a Sony PR rep to let slip that they were, in fact, suing the journalists.

Speaking to Kotaku, Audureau had this to say:

“The story has been written sincerely, following a well-documented, thorough investigation, respectful of the principle that both sides must be heard,”

The first court hearing will take place in June, so we can expect an update before then. I’m not going to lie, I am incredibly surprised by this. It’s one thing for a company to be accused of having a toxic workplace, as it happened to Konami all the time, and it’s sort of an open secret in the industry that employees are often getting the short end of the stick – that’s why the subject of unionizing has always been so sensitive. So taking these dramatic legal measures is eyebrow-raising, because it should be easy to dismiss outside of court if the rumors were false, but it would also be a doomed case if they were even remotely true. And even if it is 100 percent false, they could only win if they proved the report was an intentional smear campaign, making the lawsuit even trickier. So I’m not quite sure what Sony is thinking here.

We’ll have to find out.