On Thursday, former Bungie executive and director, Christopher Barrett announced that he is suing the Destiny 2 developer and Sony for $200 million, alleging both companies did so to avoid paying his salary.
Former Bungie and Marathon Director of 25 years, Christopher Barrett, has taken to the internet to announce that he is suing his former employer. He alleges the developer and Sony have conspired to terminate his employment to avoid paying out the $45 million left on his contract, claiming the allegations made toward him in a Bloomberg report released in August was designed to ruin his reputation. The report detailed eight women have made complaints about Barrett’s behavior. Barrett says this is not the case in a post on X (formerly Twitter) which can be seen below.
Barrett claims “I’ve had to endure rampant speculation, unfounded attacks on my reputation, and innuendo about what happened behind the scenes to cause me to be fired after 25 years of loyal service.” Barrett continues with “Today, I filed a lawsuit against Sony and Bungie to hold them accountable for their conduct and the damage that has been done to my reputation and my career.” The lawsuit then alleges what Barrett himself details is ‘true’ misconduct, which has gone under the radar.
The lawsuit has been emailed to publications starting with VentureBeat, in a PR campaign designed to detail the lawsuit, and pre-emptively answer any counterarguments for the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges “While denying any role in such behavior, Barrett alleged in the lawsuit that he witnessed “a very senior Bungie executive” texting him and others “sexually suggestive material, including lewd photographs, texts about his sex life (including graphic descriptions of particular sex acts), and texts concerning the appearance of women working for Bungie.”
While Bungie and Sony have yet to respond to these allegations, Former Bungie Chief Legal Officer, Don McGowan has also levied allegations against the Destiny 2 developer, alleging the developer sought to employ fans of Destiny 2 to save the company money. In the interview published by GamePost, McGowan claims “One of the things that they could get away with is low pay, because you’re working on a game you love,” and he continued with “we totally took advantage of that at Bungie. We hired fans because fans would work for less.”
McGowan then makes allegations that the Destiny 2 developer engaged in anti-union practices, claiming the developer would promote potential unionization organizers to disrupt organization efforts. McGowan explains “You promote [potential organizers] out of being able to organize” then he said “Once you give them people who report to them, they are no longer part of the bargaining unit,” detailing efforts to curtail the strength of union organization.
The report also claims Bungie had 1,600 employees during McGowan’s tenure at the studio. At the time of this report, Bungie and CEO Pete Parsons confirmed the studio currently stands with 850 employees after waves of layoffs in a blog post titled The New Path for Bungie, a 47% workforce reduction.
Both the Marathon developer and Sony have not responded to this new wave of accusations yet.
