As reported by the Axios site, which has been following the case from the start, these new testimonies include seven former employees and a current employee of PlayStation. They denounce a series of behaviors in several PlayStation offices in the United States, including degrading comments, unwelcome advances, a lack of attention paid to their work or their ideas and, most often, the feeling that it is much more difficult for women to obtain a promotion in the company.
Axios cites the experience of Marie Harrington, who worked at Sony Online Entertainment between 2000 and 2006 and then in the PlayStation Network team at Sony Interactive Entertainment between May 2009 and August 2019. of Sr. Director Program Management Office and Chief of Staff, Marie Harrington judges that the management of Sony Interactive Entertainment did not do what was necessary to take into consideration the promotions of women. She further recounts having heard comments about the family life of the candidates that were not made about the male candidates.
The statement of Kara Johnson, who worked as Sr.Technical Program Manager at PlayStation between September 2018 and January 2021, includes a letter she shared with employees when she left the company last year. This letter mentions his repeated attempts to inform his superiors of gender bias, alleged discrimination against pregnant women or the lack of reaction from a senior man in HR. “I believe Sony is not equipped to handle toxic environments appropriately“, wrote in her statement the one who joined Amazon Games Studios … at the exact moment when these were the subject of a portrait at Bloomberg for “a bro culture in which women often don’t have the same opportunities as men.“
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