Female game testers at Nintendo America reportedly faced years of sexual harassment
Nintendo is just one of many companies that use contractors to test their games, but it is said to be one of the most profitable and this undoubtedly draws many to work for the company.
One such employee Hannah (not her real name) was contracted to the company by Aerotek to test upcoming games.
She appears to be one of several female contractors who experienced discriminatory behavior that frequently prevented their professional growth and allowed sexual harassment to occur.
One former tester who worked in the department in 2017 stated: (product testing) really felt like a frat house sometimes.”
Nintendo does have a history of not having a high percentage of female employees. Among the permanent employees, only 37% of those are women and only 23.7% are in management positions globally.
“Hannah” also claimed that after working at the company for nine years she found out about a male contractor that was more junior than her earning $19/hr while she was only receiving $16/hr, she then fought for weeks for the “wage gap” to be closed with the company finally settling on $18/hr. Another woman reported that she stayed at $16/hr for six years after which she was offered a higher wage elsewhere and threatened to leave.
Hannah claims that several employees created a group chat in Nintendo’s Microsoft Teams server called “The Laughing Zone” which was supposed to be a light-hearted group to share jokes and memes. This is where things took a turn for the worse when one employee, a male translator was added to the group.
He apparently shared Reddit screenshots of why Vaporeon was the best Pokemon to have sex with and the explicit descriptions disgusted Hannah. The conversation then turned to the popular Genshin Impact and said translator posting a GIF of Paimon which is a child character in the game, saying how it was ok to be sexually attracted to the character despite their childlike appearance, voice, etc.
Hannah then tried to escalate the situation with Aerotek by taking screenshots of the sexual comments.
She claimed that after she reported the incident, her coworkers blamed her and that the translator only received sexual harassment training as punishment.
It seems reported the incident set off a chain of events that eventually led to her quitting her “dream job”.
The contracting company Aerotek (now reorganized into Aston Carter) is no better though being embroiled in an anti-discrimination lawsuit in regards to sex, age, and race, being ordered to pay over $3 million to settle the case.
“The Chicago reporter” had been investigating the claims against the company to which Aerotek issued a statement saying:
“First and foremost, there is no place for discrimination in our company or our industry. Equal employment opportunity is a fundamental value at Aerotek.”
Hannah was not surprisingly unhappy with the “unsatisfactory response” from the company and felt that her workplace did not adequately protect her from sexually inappropriate behavior from men ending in her eventually quitting her job testing Nintendo products.
Many women at the Redmond Washington office still have a problem with women not being treated with respect.
According to Kotaku who spoke to ten different sources a story of corporate culture exists at Nintendo where sexist behaviour is commonplace and very little action is taken to address the issues.
You can read the full article here.