Aug 19, 2022 06:00:00

Former employee confesses about terrible sexual harassment and discrimination against women at Nintendo of America

Nintendo, which is well-known as a game maker, has adopted the trend of diversity, gender differences, and respect for culture in recent years, and is implementing various

initiatives such as realizing a diverse workplace and promoting the active participation of women. A female employee who worked as a contract employee at Nintendo of America, an American corporation of Nintendo, confessed that she experienced sexual harassment during work, Kotaku, a game media. reported.

Nintendo's Testers Allegedly Faced Years Of Sexual Harassment
https://kotaku.com/nintendo-of-america-sexual-harassment-sexism-aerotek-1849414921

A female employee named Hannah by Kotaku quit her job at Nintendo of America in 2020, after serving as a game tester for nearly 10 years. Hannah says that some colleagues at the time created a group chat in Microsoft Teams called 'The Laughing Zone' to interact with each other as a place to share funny memes.

But one day, things changed when a male translator joined the group. The man shared a screenshot of a post posted on a bulletin board and started talking about how `` Showers (a kind of Pokemon) is sexual '', and when the story moved to the game `` Genshin '', the mascot character `` Paimon '' ' and said, 'It's good to feel sexual attraction even though you look and have a childish personality.' Hannah recorded this post and reported it to Aerotek, a staffing agency that she contracted, and tried to get the situation managed.

However, the person who posted the sexual harassment only had to be punished for 'sexual harassment training', and Hannah was warned by Aerotek's management to 'do not talk about this'. Hannah also confessed that members of the group accused her of reporting the incident.

Hannah said she felt the response was inadequate and quit her job because she felt her workplace did not adequately protect her from sexually inappropriate behavior.

In response to this confession, Kotaku spoke to 10 former Nintendo employees who said they had worked at Nintendo at various points in the past decade, from the 'Wii U' to the 'Nintendo Switch' era, and found that they were similarly sexually charged. It reportedly received testimony that harassment was 'common' and little action was taken to combat it. Furthermore, among contract employees, it is particularly difficult for women to be promoted, and women tend to be less likely than men to get a raise or switch to regular employment.

Valerie Allison, a former contract employee, also wanted to be promoted to a full-time employee, but when I asked her manager, 'How can I do it?' It seems that only vague answers such as 'match' were returned. Another contract employee who worked as a game tester during the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U era said, ``There were a lot of favoritism and nepotism. There was a trend that it was because I got along well with the employees.' In addition, it seems that stalking damage to employees has been reported.

A Nintendo employee has previously filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleging that Nintendo of America and staffing agency Aston Carter violated their legally recognized right to form a union. , and this has led to the development of a situation in which problems of the working environment and internal caste are being discussed. A second complaint was filed in August 2022, ``Nintendo's labor problems continue,'' Kotaku wrote.