A new report alleges incidents of sexual harassment took place at Nintendo’s Redmond Washington campus against female contractors working for the company. According to Kotaku, who reported the news on Aug. 16, there are multiple interviews with anonymous employees who were contracted to work at Nintendo of America via Aerotek.
One anonymous Nintendo employee told a story about a male translator who posted explicit content into a Microsoft Teams chat set up for employees to chat.
According to the interview, the person posted Reddit screenshots about why the Pokémon Vaporeon was ‘the best to sleep with’ and attempted to justify being sexually attracted to a child-like Genshin Impact character.
After these incidents, the anonymous worker attempted to take the issue to her supervisors. Ultimately the employee chose to quit her decade-long career at Aerotek after feeling the company’s response to these reports was unsatisfactory and that they hadn’t adequately protected her from sexually inappropriate behavior from men.
Continuing further, Kotaku’s report said the 10 sources they spoke to were former Nintendo employees who shared stories about the sexist culture taking place without actions being taken.
Another employee claimed a full-time lead at Nintendo’s QA department had such a record of unprofessional behavior that women working in the same location would warn others to steer clear of his desk.
Regarding this man, one contractor claims women were forced to remain friendly with this employee if they wanted to be brought back or reduce the chance of losing their job.
As contractors, many employees had the goal of gaining full-time employment but some shared that they felt these aspirations were “strained by being women.” As full-time employees, workers would have more stability and benefits than what was available as a contractor.
One anonymous employee claimed that, instead of being given goals to work towards that could lead to a full-time contract, she was told to “increase face time with male colleagues.” Because of the lack of clarity regarding promotion, some women claimed to have been forced to brush off sexual harassment so they were not seen as “overly sensitive.”
Other allegations in the report suggest full-time employees called “red badges” would use the pool of contracted testers as a “dating pool”, and that queer employees suffered more prejudice than others. The report even includes a claim of stalking that went on for more than six months.
These are not the first claims from Nintendo contractors about mistreatment.
Previously, many spoke out about feeling like “second class workers” at the company. Similar accusations have led to a pair of legal battles, which are currently ongoing.
