Quantic Dream overturns unfair dismissal decision at appeal

Quantic Dream on Friday managed to get the Paris Court of Appeals to overturn a 2018 ruling of unfair dismissal for a former employee. With the case tackling accusations of a toxic culture at the studio and more specifically the circulation of photoshopped images of staff within the company. 

Gamesindustry.biz reported that the court ruled that photoshopped images involving the plaintiff were not degrading, homophobic or rascist, unlikely many that had been circulated at the developer. And that the employee was aware of the image in 2015 and had been maong its recipients. 

The fact that the employee did not complain about the image at the time, said the court, showed a “tacit acceptance” of its contents. With him only complaining later. As a result the former employee will have to pay €10,138 to Quantic Dream in compensation.

Following up from the ruling, Quantic Dream published a statement that attacked French press coverage and accusations of a toxic culture at the developer. And alleges that there was a falsely-created social media campaign against the developer, although it’s not clear what the motive was for the attack. 

“More than 10,000 tweets were sent in a few days by a single account on Twitter, with the aim of getting the allegations against the company to the top of the search engines. There is evidence that a very small number of people are behind these actions, which are aimed at deliberately tarnishing the studio’s image and damaging its team,” said the statement.