• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Insomniac donates $50k & sent 60-page doc to Sony urging Ryan to do better. Sony will not approve any statements from studios on reproductive rights.

--R

--R

Being sued right now, please help me find a lawyer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,759
Last week, PlayStation president Jim Ryan sent employees an email asking them to "respect differences of opinion" around abortion rights in light of the leaked Supreme Court opinion surrounding Roe v. Wade, stressing that "we owe it to each other and to PlayStation's millions of users to respect differences of opinion among everyone in our internal and external communities," and concluding the missive with several paragraphs about Ryan's cats' birthdays. Employees were not pleased with the lighthearted response, according to a Bloomberg report about the email.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Following that gaffe, Insomniac, the Sony subsidiary behind "Ratchet & Clank" and "Marvel's Spider-Man," plans to donate $50,000 to the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), according to an internal email sent May 13 from Insomniac CEO Ted Price viewed by The Washington Post. Sony will match the donation, along with donations from individual Insomniac employees if they make them via the company's "PlayStation Cares" program. In addition, Sony now plans to formulate an initiative to provide financial assistance to employees who might have to travel to different states to receive reproductive care. Insomniac will aid in formulating that policy.

Neither company plans to tweet about their donations, and Insomniac employees have been forbidden from explicitly mentioning Insomniac or Sony should they decide to retweet any announcements the WRRAP might make, according to the email.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

A portion of the email is structured as a Q&A addressing questions from employees. In it Price explains his rationale for the social media silence. He begins by noting the studio sent a "near-60 page" document to PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst filled with messages from employees urging leadership — Ryan, in particular — to "do better by employees who are directly affected." For the time being, however, Insomniac is not allowed to make a statement about reproductive rights or its donation — nor does Price think it would be a good idea for the studio to go over Sony's head and try.

"There would be material repercussions for us as a wholly owned subsidiary," Price wrote in response to a question about what would happen if Insomniac tweeted about the donation. "Among other things, any progress that we might make in helping change [Sony Interactive Entertainment's] approach would be stopped dead in its tracks. We'd also probably be severely restricted from doing important public-facing work in the future."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


Please, read the whole article because I can't post the whole thing due to rules and not everything is as nice as the first 2 paragraphs make it look.
 
IDontBeatGames

IDontBeatGames

ThreadMarksman
Member
Oct 29, 2017
16,522
New York




Following that gaffe, Insomniac, the Sony subsidiary behind "Ratchet & Clank" and "Marvel's Spider-Man," plans to donate $50,000 to the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), according to an internal email sent May 13 from Insomniac CEO Ted Price viewed by The Washington Post. Sony will match the donation, along with donations from individual Insomniac employees if they make them via the company's "PlayStation Cares" program. In addition, Sony now plans to formulate an initiative to provide financial assistance to employees who might have to travel to different states to receive reproductive care. Insomniac will aid in formulating that policy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Neither company plans to tweet about their donations, and Insomniac employees have been forbidden from explicitly mentioning Insomniac or Sony should they decide to retweet any announcements the WRRAP might make, according to the email.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

A portion of the email is structured as a Q&A addressing questions from employees. In it Price explains his rationale for the social media silence. He begins by noting the studio sent a "near-60 page" document to PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst filled with messages from employees urging leadership — Ryan, in particular — to "do better by employees who are directly affected." For the time being, however, Insomniac is not allowed to make a statement about reproductive rights or its donation — nor does Price think it would be a good idea for the studio to go over Sony's head and try.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

"There would be material repercussions for us as a wholly owned subsidiary," Price wrote in response to a question about what would happen if Insomniac tweeted about the donation. "Among other things, any progress that we might make in helping change [Sony Interactive Entertainment's] approach would be stopped dead in its tracks. We'd also probably be severely restricted from doing important public-facing work in the future."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Helix

Helix

Mayor of Clown Town
Member
Jun 8, 2019
23,751


Sony apparently stopped studios from talking about Reproductive Rights.

gg Sony.
 

Deleted member 110527

Mar 11, 2022
1,311
This comes after Insomniac employees made repeated requests to get management to make a statement not unlike those issued by a few other large video game companies including "Destiny 2" developer Bungie and "Psychonauts 2″ creator Double Fine. In the Q&A, Price writes that Sony shut that approach down: "[Sony Interactive Entertainment] will not approve ANY statements from any studio on the topic of reproductive rights. We fought hard for this and we did not win."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Neoxon

Neoxon

Spotlighting Black Excellence - Diversity Analyst
Member
Oct 25, 2017
85,299
Houston, TX
Good shit on Insomniac's part, but they also still need to clean up shop within their studio.
 
Fisty

Fisty

Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,214
Wait... stopped by Sony or stopped by Jim Ryan? What the hell is going on here

Ted seems to be laying this at the feet of SIE, from that quote at least
 
liquidtmd

liquidtmd

Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
6,129
aliens-bill-paxton.gif
 
ghostcrew

ghostcrew

The Shrouded Ghost
Administrator
Oct 27, 2017
30,351
Private donation is nice, but this is disappointing.

"This comes after Insomniac employees made repeated requests to get management to make a statement not unlike those issued by a few other large video game companies including "Destiny 2" developer Bungie and "Psychonauts 2″ creator Double Fine. In the Q&A, Price writes that Sony shut that approach down: "[Sony Interactive Entertainment] will not approve ANY statements from any studio on the topic of reproductive rights. We fought hard for this and we did not win.""
 
Aaronrules380

Aaronrules380

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
22,432
It's good that people's protests forced Sony's hands and made them give money, but make no mistake this happened because they felt they needed to get out of hot water, not because they actually care and the obvious solution is to keep up the pressure and get more out of them
 
IDontBeatGames

IDontBeatGames

ThreadMarksman
Member
Oct 29, 2017
16,522
New York
Worth pointing this out as well:

One employee asked Price if he thought Sony's acquisition of Insomniac for $229 million in 2020 is "now impacting our freedom of speech and our values."
"As far as our freedom of speech goes, while we do have a LOT of autonomy that often gets taken for granted, there are times where we need to acknowledge we're part of a larger organization," Price wrote in the email. "For the most part our ability to tweet has been unfettered. However there are rare times when we're in opposition (like this week) and SIE will have the final say."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
boxter432

boxter432

The Fallen
Oct 28, 2017
9,226
hey imsomniac, just do it, then say Jim has to respect your opionions. what is he going to do. fire his whole best studio?
 
bsigg

bsigg

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,543
The title is kinda burying the bigger point of Sony blocking studios right to say anything about what's going on.
 
Ovvv

Ovvv

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Jan 11, 2019
10,030
Pretty much a joke. Good on Insomniac. The whole

"In addition, Sony now plans to formulate an initiative to provide financial assistance to employees who might have to travel to different states to receive reproductive care. Insomniac will aid in formulating that policy."

is great but the censorship is so fucking stupid.
 

UtterlyPerplexed

Member
Oct 25, 2017
828
Cowardly, craven cumstain of a corporation.

Good on Insomniac and everyone else under the Sony umbrella with a measure of spine, integrity and decency.
 
Greent4

Greent4

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,273
Charlotte, NC
"[Sony] will not approve ANY statements from any studio on the topic of reproductive rights," wrote Insomniac head Ted Price. "We fought hard for this and we did not win"

wtf
I guess they dont technically own bungie and that's why they were allowed to make they're statement.
Fuck Jim Ryan and kudos to Insomniac!
 
Uzupedro

Uzupedro

Banned
May 16, 2020
12,234
Rio de Janeiro
They are donating and planning to give bigger support to employees in case of assistance but they are blocking studios or devs being vocal about the subject, makes no sense. Well it does but it's dumb as hell.
 
m23

m23

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,417
ghostcrew said:
Private donation is nice, but this is disappointing.

"This comes after Insomniac employees made repeated requests to get management to make a statement not unlike those issued by a few other large video game companies including "Destiny 2" developer Bungie and "Psychonauts 2″ creator Double Fine. In the Q&A, Price writes that Sony shut that approach down: "[Sony Interactive Entertainment] will not approve ANY statements from any studio on the topic of reproductive rights. We fought hard for this and we did not win.""
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Oof
 
You must log in or register to reply here.