With the majority of companies in the games industry aside from Bungie declining to make public statements on the ongoing debate around the potential overturning of Roe v Wade by the US Supreme Court, many have been left wondering just what stance these silent parties were adopting on the issue.
Well, in the case of Sony, a report from Bloomberg has revealed exactly what the Japanese publisher’s official internal policy towards abortion is, along with the manner in which employees were notified of it.
According to the report, an email from CEO Jim Ryan briefly instructed workers at Sony to “respect differences of opinion” on abortion, before delving into some slightly less appropriate material for such an email.
Playstation CEO Jim Ryan Infuriates Staff With Abortion Email
The short justification that Ryan gave for Sony taking a non-committal viewpoint on an issue which affects a lot of its staff is that “we owe it to each other and to PlayStation’s millions of users”.
The CEO also added: “Respect does not equal agreement. But it is fundamental to who we are as a company and as a valued global brand.”
At this point, Ryan’s email seemingly took a massive tone shift, as he moved from reproductive rights into a discussion of his cats’ upcoming birthday parties, apparently designed to be “something lighthearted to help inspire everyone to be mindful of having balance that can help ease the stress of uncertain world events”.
Unfortunately for the CEO, his discussion of his cats’ birthday cakes and desire to add to his menagerie of pets by getting a dog didn’t go down well with many of his employees at Playstation studios.
According to Bloomberg, several female employees viewed Ryan’s inclusion of the pet-based discussion in the email as inappropriate, with it arguably trivialising the difficult struggle for reproductive rights.
One employee went so far as to say they’d: “never been so mad about a cat birthday before.”
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