#Former Marathon director reportedly fired from Bungie over inappropriate conduct
Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter Marathon skilled a management change in March 2024, with Chris Barrett exiting the corporate and former Valorant director Joe Ziegler taking up as Marathon‘s director. Nevertheless, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier now experiences that the transfer resulted from Chris Barrett’s firing following inside accusations of inappropriate conduct.
Bloomberg’s report comes within the wake of Bungie’s July layoffs and additional integration into Sony, which additionally noticed Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy go away the studio.
In accordance with Bloomberg’s a number of sources, unnamed to guard privateness, Barrett’s behaviors prolonged to a number of ladies from totally different roles and disciplines throughout Bungie. Reported conduct features a deluge of undesirable textual content messages, feedback on bodily look, invites to hang around or play truth-or-dare, and even indications that Barrett might use his affect to advance careers.
The Bloomberg report alleges that Barrett was fired from Bungie after an inside investigation. Barrett’s departure was not made abundantly clear to different workers, with some believing he’d been on a sabbatical till discovering his studio accounts had change into inactive.
Barrett informed Bloomberg: “I really feel that I’ve at all times carried out myself with integrity and been respectful and supportive of my colleagues, lots of whom I think about my closest buddies. I by no means understood my communications to be undesirable and I’d have by no means thought they might probably have made anybody really feel uncomfortable. If anybody ever felt that means about their interplay with me, I’m actually sorry.”
Sony additionally spoke with Bloomberg, noting that it takes “all complaints of misconduct very severely” and that “it’s our coverage and follow to analyze each criticism promptly and take motion primarily based on the findings of our investigation,” although Sony by no means references Barrett straight.
Since Bloomberg’s report broke, Bungie has seemingly made makes an attempt to distance itself from Barrett, together with making a 2023 Marathon announcement Q&A video that includes Barrett and Scott Taylor personal and unavailable.
