Insomniac Gameswhich we owe among others Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and the future Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, has decided to donate $ 50,000 for the defense of the right to abortion, questioned by the conservative US Supreme Court. Unfortunately Sony he does not want the company to talk about it publicly and has censored it, probably so as not to make it appear as a gesture of spite against the words spoken by the company president Jim Ryan, who in an internal email had invited employees to respect the opinion of everyone on the subject and then he had started talking about the birthday of his cats and why he wants to buy a dog. The $ 50,000 will be given to the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP). The news emerged from another internal email, sent on May 13, 2022, which obviously someone inside Insomniac wanted to make public, showing it to the Washington Post. The CEO wrote it Ted Price.
Note that Sony will also pay the donation, so it is not opposed to it, and it appears that it is planning to provide financial assistance to female employees forced to travel to another state to receive reproductive care. He just doesn’t want the story to go public.
More seriously, both companies were banned from posting Tweets about the donation and their employees were banned from suing Sony or Insomniac by retweeting any WRRAP announcements.
The email also highlights another interesting aspect. Price wrote that he sent a nearly sixty-page document to Hermen Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios, with many messages from employees asking executives, Jim Ryan in particular, to do better for employees directly affected by the problem. In any case, it is also specified that Insomniac cannot make press releases on the rights questioned or, as already mentioned, on the donation.
Price also notes that it would not be a good idea to violate these rules, as there may be repercussions from Sony: “For us there could be material repercussions, as we are a subsidiary. Also, any progress we may make to push for a change of approach [di Sony Interactive Entertainment] it would be stopped abruptly. We would probably also be severely limited in the future. “
It should be noted that software houses such as Bungie and Double Fine have publicly taken a stand against the cancellation of the right to abortion (Bungie was acquired by Sony, but the sale has not yet been finalized ed) and the employees of Insmoniac would like their company did the same.
An employee asked Price if he thinks Sony’s acquisition has limited it freedom of word and destroyed the company’s values. The answer is quite eloquent: “When it comes to free speech, while we have A LOT of autonomy that is often taken for granted, there are times when we have to recognize that we are part of a larger organization. We could almost always tweet what we do. we wanted to. However, there are rare times when we are on opposite sides (like this week) and SIE has the final say. “
