Toxic culture and abuse at Fullbright: Gone Home studio director resigns after exodus of workers

The studio is developing its new game, Open Roads, but they have not stopped having problems.

The development of Open Roads , the new narrative proposal from Fullbright , creators of Gone Home and Tacoma , has been going through difficult times and the blame seems to revolve around a toxic and discriminatory culture established in the study by its director, Steve Gaynor . There are already 15 employees who have left the study since the beginning of its development, ten of them being women.

From Polygon they have had access to the testimony of 12 former employees of the study who anonymously have spoken about how Gaynor’s behavior towards the workers led them to take their exit from the study as the only option. Former workers have described Gaynor as a controlling person who made Fullbright a place where they constantly felt undermined and degraded . Employees have acknowledged having been afraid of being blacklisted in the industry for talking about Gaynor’s attitude, being the co-creator of an indie loved by the public.

 They constantly felt undermined and degradedSome of the former Fullbright workers say they have left the industry entirely. In their testimonies, they specify that they have not experienced or witnessed situations of sexual harassment or explicit sexism, although they have criticized the fact that the study sought to give an appearance of inclusion through its messages to users, while women were degraded repeatedly through microaggressions.

From Fullbright they have confirmed that Gaynor resigned in March due to the “pattern of women who left the company”. The situation was to be tackled after some attempts were made to improve the work environment with Steve Gaynor still in charge. From the study they spoke of “drastic measures for the health of the team . ” They have also discussed their relationship with Annapurna Interactive , who is in charge of financing the game, and have confirmed that Annapurna was aware of the situation and that she helped in the restructuring of the studio.

Steve Gaynor issued a statement to Polygon in which he apologized for his attitude as the project leader and called himself “hurtful” to the people who worked at Fullbright. The former employees of the studio have talked about how they experienced the development of the different titles and lamented that while all the workers were very united and supported each other, believing in the project as something beautiful that the team had created, they felt Gaynor was like someone unable to play as a team, someone who owned the entire studio.

Steve Gaynor’s attitude to the women in the study

Through the article we also learned about the situation of women who held leadership positions at Fullbright and the relationship with Gaynor. They describe working with him as a constant cluster of microaggressions . They tell how they made their work difficult, having to need their constant approval even in the smallest details, something that added to the way in which Gaynor treated them, belittling them and discrediting them for their contributions.

It was doubted whether to hire several women for fear of the treatment they would suffer“His weapon of choice was to laugh at people while embarrassing them in public,” said one of the former workers. These facts were corroborated by six other former employees. The size of the company and its structure made it very difficult to report these abuses, as the company did not have a human resources department to speak to.

Some of the employees, unable to report the situation, took different measures to reach Annapurna’s ears, such as leaving notes on the company’s server. Some statements from members leaving the study also reached Annapurna, in addition to the letter that another employee sent directly to Annapurna. After the exodus of employees experienced between 2020 and 2021, the hiring task became complicated , as confirmed by Polygon sources, there were doubts about whether to hire several qualified women for fear of the treatment they would suffer from Gaynor.

Several employees have confessed to having to go to therapy after passing through Fullbright, felt that they had changed after going through the study and described themselves as “consumed” by Gaynor. On the other hand, middle managers have regretted having left, feeling that they were abandoning those for whom they had spent some time “acting as a buffer”. Although Gaynor is no longer in command of Open Roads, he is still part of the project as a writer, although he no longer has contact with the rest of the Fullbright team.

The fact that Gaynor continues to have a relevant role in the writing of the play worries some of the former employees of the project, since they denounce that a man who is capable of constantly disparaging the women around him should not write the story about a mother and her daughter . “It makes me sick to my stomach thinking about how someone who treats women like this in real life, with no apparent intention of stopping, can still write game stories about women,” said one of Fullbright’s former employees.