Insomniac Games Responds To Allegations Of Workplace Sexual Harassment

Insomniac Games has responded to allegations that it protected multiple "sexual predators" in response to a claim from a former employee. The Marvel's Spider-Man developer tweeted that it had taken "numerous steps to address" the allegations.

"We were aware of the allegations made in a former employee's tweets today and had taken numerous steps to address them. For legal and privacy reasons we will not respond to individual allegations about specific former employees," the company wrote. "We are a workplace family that has actively promoted diversity, inclusion, representation and equality for our entire existence. We will continue to do so every single day."

The response comes less than two hours after former Insomniac Games employee Sol Brennan, who worked there as a technical director between 2016 and 2020, alleged the company treated women poorly and protected three sexual abusers. Insomniac did not address Brennan directly in its response.

Brennan, who is now a senior technical artist at Unity, tweeted a long thread about their experience working at Insomniac.

"I have a list in the double digits of women who were harmed by the actions of this company - some so much so that they declined to speak about it to me at all," Brennan tweeted. "Insomniac has throttled careers of great women, left them no option but to 'resign' and protected sexual predators."

Brennan's Twitter thread alleges that Edgar Vargas, a human resources coordinator who no longer works for Insomniac, had harassed them repeatedly and "abused so many others." Brennan said that Vargas had made several inappropriate comments toward them and that he was eventually fired for dating an intern.

Multiple current and former Insomniac employees have come out in support of Brennan. Xavier Coelho-Kostolny, a 3D character artist, wrote that all of what Brennan wrote is true and that "it sucks it has to be said."

This story about Insomniac comes alongside a wave of testimonies from dozens of game developers (male, female, and non-binary) about abuse within the game industry. Brennan went on to say that they believe their career, along with the careers of several others, were "throttled" after speaking up about Vargas and other workplace issues.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," Brennan wrote. "I have so many more incidents that broke me down over time. Last year was definitely the worst for it."