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Quantic Dream loses lawsuit against former employee

Quantic Dream loses lawsuit against former employee

The French developer behind Heavy Rain, Fahrenheit and Detroit Quantic Dream has lost a court case against a former member of staff.

That's according to Gamekult journalist Nicholas Turcev, who took to Twitter (below) to explain the court's decision.

The case itself centered on an employee who quit due to inappropriate and offensive images that had been photoshopped at the studio. This was revealed by French media in January of this year. In April, Quantic Dream chief David Cage said that the firm was suing two of the three publications who ran stories on the subject. Those proceedings are on-going.

The court battle focused on 'prise d'acte' - as reported by Eurogamer - a means of terminating an employment contract by a member of staff who believes themselves to be a victim. In doing so, they are giving up all employment rights and pay - but they are able to claim an unfair dismissal.

That is precisely what happened in the case with this particular employee - their leaving Quantic Dream is now an unfair dismissal, something that the studio can still appeal.

This is just one of many court cases forthcoming with former members of Quantic Dream.

No doubt this will have an impact on Quantic Dream's suit against French media. If the claims made are proven to be true, then the studio will not have a leg to stand on.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.