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Former Niantic Employee Sues Company for Workplace Sexism

News website The Verge reported last week that a former employee of game developer Niantic has filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that the company is paying its female employees less than its male employees in equivalent or lower positions, creating a "systemic sexual bias" against female employees and women of color at the company.

According to the report, the plaintiff found out in 2021 that a male colleague at Niantic who had a lower job title was receiving more pay than her. The report noted that in 2020, that male employee supposedly had a salary of US$127,000 per year, while she had a salary of US$105,000 per year. She also used California's pay transparency law to find out the pay range publicly posted for her job title; the company was allegedly paying her US$10,000 less than the bottom range of the posted wage.

When she brought up the matter with Niantic, she described the company's management as allegedly "hostile to her complaints," and that her job evaluations and lower wage were due to her discussing the issue with other colleagues at Wolfpack, an internal employee resources group for women.

The plaintiff was laid off during Niantic's mass job cuts two weeks ago, when it laid off 230 employees.

Niantic and The Pokémon Company International launched the Pokémon GO app in select countries including the United States in July 2016. Niantic also developed Pikmin Bloom, an AR app based on Nintendo's Pikmin franchise, which debuted in 2021.

Niantic's Ingress AR app inspired an anime adaptation that premiered in October 2018. Netflix began streaming the anime worldwide in April 2019.

Niantic is most recently developing Monster Hunter Now, a new augmented reality (AR) smartphone game in CAPCOM's Monster Hunter game series. The game will launch in September.

Source: The Verge (Jay Peters) via Kotaku