Capcom Faces Bullying Accusation

[RaikuFA]

Ive said it once, I'll say it again, Capcom: The EA and Activision of Japan.

EA and Activision?

I dunno.

Capcom seems like the stupid sidekick who always messes up.

I mean come on, spelling mistakes on game packaging?

and ignoring the pleases of a lady that is getting screwed over to the point where she tries to pill herself to death is sidekick tier?

We don't know both sides yet, so I'm not willing to throw around accusations.

I see your point, but these are the same people that tease us with Megaman Legends 3 and other trolltastic stuff, i would not put this past them either.

Capcom are the biggest trolls in the industry.

No EU Monster Hunter titles in a long time, no Megaman, releasing 'Ultimate' versions of fighting games, less than a year after the release of the original.

They need to change their logo to this.

Don't forget the treatment of AA fans.

OT: Not suprised, they never punished Aris for his actions during Cross Assault.

 

[Rad Party God]

I dunno.

Capcom seems like the stupid sidekick who always messes up.

"Cor, EA, what are we going to do tonight?"
"The same thing we do every night, Capcom: Try to take over the world!"

Now I can't get off that song out of my head >.<'

OT: That's just awful, although we've only heard a single side of the story, I still think it's awful either way.

 

[bificommander]

I would also wait for more proof. If I read this story correctly, the claim is that 4 seperate bosses and any number of employees were all in on this. That's not impossible, but if this many different people all claim that she wasn't performing well my first instinct isn't 'all of them are lying and she's the only one speaking the truth'. Good thing it is being properly investigated now.

 

[Weaver]

I'm surprised some people are blaming the employee. Japanese business culture is insane and the stuff the majority of employees put up with would be seen as harassment in the west. For example, did someone invite you to a corporate event after work? THIS IS MANDATORY. Even if they say it it's optional, it's fucking mandatory. Did your kid have a baseball game? Too bad. Maybe it's your wife's birthday? Deal with it.

What if you don't go? Then you're seen as "not a team player" and after a few more transgressions you'll likely be fired.

Japan is about maintaining the status quo and a strict social hierarchy. Bosses will frequently saddle employees with an insane amount of work, just to enforce this hierarchy. They will boss around employees below them, just to establish dominance. This is a country that has a listing in their annual statistics for Kar&#333;shi; Death from overwork.

Nothing in this article would surprise me if it happened exactly as this employee is describing it.

 

[weirdee]

That seems pretty insane, especially if the HR department did nothing about it. Still, presumably the HR department would have still operated within the legal areas of the law and at least noted her complaints? Should make the case fairly straight forward in court.

I find this a pretty alien concept myself, I personally would never stay at a place of work that was causing me so much distress to the point that I would think of killing myself. I understand that employment rates aren't fantastic over there but even still.

Due to the way reputation works in Japan, if she had done anything before that point using that same justification, there would have been enough blackballing by the employer to draw an inappropriate comparison to an industrial oil disaster. It would have been social sui-wait that's also inappropriate

the fact that so many of you are dredging up loaded memories of what it means to you also clearly demonstrates that it is difficult to illustrate how easy it is to manipulate people with that kind of thing without getting targeted as a hater yourself, so at this point i think we can't discuss this any further without seriously reevaluating your own psyches before proceeding on the matter

 

[gigastar]

Alot of hatred is going to be/has been spilled because alot of people assume Japan is like the rest of the world. Again.

EA seem very sure about what they're doing, for good or bad, while Capcom just seems to pull ideas out of a hat and then proceeds to cock them up in the most hilariously incompetent fashion.

And thats why id rather run with Capcom than with EA or Activision. Capcom at least might change that which gets overwhelming negative feedback.

 

[The Great JT]

Capcom's rep could only improve at this point if it was discovered that they ate kittens, kicked puppies and did the paperwork for adopting orphans only to drive away while the kid was trying to get in the car.

 

[Cranky_Gamer]

My money is on we will never fully know the facts of what did/did not happen as it'll be settled out of court.

 

[doomspore98]

If the lady is telling the truth, this is one of the worst job situations I've heard about in a while. But I'll wait to boycott until I hear capcoms rebuttal.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Eh... is all I can say. Just... bleh. Even reading this makes me feel like I should take a deliberate overdose of crystal-meth while hanging myself over killer-mutant lava-resistant-sharks over a volcano, just for shit like this happening.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

Well, not going to get Dragon's Dogma now. May that team burn and get folded.

 

[Nuke_em_05]

Since we only have one side, I can't make a judgement, and really, it's not up to me anyway.

I will say however, that:

Back in January of this year, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare released a definition of the term "power harassment." Unacceptable behavior included: "asking junior employees to perform impossible tasks, committing acts of violence and other physical offenses, causing emotional stress, isolating or ignoring individuals, asking personal questions, and giving an employee nothing or very little to do."

Two of these actually appeal to me: "isolating or ignoring individuals" and "giving an employee nothing or very little to do".

Then again, I'm not Japanese. Though harassment, however any culture defines it, shouldn't be tolerated.

Anyway, no way to tell whether it actually happened here, but I hope that they can work something out.

 

[Formica Archonis]

I'm willing to believe it. I never had it that bad, I once had a boss telling me things like I was "taking too much time off" and I was a "liability to the team" etc. etc. because I took three weeks of approved medical leave (and 3 days later for followup) to have abdominal surgery to get a cancerous tumor removed. He also shared my medical info from the company insurance papers with people who should NOT have seen them. Like, I had coworkers talking about my biopsy results.

HR did jack about it until I resigned, then I guess the head HR person realized this was a legal fiasco waiting to happen and told me that "due to a clerical error" I should have had six weeks of medical leave so "just go home for three weeks and rest up" before I resigned. I was randomly switched to another department and my desk contents moved, perhaps so there was no paper proof that prick was my boss.

 

[Lunar Templar]

*sighs*

crap like this makes me sorry i ever like them

 

[The Wooster]

Since we only have one side, I can't make a judgement, and really, it's not up to me anyway.

I will say however, that:

Back in January of this year, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare released a definition of the term "power harassment." Unacceptable behavior included: "asking junior employees to perform impossible tasks, committing acts of violence and other physical offenses, causing emotional stress, isolating or ignoring individuals, asking personal questions, and giving an employee nothing or very little to do."

Two of these actually appeal to me: "isolating or ignoring individuals" and "giving an employee nothing or very little to do".

Then again, I'm not Japanese. Though harassment, however any culture defines it, shouldn't be tolerated.

Yeah, the Japanese workplace is hyper-competitive right now, so every employee is going out of their way to prove how valuable they are. So being given nothing to do makes it more likely a higher up will see you slacking and fire you.

 

[doublenix]

Even -if- she was bad at her job, that is now way to treat co-workers. If someones shite you sack them and leave it at that, not go on a protracted campaign of abuse. Fuck those guys with a 2X4 right up the rear end.

True, but again we don't know exactly what the situation was. Hopefully whatever the situation turns out to be justice will be done.

Agreed. Either way it goes based on the evidence, I hope justice gets served.

Unless you're some all-knowing god or a brilliant psychoanalyst that can do a full evaluations based on a few paragraphs not even written by the woman herself

Of course he can do such an evaluation. Didn't you know that as soon as anyone logs onto the Internet they become an expert on every subject ever.

I watched a 2 minute video about Freud on YouTube so now I'm awesome at this stuff.

Captcha: that's hot

 

[bluegate]

Wouldn't put this past the Japanese.
Worked there myself for a while and heard a few of these stories.

Capcha: cheese burger.... could go for one of those right about now

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Ive said it once, I'll say it again, Capcom: The EA and Activision of Japan.

EA and Activision?

I dunno.

Capcom seems like the stupid sidekick who always messes up.

I mean come on, spelling mistakes on game packaging?

and ignoring the pleases of a lady that is getting screwed over to the point where she tries to pill herself to death is sidekick tier?

We don't know both sides yet, so I'm not willing to throw around accusations.

I see your point, but these are the same people that tease us with Megaman Legends 3 and other trolltastic stuff, i would not put this past them either.

Capcom are the biggest trolls in the industry.

No EU Monster Hunter titles in a long time, no Megaman, releasing 'Ultimate' versions of fighting games, less than a year after the release of the original.

They need to change their logo to this.

You're just having a laugh, (I assume), but is it possible that these things are maybe related to each other at least a little bit?

What I mean is if Copcom really does have this kind of work environment, (key word "if"), then couldn't some of their more "trollish" actions be related to, or even because of how the employees treat each other? A bad work environment leading to bad business decisions.

Just a thought. Probably not right, but something they may want to change/prevent just in case.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Ive said it once, I'll say it again, Capcom: The EA and Activision of Japan.

EA and Activision?

I dunno.

Capcom seems like the stupid sidekick who always messes up.

I mean come on, spelling mistakes on game packaging?

and ignoring the pleases of a lady that is getting screwed over to the point where she tries to pill herself to death is sidekick tier?

We don't know both sides yet, so I'm not willing to throw around accusations.

I see your point, but these are the same people that tease us with Megaman Legends 3 and other trolltastic stuff, i would not put this past them either.

Capcom are the biggest trolls in the industry.

No EU Monster Hunter titles in a long time, no Megaman, releasing 'Ultimate' versions of fighting games, less than a year after the release of the original.

They need to change their logo to this.

You're just having a laugh, (I assume), but is it possible that these things are maybe related to each other at least a little bit?

What I mean is if Copcom really does have this kind of work environment, (key word "if"), then couldn't some of their more "trollish" actions be related to, or even because of how the employees treat each other? A bad work environment leading to bad business decisions.

Just a thought. Probably not right, but something they may want to change/prevent just in case.

Actually a very interesting point.

It would make more sense than Capcom just being composed of incompetents .

 

[Voltano]

I'd like to know more information on this case myself before I pass judgement, however I'm more disturbed that this might be a norm in the working culture of Japan. Bullying is bad enough in high school, but having to go to a (possibly) crap job so you can live while being harassed by your managers and/or employees? If that is a norm in Japan, that's just depressing.

Could a victim in this situation record or document evidence of this in some way, like saving emails with offensive words or security footage?