Quantic Dream

To prove them wrong, Cage hired a team of friends and made an office out of a sound booth, with a financial deadline of six months to come up with a game engine and prototype.

With the project funded and a publisher secured, The Nomad Soul was in full development; musician David Bowie played two characters and created ten original songs.

[11] The second title with Sony was 2013's Beyond: Two Souls, starring actors Elliot Page and Willem Dafoe,[4][15] which received mixed reviews from critics and managed to sell 2.8 million copies.

[34][35][36] According to the reports of some insiders, the game is expected to be released in 2027 at the earliest; industry analysts attributed this long development timeline to an inability to attract staff because of the studio's poor reputation as a place of work.

Players used the hashtag "#BlackoutStarWarsEclipse" on Twitter to call on Disney to revoke the Star Wars license from Quantic Dream on account of the studio's history of hostile workplace reports.

Le Monde called Quantic Dream "a toxic corporate culture, management with inappropriate words and attitudes, under-considered employees, overwhelming workloads and questionable contractual practices".

[14] First among the issues raised by the newspapers, Cage and de Fondaumière were said to have participated in or encouraged a sexist and racist culture, with controversial images exchanged by email and posted around the office including photos of studio collaborators and employees digitally edited to appear as Nazis or porn stars.

[48][50] Second, studio management was accused of employing an arduous "crunch time" schedule in which 15–35 additional hours of work per week were expected for a year before a game's launch.

[48] Third, the human resources department was accused of colluding to terminate fixed-term contract staff before their deal expired, violating French labour laws, and arranging settlements to remove employees who did not fit in with the studio culture.

[48] In particular, the reports outlined how de Fondaumière conspired with the company to use French labor laws to contest his dismissal in 2016 and obtain a €60,000 compensation fee that was not subject to social security collection via URSSAF.

[55] In a separate case brought by another former employee, the Parisian employment tribunal found for the employee, stating that the studio had allowed the "homophobic, misogynistic, racist, or even deeply vulgar" dissemination of the photos to continue in the workplace,[50] and further ordered Quantic Dream to pay €5,000 in addition to a €2,000 fee in December 2019 after finding that the company "[remained] passive in the face of this practice more than questionable, which can not be justified by the 'humorous' spirit of which the company avails itself, the employer has committed a breach of the obligation of security".

[59][60][61][62][63] The court ruled in favor of Mediapart in the personal suit, dismissing charges related to three of seven passages in their report about Quantic Dream, while stating that the other four were made in "good faith" as they had "a sufficient factual basis" as to not qualify for libel.

[62][63] Separate cases filed against Le Monde and Mediapart on behalf of Quantic Dream as a company also found in favor of the defendants, clearing them of the libel charges.

The original logo for Quantic Dream (1997–2019)
David Cage in 2008