Niantic being sued by former employee over sexual discrimination and unequal pay

Niantic, developer of mobile games Pokémon Go and Pikmin Bloom, has had a lawsuit filed against it by an anonymous former employee who was let go as part of the company’s recent layoffs. They are being accused by her of sexual bias and discrimination against women.

According to the complaint, the former employee discovered that she was being paid less than men working at the company, even though those men held lower positions than she did. In 2022, a male employee was receiving $127,000 per year, while she received only $105,000, despite having a higher ranked position in the company. (She later received a pay bump to $115,000, which was still lower than his salary.)

The employee then raised concerns with Niantic and the company’s internal women’s resources group, Wolfpack. However, executives reportedly downplayed the issues. She ended up leaving the Wolfpack group “in fear that her association with Wolfpack would disadvantage Wolfpack employees or her.” A survey conducted by Wolfpack found that “many female employees viewed Niantic as a sexist work culture that disadvantages female employees”.

You can read through the full complaint at the bottom of this article from The Verge. Unfortunately, sex discrimination is still alive and well in many workplaces, including the tech and gaming industries. Hopefully, lawsuits like this will continue to bring these issues to light so they can be properly dealt with. Niantic has yet to respond with a statement of any kind.