Quantic Dream loses libel lawsuit for abuse, wins another

Quantic Dream, creators of “so bad, they’re bad” games like Heavy rain and Detroit: become human, recently sued for libel against two French newspapers which jointly published allegations misconduct against people in the company in 2018. Now the court has ruled both for and against the developer, apparently on the same basis.

September 9, despite extremely strange public behavior, Quantic Dream won its libel case against the French newspaper, The world. However, he also lost his other libel action against another French publication, Mediapart. This is particularly strange given that the pieces in question were a collaboration between The World, Mediapart, and PC duck. All three stories regarding alleged abuse of Quantic Dream were published at the same time, based on collaborative reporting. Quantic Dream sued The world and Mediapart, But no PC duck.

In 2018 The world, Mediapart, and PC duck each published articles alleging various abuses of Heavy rain Quantic Dream developer. These included allegations of widespread sexual harassment, serious outbursts, racist remarks by executives (including studio founder David Cage himself) and the existence of a group of truly employee photoshops. strange and uncomfortable. Quantic Dream responded to these allegations by stamping their feet and filing a libel suit, claiming the allegations were completely baseless attacks.

Mediapart won the lawsuit against the developer by proving its good faith reporting practices. This means that the claims against Quantic Dreams reported by Mediapart, and its reporting practices, have now been court-verified, which is frowned upon for a company trying to exonerate itself from allegations of wrongdoing.

The court decided that The world, on the other hand, had not satisfied the burden of proof, that the French trade union publication IT Solidarity supports was caused by The worldrefusal to disclose anonymous sources to court.

Establishing the truth in French libel cases can be notoriously difficult. You must prove not only that what you are saying is true, but that you have all the relevant evidence at the time of posting. All of this onus is on the defendant. By refusing to disclose his sources to the court, The world may not have been able to prove that the information was verifiably coming from, even if it was true.

All this to say that the practice of basic journalistic ethics could have resulted in the publication’s conviction for defamation. It is not that rare. Relying on anonymous sources, despite its ability to reveal incredibly important stories like misconduct at Quantic Dream, comes with risks, and vulnerability to libel lawsuits can be one of them.

However, it is important to put this loss in context. The allegations against Quantic Dream have not been proven false. The world apparently lost for a procedural matter. In reality, MediapartThe successful defense of only gives credence to the allegations against Quantic Dream.

In addition, French courts are based on the law as it is written, and not on precedence, as in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the United States, decisions of higher courts set the standard for future proceedings, which is not the case in France. Instead, judges act almost solely on the letter of the law. This does not mean that the precedent has no influence on subsequent decisions, but that its effect is much more limited. This loss, fortunately, does not lay the legal basis for future harassment of journalists, although it may encourage other companies to pursue libel lawsuits.