Hello and welcome to NBC IGN's Nintendo podcast. I'm your host, Casey DeFreetis. And this week we will be talking about smash and I'm sorry, but more Pokemon Nintendo more games and some more. I'm joined this week by Tom Marx.

Hello, Brian Altano. Hi everyone. And pair Schneider. Hello.

And before we do get started with our normal run of show, I did want to address some questions that have been popping up in the Nintendo podcast forum community.

One of these specific questions comes from Sam Schumacher and he asked, does IGN have any intention of addressing the additional claims made recently about toxic workplace culture at the company pair? Could you answer this question for us?

Yeah, I appreciate our NBC fans asking the question. I saw the questions. IGN is not just the content we publish, but it's also about the people that create it.

So I want to read this. It's usually not my style to read something, but I want to make sure I get to everything and not miss anything. So obviously there are privacy issues involved. So I can't talk specifics about current or former employees that sort of message has to come from them.

With regards to statement my boss, Yael Probe provided a statement on behalf of our management team. So at the time you're listening to this, you may have already seen it.

Personally, I tried to be an accessible manager and invite people to come to me with grievances, request for advice and support or feedback.

If any employee past our present felt like they couldn't approach me or that I didn't treat their concerns with anything, but immediately in thoughtfulness, I'm sorry.

I strive to make the best decisions to resolve challenges, but I'm never done listening and learning. So we made a lot of changes to IGN a few years back to ensure that we provide a more positive work environment to all of our employees.

That included major staff changes. And for example, 360 manager reviews, which allow for anonymous feedback if someone's not comfortable to chat directly with that manager for any reason.

I moved out of an office into an open floor space in the office to be more personally involved with everyone too.

We've got annual training and sexual harassment training courses for all, not just for new employees, and we're ruling out more manager training.

And we're continuing to look at other available resources that make sure our training is as thorough and as responsible as possible.

Some things I spotted and tried to fix through coaching or staffing changes. Others unfortunately wasn't aware of until recently.

It's the latter that I'm focusing on so that I can do a better job for our team as a whole in the future.

I recently reached out to a few people who recounting experiences four years ago on social media that weren't known to me.

For example, there was an account about mishandling a new story that went against our editorial policies and Tina or EIC reached out to the parties involved and acknowledged and corrected the past failure in process.

I feel really good about the team we have in place now and haven't been at IGN in the last few years.

I know it's not always easy to see the direct change or how it's impacted our culture and our work, but I hope the changes we made in our still making help us continue to evolve as managers and as an organization.

Thank you everyone.

Thank you very much for addressing that pair. I appreciate it and I do want to say I appreciate our community for holding this accountable and asking these questions and caring.

...