Sony donated $50,000 :)

[SvennoJ]

Ryuu96 said:

Eltonio said:

This is such a funny discussion because everyone should be taking a step back.

This donation was motivated by Jim Ryan distasteful comments in which he trivialized the struggle for reproductive rights by going on and on about his cat birthdays in the message saying that Sony wanted to stay neutral.

Neutral is ok. You don't want to take side in the culture war, then ok do it. Just don't speak about your cats in the same breath.

Secondly, and I will maybe shock you, those who are educated and have purchasing power are mostly pro abortion. You can spin it as much as you want but largely the consumers are largely pro choice.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018-demographic-tables.aspx

This is a poll which is heavily skewed to favor the pro choice position, as a lot of polls are reporting a lower share of US citizen who are pro-life. You can still see that:

Young people (future consumers)
Educated people (Future policy makers and future leaders)
People who earn a lot of money (Consumers + maybe shareholders)

These three groups are pro choice. Now you can debate all you want about why when how. The fact is that, people who are important for companies are actually (edit because I wrote pro-life instead of pro-choice:) pro-choice and if this part of their most important values, then they don't want to see companies trivializing the discourse.

This small time donation is an attempt to repair the PR catastrophe created by Jim Ryan. Nothing else.

Okay, fair. Maybe I wouldn't be so bothered if Jim Ryan didn't send such a God awful email which trivialised the issue by immediately banging on about his cats and then saying he likes dogs cause they're obedient...Pretty weird thing to point out when you've just sent an email essentially telling your employees to shut up, almost feels passive aggressive to me, I like dogs cause they're obedient, you should be obedient too.

But if Sony doesn't want to comment on it then whatever, don't comment on it at all, I still don't think they should muzzle individual studios or employees on the issue though, Sony may be Japanese but many of these studios are American and have their own thoughts and opinions on the matter and are ultimately ran by individual people who are looking out for their employees.

Maybe it's a cultural thing? I don't really find it offensive to talk about other 'simple' things in the same email. Apparently that's his normal rambling in his emails and the statement is the extra. He did put the statement above the cat story...

Would it have been better as a separate email? Would that not just put more emphasis on the 'stay inline' part. As a friendly reminder to be respectful to other's opinions, seems about right to me to add it into the weekly 'my life' update. Yet in the 'west' nowadays everything is dissected fully for 'outrage' potential.

Of course the follow up from Insomniac that they have to stay quiet is a different matter. That's not being respectful of opinions, that's squashing them. But that works both ways. They also don't want their subsidiaries openly promote pro-life.

Anyway putting 1 and 1 together, it's clear now after the donation. Sony is pro-choice, doesn't want any of their subsidiaries to promote pro-life. They just don't have the balls to openly say it.