There is little evidence of anything right now, thats the point most of us are trying to make. I owe neither party anything, I'm just telling you what happens in business. Severance pay is normal, could that be construed as a payout, of course, could they be trying to pay him off, of course.

Crunch is bad, most of us have never done the types of crunch that apparently these guys do, but even doing a small number of hours over and pressure can really make you depressed and for some people it can lead to breakdowns. Thats why the industry loves younger people cause they seem to be able to hack it more than older people. At no point did I say crunch is good, its not.

I dont know what happened, but nor does anyone else on the web, but I am just telling you that crunch is bad, people you work with can be bad, people having breakdowns can be bad. Perhaps he had a bastard of a boss or lead, totally plausible because people have had awful bosses, but on the other shoe perhaps he's one of those employees who are just so much hard work or a total nightmare. The issue I have is people are stating matter of factly that a tweet is 100%.

You seem to have missed the point of what I said entirely. I know what HR stands for (fun fact, technically I work HR, so yeah) but especially in the US, in larger corporations, the focus tends to be on protecting the company at the end of the day, not necessarily the individual employee.  Coincidentally just today on Reddit near the top of /r/all is a thread full of (anecdotal) stories reminding people that HR is nothing close to your friend in many companies. 

It's a shame to say, but things don't work the way they're designed to. It's naive to think something like this can't happen the way it's described. The burden of proof will obviously fall on the employee here, though. That's why I'm leaving my mind open until the story fully develops. 

Consider that he may not have wanted to sue, due to the exposure and embarrassment/shame it could bring.

Also, didn't he decline $20K?

Maybe Mr X [the Harrasser] will go on Twitter and say how much he had the hots for Dave.

The percentage of false reports in sexual harassment cases is very low (you can read some studies on it if you don't believe me, google is your friend), so this is most likely real as well. Why would anyone put this kind of attention on himself if it wasn't true? It's not like he has anything to win here if it is indeed a false accusation (there's no court case and he hasn't filed one)..

I'd rather believe the guy is telling the truth. Even if there's no evidence.

Was clearly a joke. 

I konw, I was joking back

Including me. It's in my original post. At what point did I ever say that any side here had the absolute truth? In fact I said there was little evidence in general and that it would be hard to get any proof whatsoever, one way or the other.

I tend to be careful about not flat out dissmissing a rape claim, but that is about as much courtesy as I've given in my original comment. I spoke in hypothesis, so I'm not sure why you felt the need to tell me about severence pays in the first place. I know it's a practice in the industry. Bringing them up in this context only makes sense as an attemt to deconstruct Ballards claims and nothing else. I'm not about to do that. Not if there is a chance that what he's saying is true.

I'm also not about to jump on Sony and fling wild accusations. Again, the gist of my comment was: If Sony is indeed the Company Ballard claims them to be, then this denail is not unexpected. I didn't take sides, I didn't state his claims as fact. So why you felt compelled to reply with a counter argument as to Ballards claims I am not sure.

I also didn't mean to imply you said crunch was good either. You brought up the hypothesis of Ballard having a breakdown and sony wanting to be rid of him and my reply was: Breakdowns are to be expected with the working consitions he likely faced. I wasn't trying to insinuate that it was you glorifying crunch, but higher ups in the industry often do, to justify abysmal working conditions and cost cutting. Maybe I could have made that clearer.

The following is just my own little rant about crunch, so feel free to ignore it, but maybe it will give you a little context to my prior comment:

Yes, crunch is bad and exploitative. We agree on that. I've worked crunch, though nothing over half a year, and I've seen my colleagues, faint, develop stomach ulcers, get panic attacks and high blood pressure, eating disorders and a multitude of other stress related side effects. I only got out because I reduced my hours to a manageble level (I had a good excuse because I went back to uni to a masters). We're talking about people in their early to mid twenties here, exactly the kind of young people who are supposedly better at handling crunch, but the truth is they are just much less in a position to say 'no' to it and much more vulnerable to exploitation. Every single one of the people I work with has developed a stress related illness of differing severety, add to that, that our direct superior would get rid of all of us in a heartbeat if she could afford it, but takes people leaving for better jobs in better studios as a personal slight.

Honestly from when I first read about this thing I found it somewhat weird.

He claims being sexually harassed, claims that he was offered $20k shut up money that he turned down. Mind you, if he was being offered something like that that is an admission of guilt.... and he would have gotten at least 10 times more if he took it seriously.

Then now he has been inspired to go all Watergate on us but didn't mention any names even after mentioning an attempt to pay him off.

I think there is something else to all this than what he's claiming.