Sony PlayStation Staff Outraged Over CEO’s Abortion Rights Stance In Email About Cats

One employee said they’d “never been so mad about a cat birthday before,” according to Bloomberg.
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The CEO of PlayStation is under fire.

Employees at Sony Group Corporation say they are outraged over an email that the head of PlayStation sent days after a leaked draft indicated that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, Bloomberg first reported.

PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan sent an email to employees on Thursday in which he remained neutral about his stance on abortion rights and encouraged others to “respect differences of opinion” — before launching into five ill-timed paragraphs about his two cat celebrating their birthdays.

“We owe it to each other and to PlayStation’s millions of users to respect differences of opinion among everyone in our internal and external communities,” he wrote. “Respect does not equal agreement. But it is fundamental to who we are as a company and as a valued global brand.”

Jim Ryan, Sony Interactive Entertainment president and chief executive officer, received backlash after sending employees an email asking them to “respect differences of opinion” around abortion rights before concluding the ill-received message with paragraphs about his cats' birthdays.
Jim Ryan, Sony Interactive Entertainment president and chief executive officer, received backlash after sending employees an email asking them to “respect differences of opinion” around abortion rights before concluding the ill-received message with paragraphs about his cats' birthdays.
PATRICK T. FALLON via Getty Images

Ryan then suddenly switched topics, diving into a story about his two cats celebrating their first birthdays and telling his employees he “would like to share something lighthearted to help inspire everyone to be mindful of having balance that can help ease the stress of uncertain world events.”

Gushing over his furry friends, Ryan boasted about getting birthday cakes for his cats, talked about their habits and revealed his dreams of owning a dog one day.

Employees at multiple PlayStation studios expressed being put off by the tone of the email, according to internal company discussions viewed and reported on by Bloomberg.

Some female employees said they felt disrespected by the message. One employee said they’d “never been so mad about a cat birthday before.”

One employee tweeted that he had responded to Ryan’s email to say the company “could be doing a better job.”

Other Twitter users have also condemned Ryan’s email.

Though PlayStation hasn’t taken public a stance on abortion rights, other companies in the video game industry have.

Notably, Bungie Inc., the developer of the Destiny game and a company that Sony agreed to buy earlier this year for $3.6 billion, blasted the leaked Supreme Court draft as “a direct attack on human rights” in a blog post last week.

“Standing up for reproductive choice and liberty is not a difficult decision to make,” Bungie said in the post.

Some have praised Bungie’s concrete stance on abortion rights.

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