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Star Citizen devs Cloud Imperium fined for discriminating against autistic programmer over work-from-home requestUK tribunal finds that company “treated the claimant unfavourably” due to disability
UK tribunal finds that company “treated the claimant unfavourably” due to disability
Image credit:Cloud Imperium
Image credit:Cloud Imperium
A UK employment tribunal have orderedStar Citizendeveloper Cloud Imperium to pay around £27,748 - approximately $35,230 - in compensation for discriminating against former senior programmer Paul Ah-Thion, who was dismissed in 2022 after his requests to work from home following an office move were denied.
Ah-Thion, however, had found that working from home allowed him to avoid what he describes as the exhaustion and distress of working on Cloud Imperium’s premises. The article doesn’t go into detail about this, but it’s worth noting here that many autistic people havegreat difficultywith the sensory environment and social expectations of in-office work, unless proper accommodations are made.
The tribunal, however, rejected many of Cloud Imperium’s justifications for the dismissal, noting that in the absence of a formal investigation of Ah-Thion at the time, “concern about the claimant’s performance seemed rather retrospective”. According to a Cloud Imperium witness at the trial, the company never formally asked Ah-Thion to return to the office, despite their alleged misgivings about the impact of remote-working on his performance.
The tribunal also found that Cloud Imperium “failed to give any evidence to suggest why they could not monitor [Ah-Thion’s performance] successfully remotely whilst he was working from home” and that “there is no evidence that working from home would have failed to achieve the respondent’s legitimate aim of ensuring the acceptable performance of a senior gameplay programmer”. As such the tribunal’s conclusion is that Cloud Imperium “treated the claimant unfavourably because of something arising in consequence of his disability”, and that the company could have offered thereasonable adjustmentof letting him work from home.
“It was clear to me from the start that CIG didn’t want people to work from home after the expense of their new Manchester office, and worked backwards from that to retroactively conjure up reasons why my request should be denied, something they continued to do right up until the final tribunal hearing - all while ignoring disability legislation. It was gratifying that the tribunal saw through them as easily as they did.” The legislation Ah-Thion refers to here is presumably the UK’s2010 equality act.
