Where they'll feel it the most is in hiring. Everyone in the industry is watching and if they don't fix their house, it will be very hard for them to hire and retain the engineers and designers who build and run their games.
Ehh, maybe.. Lots of people want to make games, and the games industry is notorious for having a perpetual labor glut (relative to most SW development, at least). That's why compensation and working conditions both tend to be significantly lower than average there (again, for SW dev).
Don’t think I agree with this. Rampant sexism and general abuse of workers has been an open secret in the game development world for many years now, and people still line up to work at the big studios because they love games.
Project oriented companies have the luxury of trying out new cultures one team at a time - if they get management buy-in.
The real danger comes when the project fails, for any reason at all. People who like the new direction self-select into the experiment, and if the experiment fails they are more likely to find themselves laid off, give notice, or be disillusioned and stick around anyway.
I am very suspicious, for instance, if this is what happened at GM with the EV1. Effectively the rabblerousers got put onto a project, which they cancelled it quite abruptly and then backed away from the green vehicle space for a very long time.
But that too makes a dangerous assumption. This behavior is not uncommon. Having a reputation for such behavior may just attract similar people, people who want to work in such environments. While they would probably get fewer women, they might get more of exactly the wrong type of men.
