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California sues Activision/Blizzard for employment discrimination because of sex, retaliation, discrimination & harassment, unequal pay
- Thread starter Seri
- Start date
- News Activision/Blizzard
It's basicall: See! I'm not a piece of shit! I worship a big feminist! when will peoplr learn that it doesn't matter if you worship or like a group, your still capable of being horrible.
After witnessing the way Ubisoft handled it... with a fluffy PR video and empty promises, I wish I could say that I believe something will happen. Even if Blizzard is found to be guilty of the charges, what I suspect will happen is for a continuation of what is currently ongoing. The company will continue to cannibalize itself and release increasingly more disappointing products, fail to meet Activision's ridiculous goals and at some point either have all the studios folded or merged into other teams.
I'd love for things to improve, but I'm far too pessimistic to believe that will actually be the case. At least if they're found guilty that will set a legal precedent and that might help others in the future... that's the only silver lining I can think of in this scenario.
Good on Source Gaming for doing this. I'm sorry that Krane had to scuttle a video, but I'm happy they're taking a stand.
He speak like he didn't know anything about all this in his 28 years at Blizzard as a higher up management.
Great! I like Source Gaming's stuff. Good to see them make this decision.
Cher Scarlett's replies to the tweet above are very interesting.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm going to try and embed the initial response from Scarlett:
Taking responsibility and apologizing for your role in this is paramount, Mike, and I really appreciate it.
When things got really bad in bnet - many of us felt abandoned by you, and what's worse, when I was threatened with physical harm and panic cc'd you about it -
When things got really bad in bnet - many of us felt abandoned by you, and what's worse, when I was threatened with physical harm and panic cc'd you about it -
Thread.
This is a nice start but to me, from him specifically that's just a bunch of hollow words to get some good graces from the people for whatever comes out of Dreamhaven. I'd like to hope that at the very least, if they didn't plan to change the "old Blizzard" culture over there, that they do now. This apology to me though does not absolve him or any of his higher ups that followed him from all the heinous shit they did to these women for so many years.
Also, I'm seeing some Blizzard employees on Twitter, including Jon Spector the OWL VP issuing an attempt at an apology:
Again, this is a nice start but I'd like to see more of the upper management folks from Acti-Blizzard come forward, issue a proper and official apology on behalf of the company and provide an action plan for what will be done to better the work conditions over there. I do wonder if this will happen though, when we are seeing internal emails outright denying any claims, not to mention admitting fault would likely get them in even more legal trouble.
Also, I'm seeing some Blizzard employees on Twitter, including Jon Spector the OWL VP issuing an attempt at an apology:
Again, this is a nice start but I'd like to see more of the upper management folks from Acti-Blizzard come forward, issue a proper and official apology on behalf of the company and provide an action plan for what will be done to better the work conditions over there. I do wonder if this will happen though, when we are seeing internal emails outright denying any claims, not to mention admitting fault would likely get them in even more legal trouble.
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This is so fucked up. So much needs to happen here and it falls directly on the CEO. Bobby Kottick needs to resign immediately and hold himself accountable for all of this. Blizzard also needs to do the same.
There is absolutely no apology that is good enough to make this better. Action must be taken and individual staff must be punished appropriately for this.
Until then, I'm not paying a single penny for anymore games by these companies, they can fuck right off.
There is absolutely no apology that is good enough to make this better. Action must be taken and individual staff must be punished appropriately for this.
Until then, I'm not paying a single penny for anymore games by these companies, they can fuck right off.
idontbelieveyou.gif
Words are wind. This guy worked there for 28 years. He knew. Zero fucking way he didn't enable it. I don't believe his empty fluff whatsoever.
And there it is.
And look, another guy who is full of shit:
pikashock.gif
Good for them, someone else prepared to make a real stand rather than just continue with an easily ignored footnote.
Given the pervasiveness and openness of the toxic, abusive culture at Blizzard and his 28 years of working there, it is hard to read this statement as anything other than empty words. There's no way he never saw it, there's no way he never heard about it. At minimum he enabled that culture by doing nothing. At worst he participated in it by not supporting women who came forward, even if he did not harass any women himself.
Can't wait when, in like two to three days, literally every head, lead and Senior from Blizzard gave their heartfelt tweet about how they never knew, only to literally push all blame to the staff they should have taken care of in the first place.
I'm sorry but I don't trust almost any employee.
Now you feel bad? Now you feel sorry for the victims? Now? Oh it is so easy when things are made public: you publish a little tweet, people praise you a bit and you go on a mini-vent about how bad you feel, about how disgusted you are with your company's message.
Where were you 15 years ago? 10? 5? 2? Where? You turned a blind eye, because "dealing with that it's not my job". And now that the fire is under your ass, you go on Twitter, apologize, talk about how you and oh your so fellow coworkers are supporting each other throughout this.
It's EXHAUSTING to read people who were COMPLICIT on Twitter talking about how evil, unacceptable and shameful these practices are. It's genuinely exhausting. They seem to never know.
Now you feel bad? Now you feel sorry for the victims? Now? Oh it is so easy when things are made public: you publish a little tweet, people praise you a bit and you go on a mini-vent about how bad you feel, about how disgusted you are with your company's message.
Where were you 15 years ago? 10? 5? 2? Where? You turned a blind eye, because "dealing with that it's not my job". And now that the fire is under your ass, you go on Twitter, apologize, talk about how you and oh your so fellow coworkers are supporting each other throughout this.
It's EXHAUSTING to read people who were COMPLICIT on Twitter talking about how evil, unacceptable and shameful these practices are. It's genuinely exhausting. They seem to never know.
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It seems to be about this clip. https://twitter.com/Asmongold/status/1418442045090304072
In short, don't hound people on social media to resign and shit. People responsible need to be held accountable, not everyone who had no involvement in harassment and abuse needs to suffer from this.
You might wanna rephrase that
Edit: Seems like he said the same thing as Asmongold too. I'll link it here since it's related to the first part of my post.
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It doesn't matter if Mike was kept in the dark on some stuff. It's the whole leadership's responsibility to create a safe environment for every single person working there. Actively, day in, day out. If Mike really wants to apologize, he will make sure none of this happens again under Dreamhaven. Is Afrasiabi still working at Blizz?
yes, I RTed that yesterday. I'm specifically talking about male employees that have been tweeting about how bad they feel and how they are fighting the good fight in Blizzard when they are Lead/Senior devs. My message doesn't go against any victim no matter their gender.
I mean people like Danuser, Spector, etc. Where were they when this was happening? It's so easy to post a goody two shoes messages on Twitter now that everything's public.
Nicely said.
And even if some of their words are genuinely felt, it's still only said in the public embarrassment of the moment.
How will they feel in 6 months? In 3 years?
The most appropriate action for a leader to take under these circumstances is to announce a period of reflection and learning before action takes place. Then, a few weeks/months later when the news has died down, announce exactly what steps you have already taken to sincerely address the issue. For starters.
By the very nature of the issue, this company does not understand the problem. One afternoon of responding to negative press on Twitter is utterly meaningless, but sadly, legal action seems to be the required tool for an opportunity at genuine reflection. This carries the likely risk of causing them to privately dig in their heels while publicly reciting their rehearsed lines behind masked faces.
Ultimately, as consumers it may be up to us to make purchasing decisions with all of these factors in mind.
Oh sure, I understand. Like Jake Allen Brack giving out the statement of fighting bro culture, yet we have that Blizzcon clip of him doing nothing but condoning it.
Yeah, it's about that.
Sorry for all the male victims of harassment or abuse, obviously the beginning of the message wasn't as precise as it should've been and it's clear that victims no matter their gender are absolutely not responsible for this. I apologize and I wish the best for all of you.
But holy fuck. Seeing so many tweets from "Lead Narrative Designer" "Senior Dev at Blizzard" saying "We are desolated and we are traumatized by the news and we do not agree with the corporate message". Come on.. :/
Pretty much. Having worked in problematic studios myself, I refuse to believe that this caught them by surprise.
People in their position knew. They knew and did nothing.
I will get myself upset and angry again today if I continue, but I'm fully in agreement with your sentiments, all of these two faced platitudes coming out now, and only now after this has started to be reported by the mainstream press are nothing but cheap words.
Ubisoft got bad press, but they're still owned by their CEO who has put abusers in place through nepotism, so there's not much actually forcing their hand to change.
The most significant difference in this case is that this isn't just bad press, there's a lawsuit asking for the government to step in and demand enforcement of standards on the threat of further legal action.
It is highly possible. Big companies often have a tendency to create silos and bubbles, groups of people that are close to one another, and that rarely accept people outside those bubbles in their social circles.
They also tend to have leads and craft managers for a group of people. In such a situation, a lead is not actually a people manager person, so unless told directly, they would not be the ones that those underneath them in the chain would speak to about people issues. As usually a lead's responsibility is just the project itself. Those responsibilities and accountabilities would fall on the craft managers, people who are responsible to guide the employees of each craft through their careers. They would be the first line of defense, after which HR would get involved.
I've no idea how AB are structured, though.
I do think that even very well-meaning CEOs and other top-level employees can be unaware of problem managers and employees further down the chain because it ultimately just takes one "smart-enough" asshole that treats only their underlings badly—who of course struggle to speak out about it, especially if they lack proof and said asshole is indeed behaving appropriately to everyone else.
But even that is still very much a failure of leadership in so far, that it lacked effort in establishing the right company culture. The baseline should be that everyone in the company is extremely well aware that sexual harassment and such are an absolute nogo. That any such incident will always result in significant punishment. That there are legit options to report higher up the chain that and get taking seriously. And so forth. No fucking 'harmlessly meant' sexist jokes. No "he's so talented and we need him..."
When your company openly has these "cube crawl" events you clearly fucked up massively.
But even that is still very much a failure of leadership in so far, that it lacked effort in establishing the right company culture. The baseline should be that everyone in the company is extremely well aware that sexual harassment and such are an absolute nogo. That any such incident will always result in significant punishment. That there are legit options to report higher up the chain that and get taking seriously. And so forth. No fucking 'harmlessly meant' sexist jokes. No "he's so talented and we need him..."
When your company openly has these "cube crawl" events you clearly fucked up massively.
Oh yea absolutely. This also brings up the industry's decades old problem that a lot of people in leadership positions are not suited to be in such positions.
This is so true.
Just because you are good at a role in a project, let's say designing game systems, does not mean you can manage people.
I think most developers, designers, even in lead positions, are more focused on the projects than managing people. The day is just too short to deal with both.
EDIT: strike that.
New counsel withdrew settlement and DFEH filed suit against them in 2020.
Riot Games’ Proposed $10M Settlement Withdrawn by New Counsel in Gender Discrimination Suit
Riot Games' legal woes continue as, on Thursday evening, new legal counsel representing former female employees involved in a class action lawsuit alleging discrimination and sexual harassment against the company opposed December's preliminary settlement of $10 million.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
Riot slams $400m gender discrimination claim; DFEH responds
The League of Legends publisher has responded in no uncertain terms
www.pcgamesn.com
Riot Games will pay $10 million to settle gender discrimination suit
'League of Legends' maker Riot Games has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a gender discrimination suit. Every woman who has worked at the company since 2014 will get a payout.
www.latimes.com
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80% of workers in Japan's creative industries have been harassed within last decade
Some sexual harassment victims complained of unreasonable requests for nudity, while others said they were pressured to give sexual favors in exchange for jobs.
www.japantimes.co.jp
There are too much misogynism and harassment, and Japan is not excluded.
This is the most bizarre response I've seen to this entire state of affairs. Sorry for sounding mean, but you have literally zero basis to say this. Equally, we have a huge amount of evidence to suggest that sexual harassment and assault and systemic sexism / racism is present in most major countries. Japan has significant issues with regards to gender equality and women's issues on international rankings and judgements (even more so that places like America), and they also have a history of dressing female characters up in deeply sexualised outfits to please fans.
I guess what I'm saying is you can't react with horror at this story, and then immediately try to defend your favourite company on the basis of 'I like the men who make my game'. That's not helpful - it's another part of the culture and mindset that enables this abuse and behaviour in the first place.
And just like that, Mike's entire statement goes up in smokes. He is full of shit.
This. Mike 100% knew about it, he worked there for 28 years. He built this company. He was one of the "OG bros" not a single guy standing in his ivory tower oblivious of everything. He sure as fuck knew about the company culture.
Mike statement isn't credible because Alex Afrasiabi is a WOW veteran and a regular harasser (became even a "meme" inside the company). One thing is not to know specific details of some things that are happening within the company but not knowing that one of the leader is such an abuser is simply impossible.
A tale as old as time: Highly compensated upper management is just "SHOCKED" that terrible things have been happening right under their noses. "We had NO idea! We will listen."
It's all bullshit. They knew and were ok with it.
And if they somehow didn't know about it, then they fostered the kind of workplace where the victims were too afraid to speak up.
I mean, only you can really answer that.
Something tells me that there's a lot more shoes that are about to drop at Activision/Blizzard, though.
Do what you'll regret least.
Honestly I don't think that would be enough. The issue is systematic, it has been ongoing for decades at this point. Getting rid of the biggest or most notorious offenders would improve the environment, it would just help the company be less liable in the future, but the issue will remain and persist as long as there aren't active efforts against it.
I hate to be a cynic but I think the only actions the company will take will be the ones necessary to protect themselves legally. Nothing more than that. I'm expecting them to settle so that the case doesn't reach a judgement and set a precedent for themselves and others in the future and after the dust settles, things will go back to their sickening normal.