California sues Activision/Blizzard for employment discrimination because of sex, retaliation, discrimination & harassment, unequal pay
- Thread starter Seri
- Start date
- News Activision/Blizzard
Some Activision devs tweeted about leaving that side of the company because good ol' tax dodger Bobby K just doesn't like giving a living wage to his workers.
That Kotaku article is all the more fucked up for being able to see the actual photo evidence. Burn it all down.
"Rapists in my company? Oh good I needed an excuse to trim some fat. "
It's interesting how much I could relate to what she experienced having also started in CS for years, despite being male. My heart goes out to her but I just want to say she writes really well. Good for her for knowing she deserved to be on the Diablo team as a writer even if Blizzard couldn't recognize that.My Experiences at Blizzard Entertainment
Like many women either formerly or currently at Blizzard Entertainment, I had a fair share of bad experiences. While I immensely value my ti...wtbrecognition.blogspot.com
From a former Community Manager for Diablo
Yeah I've seen a lot of Blizz employees (mostly former) who worked in community management or customer service speaking about how they were treated like second class employees. Afraid to bring in player feedback since the devs take it out on them, or simply told to "not bother" the devs. Even given different color badges at events so no one could possibly mistake them for a "real" developer.
lol this matches up perfectly with blizz devs being extremely egoistical and stuck up about their games. "No it is the children who are wrong" mentality.
I'm sure this will trigger a positive and dramatic overhaul of corporate culture within Activision Blizzard, and the industry at large (and obviously, some horrible shit will continue to fester in the darker corners for some time). I wonder though, being completely out of my depth on the topic of the suit, how likely it is that Activision Blizzard will actually lose ground or be successfully indicted in this suit?
it is a civil lawsuit, not a criminal case so the company is not being indicted.
i wouldnt be surprised if activision blizzard decided to just settle the suit on california's terms without admitting wrongdoing. dragging this out in court could bring more bad things to light and i dont think the company wants that.
I'm not sure it will.
it didn't at Ubisoft. Even if we consider the different ownership contexts, Ubisoft kept making money. I'm guessing Activision-Blizzard will keep printing money, too.
The sexism issues are ingrained. Their initial responses showed the true corporate feeing on their issues. They've twice hired outside firms to supposedly analyze their pay data but still continued with sexist pay and employment practices.
I don't feel any company deserves the benefit of the doubt that they will change, and this one in particular should be one of the last to receive it.
It likely won't change anything in the industry. Only major unionization across the industry can lead to systemic change.
They're gonna spin the "Crosby Suite" in court like Kavanaugh spun "boofing" in his confirmation hearings aren't they?
From the Kotaku article:
From the Kotaku article:
If even that.
again Ubisoft had unions and that changed jackshit.
true! maybe more radical and strategic unions, I guess. Or just nationalize them and turn them into worker co-ops or collectives or something :P
That wouldn't even solve anything, actual political parties that look like they could serve as models are also rife with abuse and have their own lawsuits about mass abuses.
There is literally no easy answer, firing everyone in a meaningful position of power and putting a strong frame to make sure this is swiftly dealt with quickly is like the only solution I can see.
Also completely revamp education to stamp out this behavior at the early age.
There is something wrong with how boys are raised and it needs to be faced heads on.
It does help though, the union just sued Ubisoft on a criminal court 12 days ago.
Union suing Ubisoft.
Very different than only the state making pressure.
It certainly helps but it's not a cure all.
Unions or no unions, Ubisoft leadership still protected rapists and abusers like they were in a US atwill state.
Yeah, but lets not be dismissive of a Union positive influence, although there is a general cultural problem that needs work for sure though.
Oh most of the industry ABSOLUTELY need better unions (or unions at all) but the truth of the matter is that in this specific case, it did nothing to stop the abuse from taking place.
There is also the fact that French justice system is notorious for being absolute shit in cases like that.
A union representative was raped in her home and the police botched the investigation and the judge convicted the victim for inventing the crime (the conviction was later overturned, the rapist is still at large).
I don't think Ubisoft is sweating all that much (and if you followed how Quantic Dream acted during their time in court, you have to wonder what the leadership of a much bigger, more powerful company think about this at all).
Oof, that sounds rough, didn't knew the justice system in France was that rough in that type of cases, though I have been following the Quantic Dream lawsuit, David Cage is a confirmed bigot, asshole and creep, the two best friends play (rip) were right all along.
It's really help by how shit police is in these cases.
A woman was killed gruesomely by an ex in "my backyard" (read close to my hometown) not so long ago, she filled multiple complaints and the cop who took the complaints have just been convicted for beating people in his family... and of course he made it his personal goal that nothing happened.
Since the prosecutors rely on the police to investigate crimes, I'm gonna let you guess why these types of stuffs never go anywhere.
I can't believe anyone looked at Quantic Dream's output and thought of the initial allegations "nah, something like that could never happen from these guys".
At least we know David Cage isn't a secret genius whose material is just lost in translation or something.
Kellen Browning, Jason Schreier, Kara Swisher, Casey Newton, and the NYT are discussing this right now on Twitter Spaces:
It's true that what the lawsuit by the state of California shows is that workers have too much rights!
I was waiting on David Brevik's personal take on this as one of the OG's. I'll have to watch his stream later today.
"Cosby Suite" is just Activision's "surprise mechanics." God what a deplorable bunch of individuals all round.
Still catching up with this thread from the weekend, and maybe it means something, maybe it doesn't, but I do find it interesting that all of the individual statements I've read from staff on the Activision side (mainly CoD staff) have been:
"The company PR is bullshit and doesn't represent my opinion."
And all of the individual statements from the Blizzard side have been:
"Saddened by this news, which I am hearing about for the first time. I've always tried to be the best ally I could be. In fact my mom is a woman."
"The company PR is bullshit and doesn't represent my opinion."
And all of the individual statements from the Blizzard side have been:
"Saddened by this news, which I am hearing about for the first time. I've always tried to be the best ally I could be. In fact my mom is a woman."
That's an accurate summation of a lot of the statements from the names people would be more likely to know from Blizzard (the Metzens, Streets, Morhaimes etc), but there have been a ton of comments from Blizzard employees similar to how you're characterizing the Activision ones:
(Ran into embed limit):
Dafuq... is there no end to vile shit spewing out of ActiBlizz?
I was listening to a Twitter room discussing this that had Jason Schrier yesterday, and Schrier actually speculated that, with the major focus of this seeming to be on Blizzard, Kotick may use this as opportunity to consolidate power even more. "We tried giving them some autonomy and look what happened. I'll have to put my people in there to clean it up." That kinda thing.
Looks Blizzard blue, maybe it's some internal support thing.
Blizzard logo: #00b5ff - 0% red, 71% green and 100% blue
Twitter avatars: #00aeff - 0% red, 68.2% green and 100% blue
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Maureen Kearney
Quick and dirty links
L'étrange agression d'une syndicaliste d'Areva, au cœur d'une erreur judiciaire
Dans son livre La syndicaliste, la journaliste Caroline Michel raconte l'histoire de Maureen Kearney, responsable syndicale de haut niveau chez Areva, retrouvée chez elle ligotée et mutilée en décembre 2012, et accusée d'avoir simulé son agression.
www.franceinter.fr
France Inter made podcasts about it
La syndicaliste et le Scandale d’État
Aujourd’hui dans Affaires sensibles : l’histoire d’un fait divers derrière lequel se cache pourtant… Un incroyable thriller et un scandale d’État ! Invitées la journaliste Caroline Michel-Aguirre et Maureen Kearney personnage central et victime de l'affaire.
www.franceinter.fr
Fiction : Suspicion. L'agression (épisode 1)
L’histoire d’un fait divers, dont vous n’avez sans doute jamais entendu parler, et derrière lequel se cache un incroyable thriller et un scandale d’État. La nouvelle fiction d’Affaires Sensibles nous y plonge toute cette semaine durant 5 épisodes.
www.franceinter.fr
That was my suspicion but i thought maybe I missed a movement here.Looks Blizzard blue, maybe it's some internal support thing.
Blizzard logo: #00b5ff - 0% red, 71% green and 100% blue
Twitter avatars: #00aeff - 0% red, 68.2% green and 100% blue
Weird to cling so much to company "family" culture when you want to change company "family" culture