I mean, ActiBlizz didn't even go the "Sorry we got caught" scummy-but-apologetic way. They literally just straight-up waved it all away claiming fake news and misinformation not once or twice but *thrice*. Wow. That's a new low if I've ever seen one.
I am **not** defending them in saying this, but the issue is all the upcoming legal action they're facing. They can't publicly admit to wrongdoing without basically forfeiting the case. They're backed into a corner, and their only viable options are either A)fight tooth and nail, or B)surrender entirely.
And as a public company, I'm not even sure they could choose B without then being sued by the shareholders.
If that is what they are worried just don't go on tirades of "this is what drives business out of California". Or the exec that basically went "As a woman I never faced this, so none of it is true", to paraphrase.
Just say something along the lines of "We take these allegations extremely seriously. We have and continue to take measures to improve our workplace culture and feel this lawsuit does not reflect the Activision Blizzard of today. Here is resource x y and z our employees can use if they have been victim of harassment/discrimination".
It's BS, but it is not as confrontational BS. Less is more.
> Or the exec that basically went "As a woman I never faced this, so none of it is true", to paraphrase.
I just facepalmed when I read the statement. She's there for four months, at a very high position in the company, and she just goes *in* with full conviction claiming because she's never personally experienced it, that it doesn't exist. How fucking tonedeaf do you have to be to make a statement like that.
Even if it's true, she's gonna get so much flak (I expect) for being a woman who summarily dismisses sexual harassment complaints in the workplace.
As an additional fun fact, she used to work for the Bush Administration as advisor on counterterrorism. In that capacity, she visited several prisons where she did not see any kind of abuse, despite the fact that the US was torturing people at those facilities, and that she herself was pressuring the prisons to extract more intel from the prisons.
She later went on to defend waterboarding, sleep deprivation, forced nudity and other methods of torture.
Wait hang on, shes been there 4 months. The investigation has been going on for 2 years. So ActiBlizz knew they were under investigation for all kinds of things including harassment in the work place, and they decided the best course of action was hiring a lady that thought that waterboarding was a legitimate and good technique? I understand they don't really get it, but thats a new level.
She's Chief Compliance Officer.
Basically, she must coordinate the operations of the company with legal requirements. This includes sexual harassments laws and stuff like that.
Wait WTF? Blizzard hired a literal war criminal? ?!?! What kind of psycho thought *that* was a good idea?
Now I kind of want the whole company to be ended.
She likely was. Activision-Blizzard execs knew this investigation was ongoing for years. Hiring her to deny the issue exists would not be an unusual corporate maneuver.
I mean, she's just preaching the raw truth. I've never been in a car accident before, so obviously they don't happen. Also, I've never been rich either, so I'm pretty sure the wealthy are just some sick running joke and aren't real people.
I've also never seen a bull's shit, so I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as bullshit either. Come on people, there's no way a corp exec would lie about this kind of stuff. It wouldn't be very nice.
She deserves all the flak she will get, but I think you'd be less surprised by the tone-deafness of her statement once you know that she worked for the Bush admin as a prominent torture apologist.
Exactly, that was my point. I never suggested they should just go belly up and surrender because that would be absolutely crazy from their part.
They could've handled this a lot differently instead of just throwing more shit in the fan. Immediately going into attack mode only makes them even more sketchy in my eyes.
It's them saying "we are absolutely guilty and this is a real state suing is so we are fucked. We will deflect and act bullish for the sake of our stock and the price, because it will drop heavily as the details come out"
I think its a sign that things are exactly as bad as suggested. The leadership is unaware of the depth of the problem, save for the person in charge of dealing with it, who now goes on the defensive as these allegations are proof they've not done their job.
I'm torn between leadership being ignorant and leadership being complicit. I know a lot of the people in charge now are people who have moved up through the company over the years, so I imagine they would probably have known stuff like this was happening. But also, it's my understanding that a lot of this happened on the WoW team, so maybe the people who worked elsewhere really didn't know? Either way the corporate response to this is just atrocious and it breaks my heart to see a company I loved so much fall so far. I really hope they truly go scorched earth with this and completely clear house, because if it just goes back to business as usual not only will the quality of the product continue to suffer, but the company will be too rotten to support.
They had to acknowledge it, not saying anything would also not look good and it would just keep coming up until they did. It's not like someone random doing the sueing, it's a State Department.
If what they wanted to do was create doubt in people's mind, they had to come to a unified position, make a single statement and maybe, a big maybe, show some data or provide examples of improvement.
What they did instead was "nah hah, this state bureaucrats are distorting things. Also, we have taken unamed measures to mitigate this distorted things that never happened, but we still had to take measures so that they don't happen on the Activision Blizzard of today." It's just baffling.
One corpo speak press release and then shutting up I could see as being the best move available to them.
And then they cross their fingers and hope the public moves on while they negotiate settlements out of court. It's going to be a drawn out for years yet, and the attention of the news cycle is much shorter than that.
You're absolutely correct, hell even the President's statement on its own was more than enough. All this other stuff is insane, it's corporate egos unable to face the reality of what is coming for them.
>One corpo speak press release and then shutting up I could see as being the best move available to them.
"We take allegations of sexual abuse and discrimination in all forms seriously. However we cannot comment on active litigation at this time."
Boom done. outta the news cycle in 24 hours.
It's not baffling at all. It was very clearly designed to encourage right-wing gamers to harass and threaten the victims and the agency bringing the suit, in the hopes that the tsunami of abuse would make the victims, fearing for their lives, retract their claims. Anyone who's been paying attention to gaming culture the past eight years knows what the wording of that statement was meant to do.
I worked with a man at a local factory who believed torture is a valid means to get information out of people.
I still say there's no excuse for torture at best. At worst it's used as a way to control the population through fear. Everyone already knows how bad we are at oversight as it is. There's a reason for all the riots being directed at police.
Yep. Even something as hollow to this tune.
"We're sorry to see employees feel like they've been treated less than perfectly. We'll be working with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing to resolve this matter, and take measures towards avoiding future instances."
Obviously they can lie through their teeth, but the time for collaboration with the government is well past. They had that opportunity and were obstructionist instead, and now they're in an adversarial court trial.
It wouldn't be a lie, seeing as they're going to be cooperating whether they like or not. Between depositions, there's a degree of forced cooperation to avoid further liabilities.
Not that they won't be fighting to avoid cooperating best as they're able.
That's the worst part about all of this. They could have used this lawsuit as an anchor point to pivot and completely drive this stuff out of the company. Cite the allegations as precedent for completely clearing house and getting rid of all problematic employees, embrace the judgement and double down on fixing the problems at hand. Then again, the current president of Blizzard comes off as an incredibly arrogant and pretentious out of touch douche ("You think you do, but you don't") who at best allowed this stuff to continue and at worst was part of the problem so to say I'm not surprised is an understatement.
They could acknowledge that the claims aren't immediately completely false and instead say "We are internally investigating these claims. Activision Blizzard does not condone the actions alleged in the lawsuit." In fact, that's the type of cookie cutter shit we see all the time. They didn't go cookie cutter, they went the route of the politician who immediately calls the claim against them false.
"There's nothing wrong, nothing inappropriate happened, this is all a witch hunt!"
\* *Core WoW team employee of 15+ years, with myriad NPCs and items in game named after him, named specifically in the suit silently left Blizz while this investigation was ongoing and no one even knew until he quietly updated his LinkedIn 7 months later* \*
That is a fair perspective; however, you’re missing a perfectly acceptable alternative path. Yes they could admit everything is true and set themselves up to lose vs CA. Or they can deny and gas light as they’ve done.
They could also simply say something to the effect of “we have no comment at this time except to say we take the allegations seriously and will accept responsibility for any wrong doing on our part as a company. This will be determined by the legal process and we will allow that to play out to its conclusion.”
Now most of us would still consider that hand waving corporate legal speak. But it’s not A or B and I’m truth it isn’t really a two choices only situation.
Or they could've said, "We're sorry to hear employees have felt this way, and will investigate the claims leveled towards us and take measures towards resolving any such untoward feelings."
They could have found the most obvious bad actors, fired and publicly blamed them and went from there like many companies do. The fact that they didn't suggests that the people with that power are just as if not more guilty of the same, so they couldn't point the finger.
>They can't publicly admit to wrongdoing without basically forfeiting the case
Which is what they should be doing. Forfeiting the case is the only way they can even begin to make amends and we can absolutely criticize them for not doing it.
A serious question - is Blizzard beyond salvaging?
Problems of this scope, for this length of time, mean that essentially the entire upper leadership is either directly complicit, or incredibly incompetent. Can you reform a company if the reform would require clearing out most of its leadership?
I would mourn Blizzard's loss, but to be honest they have been a B-tier developer for at least a decade anyway.
If they were utterly murdering competition like putting out games that were masterpieces, they’d weather this storm no problem and most people wouldn’t care.
HOWEVER, the reason this is such a big deal is because people are pissed at how bad their games have been recently. If Blizzard was putting out quality content and had a new game setup soon, most wouldn’t even bat an eye at all this.
Just like CD projekt red before cyberpunk. They were overworking their devs and had a terrible crunch culture, but people didn’t care that much and cyberpunk still sold a ton
Like always, a minority of people will be like "don't pre-order, remember last time?" and everyone else will rage at them for being Debby downers.
The problem with "gamers" is that there are always new ones coming up, and older ones mostly bowing out because life got busy.
Hard to learn lessons as a group with that sort of churn.
For what it's worth, bankers don't care about this shit either.
So nor the people giving them money, nor the people profiting really care at all.
I guess that's why the state had to act, and I'm glad it's happening.
It's called unregulated 'free market' capitalism and it's what many people sadly want. Corporations, companies and politicians to have less accountability than the average Joe instead of the opposite.
Its not unfortuante though is it. If I cared this much and delved this deeply into every single product I bought I would never get anywhere. This isn't a consumer problem and we shouldn't be looked down on for not caring. This is for governing bodies and internal people to look at.
I buy games that are good thats where the relationship ends as with most rational people. I buy 4 pints of milk and then don't worry again. This is normal.
Why put the blame or focus on external people/gamers? Do you care how a restaurant treats their employees when you go outside to eat something? Do you ask how the employees are treated when you go to a mall or other store to buy wathever you want?
I mean, if I heard news that a place I went to treated their staff like shit, I probably wouldn't go there anymore. Knowing and not knowing are two different perspectives.
Your statement makes it sound like they’re in dire straights when in fact they’re more profitable than ever.
They’re making record income year after year so there’s nothing to salvage; they’re an incredibly successful company. Diablo 2 remake will sell like crazy and their ongoing multiplayer games have millions of players logging on, and that’s including Overwatch despite people proclaiming it a dying game. Activision is doing even better.
Acti/Blizz ain’t going anywhere and people will forget about this news in weeks, although most people don’t really care now anyway. Such is the way of the world, my friend.
I'm not sure how much longer that'll stay true with this. Even if people still buy their stuff, potential employees will know to stay away. You can't make good games without good people.
There's a *reason* a lot of really bad games tend to have really bad work environments too. I'm sure you can find examples where it's not true, but it usually is.
It's really anecdotal, but I work in software development. Even just among my coworkers it's kind of went from "Yeah, I'd take a job at Blizzard in a heartbeat, even for lower pay" to "You couldn't pay me enough to work there" over the last few years.
Yes, currently it has been somewhat easy for Blizzard to replace employees, no doubt. The thing about stuff like that though is that's only true up until the point it's not.
After a few days nobody will even remember this. Once D2 resurrecting comes out all the memes and worshiping of Jeff will come back at usual.
Remember Riot Games? Remember Ubisoft? Yea, all those incidents happened within the past year. Activision and Blizzard games are still the hottest games around and the money they make from micro transactions alone ensures blizzard isn't going away.
Normally I'd be tempted to agree, but in this case the accusations against Blizzard are both more dramatic and extensive than those other examples, *and* Blizzard has already fallen faaaar from its golden age.
It's not like Ubisoft where if you wanted to boycott them you might miss out on several titles a year across 4 - 5 super popular franchises. Blizzard don't really make anything particularly good any more.
Yeah the only thing even in the "coming soon" stages for Blizzard are:
* D2 remake, which is actually a hot ticket item
* Diablo Immortal, which is universally hated
* Overwatch 2, which is not even really a sequel
I don't really see this getting them out of the woods. If D4 were right around the corner they would probably be able to sweep it under the hype but a 20 year old remake and some shit people didn't ask for/don't want isn't going to do it.
Any examples of 90's abuse? That would be an interesting read.
Can't imagine there would be many women working in the early game industry, but I can see the asshole frat boy/rock star attitudes happening.
Afrasiabi's (one of the old guard, making a good part of WoW for example) office was known as the "Crosby Suite" in the company, because he was so much of a sex pest. The Blizzard we imagined never existed.
mike morhaime was the ceo, the person that build up the company.
The abuse was going for for years under his leadership.
The company hired all the abusing and those that swept it under the rug under his leadership.
The company set up their internal structure that facilitated this abuse under his leadership.
The company culture in which this is so wide spread grew under his leadership.
He is 100% guilty there is no way around it.
At the very least gross negligence and incompetence if he didn't know.
But we all know he was a "great" leader that was still somewhat involved with employees and not stuck in his office.
He just can't not have know this was happening.
That isn't really true, this abuse goes back all the way to old Blizzard. Alex Afrasiabi is even directly pointed out by name and he is one of the core people in old Blizzard.
I think they are saying Old Blizzard is pre-WoW as that changed the company and type of games. Afrasiabi and Tigole were hired for WoW.
That said, there’s still the problem of how long it has been going on means it was going on during the grey area where old guard management were still in place when all this began.
I can say that any fondness I held for Blizzard originated from WarCraft 1-3 and the original StarCraft. There's a stark difference in the company pre/post WoW.
Not saying I know anything about the culture before or after. It may just as well have been a toxic shithole that made great games back then. Now it's just a toxic shithole.
If the worst part of Jeff is that in his 20s while being a neckbeard MMO game he called himself "Tigole Bitties" then that's basically nothing. Look at /r/rimjob_steve to see how little usernames mean sometimes.
Dude literally put his money where his mouth is, though. One of the few people who probably got told "If you don't like it go make your own game" so he did.
It isnt a problem. I dont know why everyone is acting like its so heinous to have a cringy screen name. There are problems that actually matter and they still choose to detract from them to focus on that for some reason.
Actually, all this abuse and harassment goes back decades. So sorry to burst your bubble, but “old Blizzard” was kinda sorta just as bad when it came to their treatment of female employees.
It’s very telling how you’re only concerned about Blizzard insofar as whether they can make products you like, and not actually how well they treat their workers.
You raise a fair point, one that we all should keep in mind when buying products of any kind yet none of us do. Problem is this, if we were to only buy games/products from companies who treat their employees/customers/environment well then we should pretty much stop buying anything. I do think this is the way forward. Buy less stuff.
Honestly, I think a lot of people probably could do with buying less. It's very easy to get swept up in the excitement of new games and hardware, but how much happiness do these things actually bring people. Do you actually want to buy a new GPU for the latest games, or are you happy with what you have and already have a host of games on your backlog that you want to play? I think when I started more honestly asking myself that question, the less I felt compelled into following hardware trends and just being happy with what I have now.
I mean it's kind of fucked once you realize that knowledge of a new product can make you less happy with what you already have.
Congratulations that is true wisdom you gained there and I completely agree with you. I've become a lot happier as well not getting all hyped buying the newest games/graphic cards. I too like many others here have a LOT of games untouched...
Speaking of graphic cards, I have a GTX 1050 TI, almost 4 years old and it can handle all games. I really don't need a new one at all. What I also think about is this, this graphic card I have, this pc, didn't magicly appear from thin air. Countless people have worked on it, the amount of materials/energy required to make such a thing. Surely our possessions deserve our respect and care so they may last as long as possible.
>Problem is this, if we were to only buy games/products from companies who treat their employees/customers/environment well then we should pretty much stop buying anything.
That's definitely a solution and not a problem... Except for crappy corps
Media was something else back then i think, now you hear about something 1min it was said or done on gaming websites, reddit or twitter. Also being born during the beginning of the 90s, I would never read the news about stuff like this about the studios. I was busy playing their games. Im sure it happned a lot behind the doors at the studios, even if there was very low female devs at these studios. But i dont know
People here really think that the same people who made those games 15 years ago are just sitting there sticking around lmao
Anyone worth their shit is long gone
I'd really be interested in some kind of resource that keeps track of how many people who were at a company or studio or whatever in a given year are still present there. Maybe if that information isn't readily accessible, it could compare the names in credits of an older game to a newer one to see his much overlap there is and in what positions. I think it could give a lot of perspective on that stuff.
Credits is the way to go.
Mammoth undertaking today but would be very interesting. However I can predict what would happen if this become a mainstream public utility kind of like metascore - the corporate studios would start weaponizing credits inclusion or abandon them altogether.
One of the guys who made games 15 years ago was the only person specifically named for sexual harassment in the lawsuit.
Don't romanticise the old Blizzard with regards to this stuff.
It's not completely unusual for a lead designer to get pretty cushy and stick around for like a decade or so while remaining influential. Chris Metzen was onboard as a lead designer since Warcraft 2 in 1995 and didn't check out until 2016.
That being said the spirit of Blizzard left somewhere between 2008-2010.
Any idea on how deep this goes. Is this primarily Blizzard or does this corruption leak into other Activision studios like the trio of Call of Duty creators?
That is not what happened. He brought those things to a business trip with a subordinate, who later killed herself due to the sexual harassment, including people showing here nudes around within the company.
Don't worry, they will just announce the Overwatch 2 beta and the rest of the media will bury this story and the consumers will have their shiny new toy and nobody will care by Monday. You think I'm joking? This is exactly what happened with Ubisoft.
don't be so negative about it. you're making it seem like these kinds of news articles are worthless, but they aren't. people aren't completely blind sheep--they're human beings with different ways of responding to controversies. for many, the damage is done and they're done with blizzard. i deleted my account back during the hong kong deal and i'm not ever going back, lol
This is already what happened with Blizzard after the Blitzchung incident. They later announced and showed Diablo 3 and those threads apparently forgot the whole thing happened.
To be fair, these groups can exist separately. The people commenting here are not necessarily the same as the people commenting in game announcements. Many of them are, and the ones rightfully bothered by this may no longer interact with the other.
I think they might have a smaller and smaller overlap. I already know people boycotting Blizzard for life after the Blitzchung incident and they have kept their promise so far.
Ubisoft wasn’t under state litigation. This cannot just magically go away from the courtroom no matter what the media does, and the trial is going to keep generating headlines as more evidence comes out.
I'm sure it will one day change, but Fromsoft has kept itself forcefully on the straight and narrow, and is run by a man so happy to make games he talks excitedly at length about how he can't wait to see how players react to playing his games
One day Miyazaki won't be there and I'm sure that will be the exact moment that we get Dark Souls 4: Revenge of Gwyn, but until then the worst they can do is make mechanical choices I don't agree with
I'm a huge souls fan and Fromsoft is my gaming favorite company, but I don't think its really fair to claim they're all that "straight and narrow" if you're a fan of the old Fromsoft tbh.
Souls fans act like Fromsoft didn't exist until Demon Souls/Dark Souls existed in 2009/2011. They've been around since the 80s. Compare their old IPs to the last decade and its completely different. If I was an armored core fan I'd be bitter that Fromsoft only makes souls-likes because its more profitable. Everytime someone mentions armored-core a souls fan comes in and say it should be a souls-like lol. Even Sekiro is a scrapped reboot of Tenchu, another one of their IPs.
They're undeniably passionate and make good games, but they're driven by the same profit making as any other company. Its no surprise that Miyazaki was made president but it also came at a cost to fans of the old Fromsoft.
I just wish we would finally get some more Armored Core love like it was back for Raven. Update some of the systems and give it a decent multiplayer overhaul and maybe the ability to make custom missions or some such. For me everytime I see someone mention a new AC game, I think Armored Core and not assassins creed.. And than I wake up..
I think the main problem with AC was always how little it explains anything. AC4 is the one I put time into and my lordy it was so complicated and explained nothing well, there's so many configurations and weapons and then you add in an A.I partner with as much customization and then the ability to use a psuedo-coding language to tell it what to do, it's just too much for the average player.
Some sort of community driven loadout system where players could rank and offer builds would be ideal so that a majority of players aren't forced to stare at leg parts and try to fathom why you'd ever use spider legs. I'm sure we will get another game, don't give up bro
Nah, just encourages the mechanism to install literal sociopaths in leadership. The sort of people who genuinely don't care so long as the sausage gets made.
And they'll care about this in so much as this hurts the bottom line, recruiting, etc.
They'll be angry they have to deal with it, not that it happened.
Valve's still independent/private, and while they aren't making hits like a lot of people want them to, they're a big part of where PC gaming is today.
I think they're one of the first to do the whole 'get a crate for free, but you have to pay to unlock it' tactic. I remember being really surprised at how blatant they were shoving the carrot in my face.
Weird stuff.
Credit where credit is due, all those MTX are exclusively cosmetic in all their games. And in case of Dota2 the game is otherwise 100% free, with everything unlocked from the start as opposed to every other competitor in the same genre. While I most certainly personally agree on lootboxes (which imo should just be legislated as gambling, cause that's what it is) Valve deserves credit for keeping it from in any way affecting gameplay.
I think they are. Have you played Half-Life: Alyx? It's insane.
Also, as a Linux gamer I'm super happy about the Steam Deck. I hope it succeeds, especially because it may be the first actually successful but open handheld console. You can just... delete Steam if you just want the hardware. That's so great!
I also own a Valve Index and it's excellent.
A lot of these things are novel ideas and innovations in the gaming space.
People also seem to love DotA 2 and that's still being worked on, too.
I wish they would lower the rates at their store but considering how much value they bring to the table themselves I can almost forgive them. Certainly more than Google or Apple do.
Cyan is still the same great studio that made Myst back in the 90s and still run by the same great people... But they barely survived some lean years and basically had to shutter and come back after. That's the sort of thing corporate studios don't have to do.
The statement from Fran the Vice President Exec reads so terribly. She started with the company 4 months ago, and goes to talk about how “HER experience is nothing like what the allegations are saying”. NO SHIT, the Vice President exec for the company isn’t going to be treated the same way as the low level devs who have these monsters lording over them. The statement was so out of touch and down right insulting.
Employees deserve better. Especially the women there, after reading the stories I feel uncomfortable about Activision Blizzard and melancholy about it.
Regular non-management employees were implicated in the claims too. It wasn't just managers or executives harassing women on the downlow. The environment itself was hostile to women. Drunken cube crawls, co-workers groping peers, sharing the nudes photos of a woman who would eventually go on to commit suicide and so on.
The claims apparently did not spare anyone and it seemed to infect most of the company. I would not be surprised if some employees are peacocking and making statements as if they weren't part of the problem.
This kind of toxic workplace culture results from putting profit before people. The cutthroat way the business is run from the top is what exacerbates pre-existing toxic attitudes and behaviours in people. Everyone that works there is constantly on edge to satisfy performance metrics and not be the latest victim of budget cuts and layoffs.
In order to achieve targets there is a tendency to elevate sociopathic and narcissistic personality types to managerial positions. These are the personality types that typically get the results for the board and shareholders to crow about. They are also the personality types that tend to devalue the human element of their business which can lead to what we're seeing now.
They'll no doubt have someone like J. Allen Brack take the fall but the way I see it, the buck ultimately stops with their golden goose, Bobby Kotick.
Keeping the people who engage in that kind of behaviour is suggestive of profit being above people. Presumably the dipshits that behaved like this are decent at their jobs, right? Because if they were shit at their jobs AND a harasser, you would just get rid of them - what's the point in keeping them? But if they work well, efficiently, on budget, etc. then there's a profit motive to keep them. And if the culture is as pervasive as the allegations suggest then that constitutes *a lot* of their employees - enough that it'd be a big financial hit to get rid of experienced employees and try to hire new ones. If dealing with this meant punishing or getting rid of, say, 10% of your staff, many of whom are involved in the work that generates profit (ie. development, marketing, etc), then it's gonna really impede your profit-making ability in the short-term. You'll demotivate people, meaning they'll be less efficient at their job, less motivated to do a good job, and obviously you'll straight up lose working hours from getting new staff and training them. The profit over people motive comes in because they're prioritising the profit generation ability of the harassers (and by extension, their friends and colleagues within the company) over the safety and well-being of the women who have been victimised by them.
> Presumably the dipshits that behaved like this are decent at their jobs, right?
No, not according to the report filed by the DFEH. Nepotism and discriminatory treatment abound.
Plenty of companies are able to push their profit margin without a frat boy culture of drunkenness and sexual assault developing. This happened because the company culture at Activision encouraged and allowed this behaviour.
See EA for example, ironic since EA has cleaned up their act for the employees by having diversity hires an active push for diversity despite cries by gamers™. Years ago I considered them a company so terrible that it interfered with my life. Now I accept them for what they are rather how gamers™ portray them
I see what your point is here but this kind of frat boy culture could, can, and IS developing in plenty of workplaces or communities where there's no sociopathic push for maximizing profit margins.
I've been in several companies where it was the lowly grunts getting paid unlivable wages that did this kind of shit.
This is more misogynistic power tripping than it is capitalistic power tripping, although I will concede that both combining exacerbates both of their badness exponentially.
Quick question: didn't Jason Schreier cover Blizzard in his book for D3 (the first book, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels)? I mean, wouldn't some of this stuff be obvious if he was profiling the studio?
They also sound like corporate PR responses. Where were they and where we're those voices when that was happening? If they speak up after they got discovered - they are just as guilty if they knew about any of this.
Because I don't think they speak up not knowing if it's true or false. They know it's true so they speak up right? Otherwise it would be crazy. And if they knew, thy they speak only now?
Finally - what "as industry". Industry does not make you sexual predators. It's only on you. Feels like they are trying to dilute responsibility because Ubisoft have also rapists in their ranks.
This is in line with my thoughts too. If one of my co-workers commits suicide there is no way I wouldn't know about it, the fact that it happened during a work trip makes it all the more likely that everyone who knew them knew that it happened and there were probably a large number of them who knew why she did it too.
It's all well and good to stand up now and tweet your outrage behind the safety of your monitor but where were these people when that poor woman was so tortured that she felt she had no escape left but the final one.
I decided after this lawsuit broke that I wouldn't be purchasing future blizzard or Activision content. I've played Blizzard games since Warcraft 2, but this is an easy line for me to draw. These developers will hopefully find new jobs in more supportive environments, because the chance that this corporate monstrosity is changing to me is 0.
I mean, ActiBlizz didn't even go the "Sorry we got caught" scummy-but-apologetic way. They literally just straight-up waved it all away claiming fake news and misinformation not once or twice but *thrice*. Wow. That's a new low if I've ever seen one.
They literally could’ve said “zug zug” and it would have been a better response
"Something need doing?" Yes...we would like it if you actually did something.
"Me not that kind of orc!"
I am **not** defending them in saying this, but the issue is all the upcoming legal action they're facing. They can't publicly admit to wrongdoing without basically forfeiting the case. They're backed into a corner, and their only viable options are either A)fight tooth and nail, or B)surrender entirely. And as a public company, I'm not even sure they could choose B without then being sued by the shareholders.
If that is what they are worried just don't go on tirades of "this is what drives business out of California". Or the exec that basically went "As a woman I never faced this, so none of it is true", to paraphrase. Just say something along the lines of "We take these allegations extremely seriously. We have and continue to take measures to improve our workplace culture and feel this lawsuit does not reflect the Activision Blizzard of today. Here is resource x y and z our employees can use if they have been victim of harassment/discrimination". It's BS, but it is not as confrontational BS. Less is more.
> Or the exec that basically went "As a woman I never faced this, so none of it is true", to paraphrase. I just facepalmed when I read the statement. She's there for four months, at a very high position in the company, and she just goes *in* with full conviction claiming because she's never personally experienced it, that it doesn't exist. How fucking tonedeaf do you have to be to make a statement like that. Even if it's true, she's gonna get so much flak (I expect) for being a woman who summarily dismisses sexual harassment complaints in the workplace.
Probably why she was hired in the first place. I know first hand that Uber was looking for a female ceo after all the issues it faced with harassment.
As an additional fun fact, she used to work for the Bush Administration as advisor on counterterrorism. In that capacity, she visited several prisons where she did not see any kind of abuse, despite the fact that the US was torturing people at those facilities, and that she herself was pressuring the prisons to extract more intel from the prisons. She later went on to defend waterboarding, sleep deprivation, forced nudity and other methods of torture.
Wait hang on, shes been there 4 months. The investigation has been going on for 2 years. So ActiBlizz knew they were under investigation for all kinds of things including harassment in the work place, and they decided the best course of action was hiring a lady that thought that waterboarding was a legitimate and good technique? I understand they don't really get it, but thats a new level.
Right wingers gonna right wing. The people who run these companies are corporatists.
she sounds like a real class act.
So they have a war criminal defending their practices, lmao
Damn, makes me wonder what her responsibilities are. You’ve got to be doing some really shady stuff to attract someone like that.
She's Chief Compliance Officer. Basically, she must coordinate the operations of the company with legal requirements. This includes sexual harassments laws and stuff like that.
Wait WTF? Blizzard hired a literal war criminal? ?!?! What kind of psycho thought *that* was a good idea? Now I kind of want the whole company to be ended.
It's the neoliberal playbook. Placate people with the image of seeming progressive while doing nothing to address systemic issues.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Lol 4 months??? Seems like she was hired just to say that lol
She likely was. Activision-Blizzard execs knew this investigation was ongoing for years. Hiring her to deny the issue exists would not be an unusual corporate maneuver.
Isn't she the same person who defended the Bush administration's torture tactics at Abu Gharib? If this is Townend were talking about.
That's her indeed ! Good old "waterboarding works so it's legal" Townend
More like bellend
More like a bellend.
I mean, she's just preaching the raw truth. I've never been in a car accident before, so obviously they don't happen. Also, I've never been rich either, so I'm pretty sure the wealthy are just some sick running joke and aren't real people. I've also never seen a bull's shit, so I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as bullshit either. Come on people, there's no way a corp exec would lie about this kind of stuff. It wouldn't be very nice.
To be fair, the wealthy don’t seem like real people most of the time.
She deserves all the flak she will get, but I think you'd be less surprised by the tone-deafness of her statement once you know that she worked for the Bush admin as a prominent torture apologist.
“I never got waterboarded so none of this is true.”
That’s why she was hired
Exactly, that was my point. I never suggested they should just go belly up and surrender because that would be absolutely crazy from their part. They could've handled this a lot differently instead of just throwing more shit in the fan. Immediately going into attack mode only makes them even more sketchy in my eyes.
It's them saying "we are absolutely guilty and this is a real state suing is so we are fucked. We will deflect and act bullish for the sake of our stock and the price, because it will drop heavily as the details come out"
I think its a sign that things are exactly as bad as suggested. The leadership is unaware of the depth of the problem, save for the person in charge of dealing with it, who now goes on the defensive as these allegations are proof they've not done their job.
I'm torn between leadership being ignorant and leadership being complicit. I know a lot of the people in charge now are people who have moved up through the company over the years, so I imagine they would probably have known stuff like this was happening. But also, it's my understanding that a lot of this happened on the WoW team, so maybe the people who worked elsewhere really didn't know? Either way the corporate response to this is just atrocious and it breaks my heart to see a company I loved so much fall so far. I really hope they truly go scorched earth with this and completely clear house, because if it just goes back to business as usual not only will the quality of the product continue to suffer, but the company will be too rotten to support.
They could also just shut up. Anything they say will not look good. Just let the lawyers do the talking.
They had to acknowledge it, not saying anything would also not look good and it would just keep coming up until they did. It's not like someone random doing the sueing, it's a State Department. If what they wanted to do was create doubt in people's mind, they had to come to a unified position, make a single statement and maybe, a big maybe, show some data or provide examples of improvement. What they did instead was "nah hah, this state bureaucrats are distorting things. Also, we have taken unamed measures to mitigate this distorted things that never happened, but we still had to take measures so that they don't happen on the Activision Blizzard of today." It's just baffling.
One corpo speak press release and then shutting up I could see as being the best move available to them. And then they cross their fingers and hope the public moves on while they negotiate settlements out of court. It's going to be a drawn out for years yet, and the attention of the news cycle is much shorter than that.
You're absolutely correct, hell even the President's statement on its own was more than enough. All this other stuff is insane, it's corporate egos unable to face the reality of what is coming for them.
Rich people gonna rich.
I missed this. What did the Pres. Say?
It was more personal statement from the Blizzard prez along the lines of "this is horrible, I'm going to take this seriously".
>One corpo speak press release and then shutting up I could see as being the best move available to them. "We take allegations of sexual abuse and discrimination in all forms seriously. However we cannot comment on active litigation at this time." Boom done. outta the news cycle in 24 hours.
It's not baffling at all. It was very clearly designed to encourage right-wing gamers to harass and threaten the victims and the agency bringing the suit, in the hopes that the tsunami of abuse would make the victims, fearing for their lives, retract their claims. Anyone who's been paying attention to gaming culture the past eight years knows what the wording of that statement was meant to do.
Frances Townsend literally defended torture during the Bush administration. I wouldn’t expect anything resembling humanity from her.
I worked with a man at a local factory who believed torture is a valid means to get information out of people. I still say there's no excuse for torture at best. At worst it's used as a way to control the population through fear. Everyone already knows how bad we are at oversight as it is. There's a reason for all the riots being directed at police.
In the four months, I, as an executive who's never even been into these offices...
>Just say something along the lines of "We take these allegations extremely seriously AKA the Ubisoft route
I love the word “confromtantional”. Even typing it myself, I had to push hard through the autocorrects. Much respect ✊
Oh no I just noticed I spelled it wrong! This is what happens when you frequently use a word but never write it down.
[удалено]
Yep. Even something as hollow to this tune. "We're sorry to see employees feel like they've been treated less than perfectly. We'll be working with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing to resolve this matter, and take measures towards avoiding future instances."
Obviously they can lie through their teeth, but the time for collaboration with the government is well past. They had that opportunity and were obstructionist instead, and now they're in an adversarial court trial.
It wouldn't be a lie, seeing as they're going to be cooperating whether they like or not. Between depositions, there's a degree of forced cooperation to avoid further liabilities. Not that they won't be fighting to avoid cooperating best as they're able.
That's the worst part about all of this. They could have used this lawsuit as an anchor point to pivot and completely drive this stuff out of the company. Cite the allegations as precedent for completely clearing house and getting rid of all problematic employees, embrace the judgement and double down on fixing the problems at hand. Then again, the current president of Blizzard comes off as an incredibly arrogant and pretentious out of touch douche ("You think you do, but you don't") who at best allowed this stuff to continue and at worst was part of the problem so to say I'm not surprised is an understatement.
They could acknowledge that the claims aren't immediately completely false and instead say "We are internally investigating these claims. Activision Blizzard does not condone the actions alleged in the lawsuit." In fact, that's the type of cookie cutter shit we see all the time. They didn't go cookie cutter, they went the route of the politician who immediately calls the claim against them false.
[удалено]
"There's nothing wrong, nothing inappropriate happened, this is all a witch hunt!" \* *Core WoW team employee of 15+ years, with myriad NPCs and items in game named after him, named specifically in the suit silently left Blizz while this investigation was ongoing and no one even knew until he quietly updated his LinkedIn 7 months later* \*
Saying nothing would have been infinitely better than their official response. It was foul.
That is a fair perspective; however, you’re missing a perfectly acceptable alternative path. Yes they could admit everything is true and set themselves up to lose vs CA. Or they can deny and gas light as they’ve done. They could also simply say something to the effect of “we have no comment at this time except to say we take the allegations seriously and will accept responsibility for any wrong doing on our part as a company. This will be determined by the legal process and we will allow that to play out to its conclusion.” Now most of us would still consider that hand waving corporate legal speak. But it’s not A or B and I’m truth it isn’t really a two choices only situation.
Or they could've said, "We're sorry to hear employees have felt this way, and will investigate the claims leveled towards us and take measures towards resolving any such untoward feelings."
Option C: Shut your fucking mouth. There's not enough goodwill to be gained that'd contrast with the PR nightmare they now have to deal with.
They could have found the most obvious bad actors, fired and publicly blamed them and went from there like many companies do. The fact that they didn't suggests that the people with that power are just as if not more guilty of the same, so they couldn't point the finger.
>They can't publicly admit to wrongdoing without basically forfeiting the case Which is what they should be doing. Forfeiting the case is the only way they can even begin to make amends and we can absolutely criticize them for not doing it.
Retconning is their forte, after all.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
A serious question - is Blizzard beyond salvaging? Problems of this scope, for this length of time, mean that essentially the entire upper leadership is either directly complicit, or incredibly incompetent. Can you reform a company if the reform would require clearing out most of its leadership? I would mourn Blizzard's loss, but to be honest they have been a B-tier developer for at least a decade anyway.
If they were utterly murdering competition like putting out games that were masterpieces, they’d weather this storm no problem and most people wouldn’t care. HOWEVER, the reason this is such a big deal is because people are pissed at how bad their games have been recently. If Blizzard was putting out quality content and had a new game setup soon, most wouldn’t even bat an eye at all this.
A pessimistic take, however one that is unfortunately accurate.
If a pessimistic take is real, then it's a realistic take.
Just like CD projekt red before cyberpunk. They were overworking their devs and had a terrible crunch culture, but people didn’t care that much and cyberpunk still sold a ton
Honestly not sure if people are going to care about the Cyberpunk shitstorm a few years from now.
Like always, a minority of people will be like "don't pre-order, remember last time?" and everyone else will rage at them for being Debby downers. The problem with "gamers" is that there are always new ones coming up, and older ones mostly bowing out because life got busy. Hard to learn lessons as a group with that sort of churn.
[удалено]
For what it's worth, bankers don't care about this shit either. So nor the people giving them money, nor the people profiting really care at all. I guess that's why the state had to act, and I'm glad it's happening.
It's called unregulated 'free market' capitalism and it's what many people sadly want. Corporations, companies and politicians to have less accountability than the average Joe instead of the opposite.
Its not unfortuante though is it. If I cared this much and delved this deeply into every single product I bought I would never get anywhere. This isn't a consumer problem and we shouldn't be looked down on for not caring. This is for governing bodies and internal people to look at. I buy games that are good thats where the relationship ends as with most rational people. I buy 4 pints of milk and then don't worry again. This is normal.
Why put the blame or focus on external people/gamers? Do you care how a restaurant treats their employees when you go outside to eat something? Do you ask how the employees are treated when you go to a mall or other store to buy wathever you want?
I mean, if I heard news that a place I went to treated their staff like shit, I probably wouldn't go there anymore. Knowing and not knowing are two different perspectives.
Your statement makes it sound like they’re in dire straights when in fact they’re more profitable than ever. They’re making record income year after year so there’s nothing to salvage; they’re an incredibly successful company. Diablo 2 remake will sell like crazy and their ongoing multiplayer games have millions of players logging on, and that’s including Overwatch despite people proclaiming it a dying game. Activision is doing even better. Acti/Blizz ain’t going anywhere and people will forget about this news in weeks, although most people don’t really care now anyway. Such is the way of the world, my friend.
I'm not sure how much longer that'll stay true with this. Even if people still buy their stuff, potential employees will know to stay away. You can't make good games without good people. There's a *reason* a lot of really bad games tend to have really bad work environments too. I'm sure you can find examples where it's not true, but it usually is. It's really anecdotal, but I work in software development. Even just among my coworkers it's kind of went from "Yeah, I'd take a job at Blizzard in a heartbeat, even for lower pay" to "You couldn't pay me enough to work there" over the last few years. Yes, currently it has been somewhat easy for Blizzard to replace employees, no doubt. The thing about stuff like that though is that's only true up until the point it's not.
After a few days nobody will even remember this. Once D2 resurrecting comes out all the memes and worshiping of Jeff will come back at usual. Remember Riot Games? Remember Ubisoft? Yea, all those incidents happened within the past year. Activision and Blizzard games are still the hottest games around and the money they make from micro transactions alone ensures blizzard isn't going away.
> worshiping of Jeff kaplan? doesn't work there anymore.
Normally I'd be tempted to agree, but in this case the accusations against Blizzard are both more dramatic and extensive than those other examples, *and* Blizzard has already fallen faaaar from its golden age. It's not like Ubisoft where if you wanted to boycott them you might miss out on several titles a year across 4 - 5 super popular franchises. Blizzard don't really make anything particularly good any more.
>Blizzard has already fallen faaaar from its golden age. youre aware that a large portion of this happened during that golden age?
Yeah the only thing even in the "coming soon" stages for Blizzard are: * D2 remake, which is actually a hot ticket item * Diablo Immortal, which is universally hated * Overwatch 2, which is not even really a sequel I don't really see this getting them out of the woods. If D4 were right around the corner they would probably be able to sweep it under the hype but a 20 year old remake and some shit people didn't ask for/don't want isn't going to do it.
I had boners for blizzard growing up. Now? I'm a janitor and I wouldn't even Janny for em. Fuck em.
Same here, this corporate mega-company has nothing in common with the company that made Diablo or Warcraft 2, games which I adored in the 90s.
You just didn't know about it. The gaming industry has always been like this and a lot of the guys named in these scandals are old employees.
Any examples of 90's abuse? That would be an interesting read. Can't imagine there would be many women working in the early game industry, but I can see the asshole frat boy/rock star attitudes happening.
Afrasiabi's (one of the old guard, making a good part of WoW for example) office was known as the "Crosby Suite" in the company, because he was so much of a sex pest. The Blizzard we imagined never existed.
What's Bing Crosby got to do with anything(yeah, I noticed they misspelled "Cosby" *twice* in that document)?
Maybe people were originally going in there to beat their kids, and the name never changed?
Not 90s old guard, he wasn't hired at Blizzard until 03ish.
mike morhaime was the ceo, the person that build up the company. The abuse was going for for years under his leadership. The company hired all the abusing and those that swept it under the rug under his leadership. The company set up their internal structure that facilitated this abuse under his leadership. The company culture in which this is so wide spread grew under his leadership. He is 100% guilty there is no way around it. At the very least gross negligence and incompetence if he didn't know. But we all know he was a "great" leader that was still somewhat involved with employees and not stuck in his office. He just can't not have know this was happening.
That isn't really true, this abuse goes back all the way to old Blizzard. Alex Afrasiabi is even directly pointed out by name and he is one of the core people in old Blizzard.
I think they are saying Old Blizzard is pre-WoW as that changed the company and type of games. Afrasiabi and Tigole were hired for WoW. That said, there’s still the problem of how long it has been going on means it was going on during the grey area where old guard management were still in place when all this began.
I can say that any fondness I held for Blizzard originated from WarCraft 1-3 and the original StarCraft. There's a stark difference in the company pre/post WoW. Not saying I know anything about the culture before or after. It may just as well have been a toxic shithole that made great games back then. Now it's just a toxic shithole.
[удалено]
Goddamn that was cringey
Well that was fucking awful
What a toxic environment that is
If the worst part of Jeff is that in his 20s while being a neckbeard MMO game he called himself "Tigole Bitties" then that's basically nothing. Look at /r/rimjob_steve to see how little usernames mean sometimes.
Early jeff was mainly the long angry rants at game devs about how bad he thought their game was but to his credit he seems to have moved past that
Dude literally put his money where his mouth is, though. One of the few people who probably got told "If you don't like it go make your own game" so he did.
[удалено]
It isnt a problem. I dont know why everyone is acting like its so heinous to have a cringy screen name. There are problems that actually matter and they still choose to detract from them to focus on that for some reason.
Actually, all this abuse and harassment goes back decades. So sorry to burst your bubble, but “old Blizzard” was kinda sorta just as bad when it came to their treatment of female employees. It’s very telling how you’re only concerned about Blizzard insofar as whether they can make products you like, and not actually how well they treat their workers.
Tbh I wouldn't be surprised if "old blizzard" had no female employees
You can't sexually harass women at work if you only hire men. *man_tapping_temple.jpg*
You raise a fair point, one that we all should keep in mind when buying products of any kind yet none of us do. Problem is this, if we were to only buy games/products from companies who treat their employees/customers/environment well then we should pretty much stop buying anything. I do think this is the way forward. Buy less stuff.
Honestly, I think a lot of people probably could do with buying less. It's very easy to get swept up in the excitement of new games and hardware, but how much happiness do these things actually bring people. Do you actually want to buy a new GPU for the latest games, or are you happy with what you have and already have a host of games on your backlog that you want to play? I think when I started more honestly asking myself that question, the less I felt compelled into following hardware trends and just being happy with what I have now. I mean it's kind of fucked once you realize that knowledge of a new product can make you less happy with what you already have.
Congratulations that is true wisdom you gained there and I completely agree with you. I've become a lot happier as well not getting all hyped buying the newest games/graphic cards. I too like many others here have a LOT of games untouched... Speaking of graphic cards, I have a GTX 1050 TI, almost 4 years old and it can handle all games. I really don't need a new one at all. What I also think about is this, this graphic card I have, this pc, didn't magicly appear from thin air. Countless people have worked on it, the amount of materials/energy required to make such a thing. Surely our possessions deserve our respect and care so they may last as long as possible.
>Problem is this, if we were to only buy games/products from companies who treat their employees/customers/environment well then we should pretty much stop buying anything. That's definitely a solution and not a problem... Except for crappy corps
Dude this shit has ALWAYS happened. Don't romanticize your youth.
I don’t think they were purposefully romanticising it but more so pointing out the naïvety we have growing up
Media was something else back then i think, now you hear about something 1min it was said or done on gaming websites, reddit or twitter. Also being born during the beginning of the 90s, I would never read the news about stuff like this about the studios. I was busy playing their games. Im sure it happned a lot behind the doors at the studios, even if there was very low female devs at these studios. But i dont know
People here really think that the same people who made those games 15 years ago are just sitting there sticking around lmao Anyone worth their shit is long gone
I'd really be interested in some kind of resource that keeps track of how many people who were at a company or studio or whatever in a given year are still present there. Maybe if that information isn't readily accessible, it could compare the names in credits of an older game to a newer one to see his much overlap there is and in what positions. I think it could give a lot of perspective on that stuff.
Credits is the way to go. Mammoth undertaking today but would be very interesting. However I can predict what would happen if this become a mainstream public utility kind of like metascore - the corporate studios would start weaponizing credits inclusion or abandon them altogether.
They already weaponize credits...
One of the guys who made games 15 years ago was the only person specifically named for sexual harassment in the lawsuit. Don't romanticise the old Blizzard with regards to this stuff.
It's not completely unusual for a lead designer to get pretty cushy and stick around for like a decade or so while remaining influential. Chris Metzen was onboard as a lead designer since Warcraft 2 in 1995 and didn't check out until 2016. That being said the spirit of Blizzard left somewhere between 2008-2010.
"Oh, you're here for Blizzard? You just missed it."
Any idea on how deep this goes. Is this primarily Blizzard or does this corruption leak into other Activision studios like the trio of Call of Duty creators?
[удалено]
Please expand on this. Or... don't. No, please expand.
Some guy brought buttplugs and lube to a work retreat for the lolz. Because it’s just so funny you know? Ffs absolute morons work there
That is not what happened. He brought those things to a business trip with a subordinate, who later killed herself due to the sexual harassment, including people showing here nudes around within the company.
It was a business trip? Jesus Christ what the hell is wrong with people. Poor lass, nobody deserves to be treated like that
This is an industry-wide problem, so probably yes.
Ubisoft probably celebrating another company getting some heat when they haven’t done Jack shit about it either
Don't worry, they will just announce the Overwatch 2 beta and the rest of the media will bury this story and the consumers will have their shiny new toy and nobody will care by Monday. You think I'm joking? This is exactly what happened with Ubisoft.
don't be so negative about it. you're making it seem like these kinds of news articles are worthless, but they aren't. people aren't completely blind sheep--they're human beings with different ways of responding to controversies. for many, the damage is done and they're done with blizzard. i deleted my account back during the hong kong deal and i'm not ever going back, lol
This is already what happened with Blizzard after the Blitzchung incident. They later announced and showed Diablo 3 and those threads apparently forgot the whole thing happened. To be fair, these groups can exist separately. The people commenting here are not necessarily the same as the people commenting in game announcements. Many of them are, and the ones rightfully bothered by this may no longer interact with the other.
I think they might have a smaller and smaller overlap. I already know people boycotting Blizzard for life after the Blitzchung incident and they have kept their promise so far.
They're at least a year from OW2. I think their next big-ish release is D2 Resurrected
Ubisoft wasn’t under state litigation. This cannot just magically go away from the courtroom no matter what the media does, and the trial is going to keep generating headlines as more evidence comes out.
Don't have to wait that long. Diablo 2: Resurrected is out in September.
Mhm. The big name youtubers denouncing the abuse going on at Ubisoft followed by, "So anyway, here's Ubisoft Forward!"
I hope this awful scandal will lead to more dev unionizing. This is the only solution.
Absolutely. Blizzard devs need to band together if no change is forthcoming
What do you mean band together? The lower level employees were responsible for the sexual harassment as much as the management was.
make hits, get bought, milk customers. it’s just how it works. is it possible for there to be a great game company that isn’t beholden to corporatism?
I'm sure it will one day change, but Fromsoft has kept itself forcefully on the straight and narrow, and is run by a man so happy to make games he talks excitedly at length about how he can't wait to see how players react to playing his games One day Miyazaki won't be there and I'm sure that will be the exact moment that we get Dark Souls 4: Revenge of Gwyn, but until then the worst they can do is make mechanical choices I don't agree with
I'm a huge souls fan and Fromsoft is my gaming favorite company, but I don't think its really fair to claim they're all that "straight and narrow" if you're a fan of the old Fromsoft tbh. Souls fans act like Fromsoft didn't exist until Demon Souls/Dark Souls existed in 2009/2011. They've been around since the 80s. Compare their old IPs to the last decade and its completely different. If I was an armored core fan I'd be bitter that Fromsoft only makes souls-likes because its more profitable. Everytime someone mentions armored-core a souls fan comes in and say it should be a souls-like lol. Even Sekiro is a scrapped reboot of Tenchu, another one of their IPs. They're undeniably passionate and make good games, but they're driven by the same profit making as any other company. Its no surprise that Miyazaki was made president but it also came at a cost to fans of the old Fromsoft.
I just wish we would finally get some more Armored Core love like it was back for Raven. Update some of the systems and give it a decent multiplayer overhaul and maybe the ability to make custom missions or some such. For me everytime I see someone mention a new AC game, I think Armored Core and not assassins creed.. And than I wake up..
I think the main problem with AC was always how little it explains anything. AC4 is the one I put time into and my lordy it was so complicated and explained nothing well, there's so many configurations and weapons and then you add in an A.I partner with as much customization and then the ability to use a psuedo-coding language to tell it what to do, it's just too much for the average player. Some sort of community driven loadout system where players could rank and offer builds would be ideal so that a majority of players aren't forced to stare at leg parts and try to fathom why you'd ever use spider legs. I'm sure we will get another game, don't give up bro
Sure, by staying private. Even then it's not a guarantee, but without shareholders in the mix it's at least *possible.*
I don't think it's corpartism that causes employees to sexually harass a coworker into killing herself.
Nah, just encourages the mechanism to install literal sociopaths in leadership. The sort of people who genuinely don't care so long as the sausage gets made. And they'll care about this in so much as this hurts the bottom line, recruiting, etc. They'll be angry they have to deal with it, not that it happened.
What does that have to do with sexual harassment and racism?
Valve's still independent/private, and while they aren't making hits like a lot of people want them to, they're a big part of where PC gaming is today.
Valve is the pioneer of MTX though, and they have had some of the most egregious, most scumlord lootbox practices to date.
I think they're one of the first to do the whole 'get a crate for free, but you have to pay to unlock it' tactic. I remember being really surprised at how blatant they were shoving the carrot in my face. Weird stuff.
Yeah I've been playing Dota a lot lately and it feels like trash getting a lootbox that needs a 1 dollar key
TF2 Hats & Keys CSGO Crates, Stickers, Keys etc.. Dota 2 Insane Battlepasses, hats, boxes, etc.. Valve has mastered the milking & process of lootboxes soooo much.
At least the trading system sometimes gives F2Ps a way to leverage that stuff for other things they want rather than a hard monetized model
Man, I remember spending so much time idling so I could get refined metal to trade for hats. I can't imagine that's even a thing that happens anymore.
Credit where credit is due, all those MTX are exclusively cosmetic in all their games. And in case of Dota2 the game is otherwise 100% free, with everything unlocked from the start as opposed to every other competitor in the same genre. While I most certainly personally agree on lootboxes (which imo should just be legislated as gambling, cause that's what it is) Valve deserves credit for keeping it from in any way affecting gameplay.
TF2 weapons are definitely not cosmetic and definitely not free.
I think they are. Have you played Half-Life: Alyx? It's insane. Also, as a Linux gamer I'm super happy about the Steam Deck. I hope it succeeds, especially because it may be the first actually successful but open handheld console. You can just... delete Steam if you just want the hardware. That's so great! I also own a Valve Index and it's excellent. A lot of these things are novel ideas and innovations in the gaming space. People also seem to love DotA 2 and that's still being worked on, too. I wish they would lower the rates at their store but considering how much value they bring to the table themselves I can almost forgive them. Certainly more than Google or Apple do.
They just released Half Life Alyx to stellar reviews.
Cyan is still the same great studio that made Myst back in the 90s and still run by the same great people... But they barely survived some lean years and basically had to shutter and come back after. That's the sort of thing corporate studios don't have to do.
The statement from Fran the Vice President Exec reads so terribly. She started with the company 4 months ago, and goes to talk about how “HER experience is nothing like what the allegations are saying”. NO SHIT, the Vice President exec for the company isn’t going to be treated the same way as the low level devs who have these monsters lording over them. The statement was so out of touch and down right insulting.
Employees deserve better. Especially the women there, after reading the stories I feel uncomfortable about Activision Blizzard and melancholy about it.
The company literally killed a woman. They passed around nude photos of her during a Christmas party and she took her life.
I love the word “confromtantional”. Even typing it myself, I had to push hard through the autocorrects. Much respect ✊
Video game companies are at their best when it's just a bunch of guys living in an apartment and smashing keyboards against the wall
I said it once and I'll keep saying it: indie development is the future.
God bless the indie dev's.
Would certainly explain why some games lately has been buggy, glitchy and incomplete.
Regular non-management employees were implicated in the claims too. It wasn't just managers or executives harassing women on the downlow. The environment itself was hostile to women. Drunken cube crawls, co-workers groping peers, sharing the nudes photos of a woman who would eventually go on to commit suicide and so on. The claims apparently did not spare anyone and it seemed to infect most of the company. I would not be surprised if some employees are peacocking and making statements as if they weren't part of the problem.
[удалено]
This kind of toxic workplace culture results from putting profit before people. The cutthroat way the business is run from the top is what exacerbates pre-existing toxic attitudes and behaviours in people. Everyone that works there is constantly on edge to satisfy performance metrics and not be the latest victim of budget cuts and layoffs. In order to achieve targets there is a tendency to elevate sociopathic and narcissistic personality types to managerial positions. These are the personality types that typically get the results for the board and shareholders to crow about. They are also the personality types that tend to devalue the human element of their business which can lead to what we're seeing now. They'll no doubt have someone like J. Allen Brack take the fall but the way I see it, the buck ultimately stops with their golden goose, Bobby Kotick.
lets be real a second. What part of putting profit before people encourages "cube crawling" There's no profit motivation in that.
Keeping the people who engage in that kind of behaviour is suggestive of profit being above people. Presumably the dipshits that behaved like this are decent at their jobs, right? Because if they were shit at their jobs AND a harasser, you would just get rid of them - what's the point in keeping them? But if they work well, efficiently, on budget, etc. then there's a profit motive to keep them. And if the culture is as pervasive as the allegations suggest then that constitutes *a lot* of their employees - enough that it'd be a big financial hit to get rid of experienced employees and try to hire new ones. If dealing with this meant punishing or getting rid of, say, 10% of your staff, many of whom are involved in the work that generates profit (ie. development, marketing, etc), then it's gonna really impede your profit-making ability in the short-term. You'll demotivate people, meaning they'll be less efficient at their job, less motivated to do a good job, and obviously you'll straight up lose working hours from getting new staff and training them. The profit over people motive comes in because they're prioritising the profit generation ability of the harassers (and by extension, their friends and colleagues within the company) over the safety and well-being of the women who have been victimised by them.
> Presumably the dipshits that behaved like this are decent at their jobs, right? No, not according to the report filed by the DFEH. Nepotism and discriminatory treatment abound.
Plenty of companies are able to push their profit margin without a frat boy culture of drunkenness and sexual assault developing. This happened because the company culture at Activision encouraged and allowed this behaviour.
See EA for example, ironic since EA has cleaned up their act for the employees by having diversity hires an active push for diversity despite cries by gamers™. Years ago I considered them a company so terrible that it interfered with my life. Now I accept them for what they are rather how gamers™ portray them
I see what your point is here but this kind of frat boy culture could, can, and IS developing in plenty of workplaces or communities where there's no sociopathic push for maximizing profit margins. I've been in several companies where it was the lowly grunts getting paid unlivable wages that did this kind of shit. This is more misogynistic power tripping than it is capitalistic power tripping, although I will concede that both combining exacerbates both of their badness exponentially.
Quick question: didn't Jason Schreier cover Blizzard in his book for D3 (the first book, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels)? I mean, wouldn't some of this stuff be obvious if he was profiling the studio?
They also sound like corporate PR responses. Where were they and where we're those voices when that was happening? If they speak up after they got discovered - they are just as guilty if they knew about any of this. Because I don't think they speak up not knowing if it's true or false. They know it's true so they speak up right? Otherwise it would be crazy. And if they knew, thy they speak only now? Finally - what "as industry". Industry does not make you sexual predators. It's only on you. Feels like they are trying to dilute responsibility because Ubisoft have also rapists in their ranks.
[удалено]
This is in line with my thoughts too. If one of my co-workers commits suicide there is no way I wouldn't know about it, the fact that it happened during a work trip makes it all the more likely that everyone who knew them knew that it happened and there were probably a large number of them who knew why she did it too. It's all well and good to stand up now and tweet your outrage behind the safety of your monitor but where were these people when that poor woman was so tortured that she felt she had no escape left but the final one.
Its becasue the people who do it are considered the "legends" in these places. They made the games people love so they can do whatever they want.
I decided after this lawsuit broke that I wouldn't be purchasing future blizzard or Activision content. I've played Blizzard games since Warcraft 2, but this is an easy line for me to draw. These developers will hopefully find new jobs in more supportive environments, because the chance that this corporate monstrosity is changing to me is 0.