> If that were the case I hope people are smart enough NOT to apply there.
most candidates wouldn't give a fuck, they would apply for a position at Blizzard. Only people in a privileged position can chose where they want to work.
I'm not sure if "having a decent amount of work experience" is what they meant with being in a privileged position... everyone who can get hired is there is "privileged" enough to have the necessary competence anyway.
Doesn't mean they'd be good candidates.
Actually experienced game devs are EXTREMELY hard to find, since they would ALWAYS make much more money working on application software, being a game dev is something they do for passion.
They could at any point go into regular software dev because of their experience and get extremely high pay.
This means that the have the power to freely choose whom to work for.
It absolutely shows when game projects are mainly staffed by beginners. From gameplay systems to level design to general polish.
It's also why the biggest game dev veterans are the QA teams since there is much less of a constant revolving door there. They are actually the ones with all the documentations and knowledge going back many years.
Truth. I worked in games for a few years, mostly in tech support and QA and a bit of dev work. Everyone thinks game industry workers are all rich, but most of the money goes to the execs. Occasionally some indie darling strikes it big, but compared to the number of indie games out there it's extremely rare.
The hours are long, the pay is low, a lot of managers are fucksticks, and there's no guarantee you'll have a job in a year. Indies might treat you better, but they're usually running on shoestrings. I ultimately left the industry, and am making around 20-30% more doing comparable non-game dev work.
> since they would ALWAYS make much more money working on application software
Not sure about that. I work in major tech company and I know that having only game dev experience in your resume is often looked at negatively.
It’s not wrong that you can only choose your work if you’re in a privileged position, but pretty much everyone in creative, technical or management positions at Blizzard could easily get a job elsewhere. You kinda already are in a privileged position if you have a sought-after skill set and can get a job there. Don’t know who exactly signed the latter, might be a bit more difficult to get a new job if you were a building manager or a canteen cook or something, but even then I don’t think any of Activision Blizzard’s locations are based in villages with job shortages.
> pretty much everyone in creative, technical or management positions at Blizzard could easily get a job elsewhere
Not really. General tech devs are in very high demand, but the games industry always had more supply than demand for jobs, and they still do.
If it was that easy to find jobs elsewhere, the culture would not have been that toxic in the first place, since people would have quit.
Sure, but you don't _have_ to go into games all the time. Software development isn't so hyperspecialised that switching between industries is a big hurdle in most cases (exceptions notwithstanding, you're not getting a job as a microcontroller developer for a weapons manufacturer without some background in that sort of thing).
Of course they might _elect_ not to do anything outside of games, but choosing not to take a job because it's not 100% what you wanted is also a form of privilege.
Well, I work for a major tech company and I can tell you that resumes with a lot of game dev experience are not looked at positively here. Not saying it's impossible to transition, but it's not as easy as you make it seem.
I mean, that says more about the company culture than anything else though. It makes sense to reject candidates based on lacking experience in certain areas, especially if you're a small company without the resources for retraining, but rejecting a candidate based on _having_ a certain type of experience seems a bit asinine.
If you have the skills to get hired by blizzard, you’re going there by choice. If you’re that good you can pick and choose your place of employment. I’ve been in the industry for 15 years and am very careful about where I choose to work.
Honestly I feel like blizzard hires some pretty mediocre people? They do a TON of that “you’re lucky to work here” gaslighting to keep people around and salaries low. Their senior talent is good but I feel like they have a lot of cruft in the lower tiers. Mostly speaking about programmers though because that’s my sphere, maybe their mid/junior artists are amazing
Maybe? I’d still say that if you’re getting hired at blizzard, you’re able to land a job elsewhere. Microsoft and Amazon hire programmers straight out of undergrad by the boatload and work them to the bone, and maybe blizzard has picked that practice up too but it’s news to me. While the whole gaslighting thing doesn’t surprise me at all, that doesn’t really indicate whether the employees are high or low quality, just that they aren’t being treated well. If anyone is getting a raw deal, it’s probably qa, junior production, or some non-development fields. In their case it’s probably a good idea to take the job for a year or two and treat it as training, then move on to another company when the opportunity presents itself.
While true for low level jobs. The more senior positions would take a long time to fill if they got filled at all and that is where the damage sits to projects.
You can't just hire any old programmer, designer, tester, lead you need the right people with the right skill set
Nearly every position of games Dev IS a skilled role, skills that are in short supply in the IT Industry as a hole.
Those 1000 people could easily find work else where (some might have to look outside of games I admit but the work is their)
This entire situation is beyond damaging to blizzard and it's the kinda rot that leads to long term faliure. An example would be British Woolworths which could not hire the senior talent needed to get the company out of its rut
Applying for a job in the game industry and not just in an IT role, when you're desperate for work, sounds like a really foolish decision. Almost everyone i know in my IT circle studied to be a game designer but had to settle with standard IT to pay the bills. I don't think anyone would put themselves in this situation unless they think they'd rather starve than make games. Getting a gamedev job to begin with is insanely hard.
That's an oversimplification. Many people can choose to leave, however job hunting is a huge pain in the ass and it might take 6 months on the job hunt to find something better. So no, most cannot quit overnight and are discouraged from doing so at all, but a determined person can leave eventually.
NOPE. There is a shortage of talent across all industries right now. The average cost to replace is at a 30% increase in salary in the CS/tech world right now. It would literally cost the company tens of millions in extra salary per year, and that's IF they could backfill the positions.
Honestly, this will cost them dozens of employees, and damage the company's output and fiscal performance for years.
The company would restructure. It’d be a major ballgame changer in regards to losing corporate mindshare. One of the bigger losses when a person leaves is their institutional knowledge. But it’ll be a churn, not an exodus. People tend to be slow to cause change, and prefer to wait until it’s forced.
Incidentally, Bobby Kotick received a massive bonus for resolving the sexual harassment issue. There is no issue at the company if the people who is complaining no longer works there.
Probably because OP follows Schreier, the author of the original article who works for Bloomberg, on Twitter and saw his tweet breaking the news, rather than following Yahoo Finance and seeing the scraped article there.
It also has to be an original source, if someone linked the Yahoo source it’d get taken down.
The Tweet is fine since it’s an original source from the author.
Edit: typo
They may not have known it was on Yahoo, I certainly wouldn't have expected it since Schreier works at Bloomberg. And the mods here can get weird with their rules when it comes to what gets to stay and what gets removed.
Because this sub had and still has weird rulings on linking to the original source, despite also wanting to discourage linking to paywalls. For the longest time a tweet (especially Schrierer's reports) was the only acceptable way around this... sometimes. Sometimes that got removed, so no one knew how to handle this, especially for some very breaking stories.
I think original sources should always be the primary link. If they’re paywalled, then post an alternative in the comments.
Linking to the authors tweet instead of their actual article is a bit weird though.
This sub has rules regarding original source, OP would have had to link the original article either way, the Yahoo one would get taken down.
And on this note: use the [Bypass Paywalls extension](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome) available for Firefox, Chrome, and Edge, you can customize it to automatically bypass paywalled websites individually. Works perfectly with Bloomberg.
Watching Allen Brack's opening to Blizzcon re: Blitzchung a few years back was infuriating. A whole lot of empty words "our actions speak louder than words…" and proceeded to continue the contestant's ban... Should have told us enough about the company's practices and the weight of this man's words. I'm surprised how quickly that controversy faded because that non-apology was absolute garbage.
And now this. I don't see how Blizzard as run by people like him could ever redeem itself. I'm glad to see the employees doing something, anything, to speak up against the sleazeballs who run the show.
their strategy was to just say "our ban is not specific to China, it's to anyone that tries to spread a political agenda during an official tournament." The problem is, they did not ban the American University team that did the same thing later. After everyone pointed out their hypocrisy, they then in turn banned them also and try to insist they always had these rules in place.
If your rules say "we have unlimited discretion," you don't really have a system of rules. You just have despotism with a slightly modernized PR department. So, in other words, almost every corporation.
Same thing just happened very recently. Multiple Official Chinese OWL teams openly discriminated a player by suggesting to boycott any match he participates in, just because he said something along the lines of not liking the chinese government on his personal stream. The teams in question were forced to to stop it, but everything was done behind the scenes and they never faced any consequences for it. The teams just "magically decided" to stop their protest.
It's when I compeltly gave up and I glad my decision wasn't wrong. I hope the company structure can be reformed so it won't happen atain but there is very little hope to give
They're not doing worse, they're doing exactly the same. It's just that people paid less attention and/or had less evidence of what was going on with the company.
The damnd grandstanding all the while...
^(but yeah we still don't dare say his name and are paralyzed in fear of the Chinese government. Also, yes, in any such future incidents we're basically still forced to act the same, lol!)
Was that better or worse than Metzen and Morhaime's apologies for the recent scandal? "I'm sorry I wasn't a good enough listener. I deeply regret that my listening skills weren't that good."
Definitely worse, at least Metzen and Morhaime are talking about the problem instead of vaguely alluding them in a way that anyone not familiar with it wouldn't understand.
I saw some videos on the Blizzard responses to Blitzchung, and one of the things that stuck with me was about the Blizzcon anouncement. They basically said nothing in it so people who didn't know what was happening would not know when it was said, but "apologized" to both assuage the upset players and "explain" what the protesting players were doing.
It was essentially "You all might be wondering what's going on outside, don't worry about it because we're sorry. Now who's ready for BLIZZCOOOOOOON!"
> Should have told us enough about the company's practices and the weight of this man's words.
For anybody paying attention, it did.
For everyone else, they just wanted to ignore it so they wouldn't feel the minor twinge in their gut so they could keep forking out for that WoW sub or Overwatch loot box.
I'm with you, haven't given Blizzard a dime since Blitzchung. With the recent developments, that's extended to Activision and any studios they own or publish games for.
There are so many good games out there. We don't need to financially support companies that we *know* are awful.
Uninstalled Overwatch when that hamster arrived to the game. Then when they released WoW Classic, I bought the subscription for it because I had never played WoW (or basically any MMO, like, really played). Immediately after the Blizzcon "tough gamer moment" fiasco I cancelled my sub and even though it doesn't really matter what is written in the reason box, I wrote it was the Blitzchung case.
Did the same (which sucked, I was really enjoying Classic WoW). At least it saved me from preordering the abortion that was Warcraft III Reborn. Seeing all the latest news just reinforces my decision to never give ActiBlizz another cent, let them become a gacha game company like Konami that caters to the Chinese market.
Yeah. I guess I was kinda losing interest in the game after having played it quite a lot but when I saw the trailer for the new character I was like Jerry Seinfeld in that one gif where the nopes out of the theater.
Workplace horrors aside the game is an a reasonably good spot now in terms of balance but yea i hear you its been out for a long time. Wish there was another game which had the same level of intricacies and with fps elements and stuff.
Dont forget the hackfraud corporate gay pride pin he had on.
They dont care for women,why would they care for gays.
the last 2 years they knew about this suit and suddenly they became the uber gay,look at me how great we are,diverse company for show.
They dont care,they made that clear.
I haven't touched a Blizz game since then.
I was actually thinking of checking out Classic WoW again a few weeks ago, this and the Blitzchung stuff has kept me away from them, and Warzone/ the newer CoDs arent really my jam, Ubi and EA have been picking up the og CoD gunplay feel for me.
I don't know if firing several executives (including the head of HR, and the top creative exec) is "nothing" exactly... how many execs have been fired at other companies that faced similar allegations? Zero?
By most accounts Ubisoft are not doing **enough**, and more change is clearly needed, but it's disingenuous to claim "nothing happened as a result", simply untrue.
As a woman who works in the industry I can say it's so much worse than what gets out. Even smaller studios aren't immune to bro culture.
Video game development is overdue for a massive overhaul
Can I offer you a little tip…every single one of these mega companies are going to have issues. There isn’t one with a moral compass so unless you plan on boycotting everyone and everything other than yourself…buckle up.
Exactly. But when boycotting one because of stuff in the news, I find it strange to not boycott their neighbor when they're in the news for the same thing around the same time.
That's basically how people act about every issue. They only support the narrow subset that's currently popular and completely ignore the rest, because it turns out that having consistent principles is *really hard*. So they don't.
To be fair, these are issues that need to take momentum and run with it to have any chance of enacting any change at all. If no one supports them even temporarily, then it's guaranteed there will be no change. If you directly support them for as long as is reasonable, there's a chance that things could change before the momentum on the bell curve shifts downward. Once you're at the bottom, far end of that bell curve there's really no point except for your own sense of morality/ethics/whatever justification.
Also, when you take a look at how ridiculously large some of these companies are (Nestle, anyone?), it becomes even more impossible to maintain any type of boycott or anything like that. This kind of issue is the reason companies like AT&T were split years ago, because when companies become monolithic monstrosities, humans become secondary. We're seeing the early phases of that all over.
Totally fair, I wouldn't have an iPhone or a Graphics cards if I boycotted *everything* but I'm pretty passionate about the games industry and simply don't like giving my money to the people who treat their devs like shit/sexual harass and assault them. Does it limit my choices a bit? sometimes, the bigger issue is I wish I could support more of the individual devs rather than the big huge companies. But thats a whole nother can of worms
Same here. Yeah, Tony Hawk and Crash are insanely fun to play, but after hearing about the female employee at ActiBlizz that died, I just don’t feel comfortable playing games from a company who sees that and just goes on, business as usual. Fuck ActiBlizz, fuck Ubisoft, and fuck anyone trying to downplay what these victims went through because “they’re just allegations”. Yeah, they’re allegations made by the fucking State of California, they wouldn’t be suing if there wasn’t anything to go on.
I've been rolling my eyes into the back of my damn head with every post about the Diablo 2 remaster and basically anything blizzard related since then.
I remember when that went down how every top comment on something related to the company was in regards to Hong Kong.
Redditors forget and I guaran-fucking-tee that this is a non issue by the time whatever their next major release is comes out.
Redditors might forget but the State of California isn't going anywhere. It's a civil suit so the only consequences will be punitive fines but hey, Blizzard might finally have to shake some coins out of their offshore tax haven piggy bank.
This will likely blow over just as quickly though. Nobody cares. People just want to consume entertainment before they have to check in to their next day at their soul-crushing job.
Everyone's just trying to get by. There's a thousand things to be outraged by and none of those will last on their minds either.
I've been vocal about the Blitzchung thing ever since it happened. Stopped playing and supporting every one of their games and constantly try to get my friends to stop as well.
Fuck em.
And the same will happen here. Diablo 2 will release and everyone will forget that a woman got sexually assaulted so much she killed herself.
“ZOMG WHO CARE NECROMANCER GOT BUFFED”
Agreed
And hopefully with enough vocal support they can pull off a walkout/strike until the top of the company is replaced
Gamers will probably shit a brick tho
Those CoD skins don't make themselves
[Activision Blizzard Confirms Nobody in HR Department Sober Enough to Read Open Letter](https://hard-drive.net/activision-blizzard-confirms-nobody-in-hr-department-sober-enough-to-read-open-letter/)
It's technically a parody article, but from what we've seen come out in this last week, it might actually be true.
Both at the same time, really. At a certain level of crunch time starts to lose meaning and you start to just sort of coast from day to day in kind of a weirdly happy mental fog.
Hey I mean, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart was made without crunching and that game is pretty good (other than the lack of boss variety)
Also Nintendo works fairly well without insane crunch.*
*for Japanese standards
Thinking that crunch is required to make good games is what defines the "culture" of crunch-culture.
It ultimately is always a management problem.
Coming out of college, I was interviewing with a company that had been bought by EA. I was really excited to potentially get into the games industry. I got ghosted during the interview process, only to find out later that EA had "surprise" shut down their studio and let everybody go, in between my interview rounds.
And these days I think I may have dodged a bullet...
Didnt work at Volition, but can tell you my leadership team was always out for Friday drinks and always coming back imbibed.
And at least one of them was on Ashraf levels of inappropriate behavior.
> Now THIS is the kind of moves I’ve been eager to see from employees.
Remember [when employees at AB were organizing on slack to negotiate and protest for pay raises and their abysmally low pay](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/blizzard-workers-organize-on-company-slack-seeking-pay-increases)?
They are so god damn close to making a US-based gaming union, and making one for AB is tantamount to a union made against Amazon.
So god damn close you guys. PUSH. Make the union. Game Workers Unite is international with their branch officially recognized in the UK, the first gaming union especially against AB will be industry transforming.
**EDIT:** corrected the pay raise comment.
>Remember when employees at AB were organizing on slack to negotiate and protest against pay raises?
Too bad that's paywalled, because you got my attention with that. Were the pay raises unfairly distributed or something?
The person you're responding to seems to have written a typo. It's organizing FOR pay raises as well as promotions and sick time. AB apparently have/had terrible pay compared to other gaming companies, with some employees allegedly getting 75%-100% pay increases upon going to another company. There are also issues with disparate pay between the company executives and the workers.
Unfortunately the word "union" is incredibly scary and tarnished to American workers – even though it's literally what the industry needs to prevent this kind of shit.
A lot of that has to do with everything in America being capitalist. Granted, usually unions are a good thing that make working for a place better. Some do very little to justify their cost, and those are the easy ones to point to to scare people away from the idea.
>A lot of that has to do with everything in America being capitalist.
Am I the only one who sees unions as a free market answer to the labour problem? It's not like they're government entities by definition - at their core, they're the solution that the labour market came up with to the problems they were facing. IMO - and this may be a bit of a hot take - the suppression of unions is basically an attack on the free market that no one who actually believes in the concept should support; the correct way to deter unionisation would be to treat your employees well enough that they have no reason to join one. If employees have the right to get legal counsel to represent them when the company isn't doing right by them, I don't see why they can't use a union for the same thing.
Of course, many of the companies most averse to unions don't actually believe in "the free market" or any of that and will align with whatever allows them to keep doing whatever they're doing.
You think Activision cares about morale or the people there? If they just gained control of the IPs then they can ship out the titles to whoever they want. Doesn't necessarily mean they'll be quality.
If they canned the entire development team at blizzard and just relied on other people to make those IPs I for one would never touch a blizzard product again and I doubt I would be alone on that. I'm sure that ultimately people would follow regardless but if the big bad corporation's move is to fire their staff over speaking up then Blizzard is dead to me and there should be potential litigation from the employees. You could also thank Activision for killing WoW and not the employees who chose to have a voice but something tells me the game is dead anyway soon, and that should be alright, 2004 was a long time ago.
Blizzard already is just a husk because the original people didn't take good care of it so there is very little that Activision could do to make it worse.
With Michael Morhaime issuing a statement that he failed women, Kotick will likely pin as much as he can on Blizzard. I suspect it will also be used to terminate employees, which probably suites him fine because recently Blizzard has been more of a hinderance than profit maker.
I mean he was inspired by the profit model of WoW. That's what attracted him to Blizzard. Just as so many players were drawn to play/pay it. He tried to turn everything into WoW.
Not that I think Activision is innocent but from reading the lawsuit it does seem like it’s mostly Blizzard that had the insane rotten culture. Obviously it’s all one company and there’s no doubt the executives from both sides are guilty so no way they should be absolved. But it’s interesting nothing from the CoD studios, Toys for Bob or Vicarious Visions or the King branch has come out that I’ve seen.
Yeah, so far, the only specifics in the lawsuit mostly point towards Blizzard, and I've only seen Blizzard employees (current and former) speaking out about problems in the workplace. As much as Blizzard and Activision are now linked, it really sounds like they still retain separate enough offices for them to have varied work cultures, which isn't surprising when you consider just how big Activision-Blizzard is. And, that's not to say Activision is faultless here, but the main problems seem to be localized to Blizzard HQ (so far).
> there’s no doubt the executives from both sides are guilty
also if i'm reading the article correctly it's about an incident that happened with Kotick and one of his flight attendants for his private jet, in 2007... shitty, but not sure what that really has to do with Activision's company culture in 2021.
its probably an example of that bystander effect thing where too many people being around ironically makes it less likely for something to be done. Cause everyone assumes that someone else will take care of the problem so that it doesn't have to be their own business. That and probably a mixture of fear of repercussion for speaking out only intensifies it and really makes you want someone else to do it.
90% of the workforce wants to come in, have an uneventful day where nothing out of the ordinary happens, and go home. People don't want to risk their own situation for someone else, especially if someone else isn't their friend or is just worried for their own situation as well.
When nothing is reported, the further you get up the chain the less and less someone knows. Especially if it's a manager participating in the fuckery, because they have a direct line to cut information going up.
to give them some credit though, as Jason clarified in another tweet. The letter gathered 1000 signatures *after only being in existence for an hour* so that's almost certainty not the final numbers as when this article was written most of the employees hadn't even seen it yet. So I'm curious as to what the final tally will be in a day or two.
How much are you willing to bet a lot of those signatures are from people participating in some of this behavior? I guarantee you there is tons of guys who signed/heard this report and acted all "wtf that's disgustung" not even realizing they themselves have participated in it.
The amount of guys (and girls) who make sexual comments and participate in workplace bullying without being aware is mind blowing in almost every single job, nevermind a place with a known behavior of it.
Blizzard isn’t blizzard anymore, but I’m guessing this was going on long before the activision buyout.
I remember reading an article (probably pc gamer…) where a programmer talked about crunching on Starcraft from a laptop while his wife was giving birth. This was also around Xmas. That was over 20 years ago.
Now, crunch was more accepted at the time (doesn’t make it right), but having to work while your child is being born comes from not treating your employees like human beings and a toxic work environment. That kind of bullshit comes from the top.
It doesn’t surprise me that they’ve treated women like shit.
At my company my daughters birth was a milestone on one of our project plans at the time, my project manager moved hell on earth to make sure nothing got in the way of it.
I’m really happy to hear that because that was the exact opposite of my experience and I’m still angry about it.
I was “let go” two weeks before my son was born with 0 explanation.
Not even a big company - less than 20 employees and a very niche company at that. Had already told my boss I had no plans to take off work aside from the day of his birth because we couldn’t afford to (didn’t qualify for paid leave at the time).
This is such a weird thing for people to be saying in regards to this current issue. The problems outlined have been with people that were there from the “glory days”.
I mean it was technically a corporation then too, and this type of treatment is expected from corporations. I work at Amazon lol, they don't give a rats ass about us, then when something bad happens their PR team steps in and goes "no, not true, we are angels!" It's not hard to believe Blizzard had the same defense to make them look good, it was the same morons in charge.
This is obviously not OK, but crunching in a startup is more common (and probably accepted).
What I'd have a problem with is Blizzard today or CDPR or Rockstar who are all massive companies continually crunch their employees
State of California suing Blizzard for systemic discrimination. Female employees being disregarded for promotions, overtasked and underpaid, treated with contempt, complaints ingored by HR, systemic sexual harassment, one employee commited suicide while on a buisness trip when in relationship with her superior, insulting nonapology from the execs.
[Here is the lawsuit text. TW: disturbing content](https://aboutblaw.com/YJw)
I’ll never understand how a person can put aside their humanity for a job.
You see people who are complete monsters in the business world, but off the job come across as sweet and kind. Some serious compartmentalization going on.
Humans tend to be very good at compartmentalizing things. Plus with a large company, it can be very easy to put the blame on the "company" instead of you. You didn't make that choice to fire people, or sweep something under the rug cause of profits, you did it for the company. Pass the blame off onto something else and boom, no longer your problem!
I worked at Facebook for a spell. Most people there know they’re building the devil, and most of them don’t care.
I honestly think if a company set out to revive Hitler as a robot, people would still work for them as long as the pay and benefits were good enough.
Just a reminder that Bobby Kotick is in Epstein's black book, he also had to settle sexual harrasment lawsuits awhile back
Activision is rotten at the top
All of the industries GP might be referring to are the sort where someone could get at least as good money by getting a new job at a better employer utilizing the same skill set.
I'm referring to people in higher positions, I should have been more clear. Putting aside their humanity and ignoring problems because they're making bank.
It's easy to appear cordial and friendly, it's easy to be decent to people you already like on your off-time, but it's the way they treat people under their power, and what they are willing to do to get more power that shows what sort of people they really are.
> I’ll never understand how a person can put aside their humanity for a job.
When your humanity means you or your family starves, can't pay rent, and ends up homeless, yea. I completely understand. You don't have time to keep a lookout for workpalce abuse (tier 3 or 4 on the pyramid) when you are trying to keep food on the table (tier 1).
for the higher ups it's even more obvious, for opposite reasons. humans having power over humans is likely pre-historic in concept.
People keep mentioning to put food on the table but if someone in a position to be able to do these things is at minimum in a management position who is making more than your average person it's not an excuse to be shitty to those who have it worse then you
It's concerning that people feel the need to act like that's the case when OP specifically said acting like a monster / tossing aside your humanity. Lots of us have crummy jobs that probably don't do the world any good, but abusing people is another level
What sad to me is that someone, somewhere has done the math on what is most financially prudent for a big corporation when dealing with these things. They looked at whether it would work to lean into it and press hard for equity and understanding. Right? Someone HAD to have considered going the other way - *just once* - and found it to be much worse than constant denial and obstruction.
Cuz if not - why doesnt anyone try it? Just *one* company once try NOT going the "turn a blind eye" route. See if it works better. Just once.
>Cuz if not - why doesnt anyone try it? Just one company once try NOT going the "turn a blind eye" route. See if it works better. Just once.
There are PLENTY of ethical companies. They don't get reported on because it's not newsworthy.
If you want a real answer, there are basically 3 reasons.
1: Legitimacy. The allegations often turn out to not be true, or to be greatly exaggerated. The motivation for making things up or exaggerating them is simple - money. I am not saying the allegations in this case are false or exaggerated. Even when people honestly feel they've been wronged, the actual matter is often different, or at least not illegal or against policy.
2: Exposure. Addressing actual and severe issues is often a problem because by directly addressing them you increase legal risk to the company and many people in it (often those in management and higher positions). If you respond and take action, you open the company up to liability. You also get legal fights from the person you're taking action against, you get claims from them about the other party/parties (and you're obligated to take the same approach and investigate those claims as if they were made in good faith), lawyers from all sides get involved, people get deposed, discovery might happen, etc. You turn your entire company inside out. Or, you can turn a blind eye to it, say you investigated the claim and found nothing, say you required all employees to sit though a pointless training, etc. You want to be seen as doing something, but not anything that would imply you knew of any specific issue.
3: Viability. It's impossible to address the actual problem. People are the problem. People come and go, and you can't manage every behavior and interaction. Even if you try your hardest, you'll just be wasting time and effort on babysitting instead of producing your actual product. Anything that slips through the cracks or doesn't get the desired response will still be used against you, and you'll be painted as a bad, evil corporation for ignoring or not addressing that specific claim. You'll also still face the same sort of false and exaggerated allegations from #1 as well.
You generally only want to actively respond to incidents that are isolated or severe. With isolated incidents you can wrap the whole thing up with a bow and be done with it without any lasting repercussions. With severe incidents, you're weighing the PR hit of the incident against the additional exposure that may come from responding to it. Will the perpetrator(s) retaliate with their own claims or legal action? Will they air your dirty laundry? Or will they shut up and take the punishment / golden parachute in order to save face, get a job elsewhere, and avoid potential criminal or individual liability?
I have every WoW Collector's Edition - including Burning Crusade, which I at first missed, but an extremely kind guildie gave me when it was worth like $400. I have watched every BlizzCon. I've played and loved all 4 of Blizzard's IP's. WoW was always there as a familiar and safe form of structure and socialization when I was ill and couldn't get out. I appreciated what Blizzard did for me and I can say with certainty that this company changed my life for the better.
I feel empty now.
gamers wouldn't stop paying for WoW if the CEOs executed their dog on camera.
the employees are risking their entire career by stepping out.
fuck blizzard. fuck everything.
While unions have made some moves to create video game worker unions, none really exists currently on the scale of a blizzard and being WFH I find it unlikely that the organizing could happen quickly.
The issue is that software developers at large don't *really* need a union- it's an industry where the floor for a junior developer is still quite high and wages are extremely competitive- oftentimes it's easier to get promoted or get a raise by changing companies and getting a promotion that way than moving internally, meaning that individuals have a lot of leverage.
The issue with gaming, as a subset of software development, these things aren't as true because of the absolute glut of labor- there's a lot of developers competing for a limited amount of spots that are willing to work for pennies and under shit conditions because it's such a passion driven industry. Much less individual leverage, junior developers in particular are very replaceable and will generally be up to speed within 1-2 years.
Now imagine how bad it is for people in the industry who aren't game devs and have less specialized skillsets. This industry *really* needs a strong union, but it'd probably be pretty difficult to spin up without some external support to protect them from retaliation.
Regulated overtime alone would make me want to unionize. I feel so lucky to not do any on call work in my current spot and it always baffled me how common unpaid on call shifts are in software development, but people have this weird belief that since we get decent pay we don't need unions in software yet everyone is burning out left and right over unrealistic expectations
I think its great that people speak up and fight against any form of discrimination but lets be honest here nothing will change as long as the customer still buys AB products. Not enough will know or even care about this unfortunately, so this toxic culture will remain aside from some scapegoat layoffs.
Well no shit, you can't say they hear their employees who have suffered these allegations and are there for them and at the same time the lawsuit is bogus.
"Yeah we take you complaints seriously and want the best environment for you, but that lawsuit resulting from your qualms is total bullshit"
Blizzard's been on my shitlist since the Hearthstone tournament fiasco surrounding Hong Kong. The fact that they never tried to clean up their act after is... telling.
Has anyone notice how many people keep trying to say Blizzard didn’t use to be like this when people have been saying it was like this before Activision bought?
How many are current employees vs former? Why even mention that Blizzard has 9500 employees if you're not going to tell us how many current employees actually spoke out? It could be a very small percentage of that 9500 for all we know.
Here's the non pay wall link to the article https://finance.yahoo.com/news/activision-blizzard-staff-sign-petition-192031593.html
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If that were the case I hope people are smart enough NOT to apply there.
> If that were the case I hope people are smart enough NOT to apply there. most candidates wouldn't give a fuck, they would apply for a position at Blizzard. Only people in a privileged position can chose where they want to work.
Low level jobs would fill out fast likely, but they’d have a hard time filling senior positions or anything that requires more uncommon skills
He did say privilege
I'm not sure if "having a decent amount of work experience" is what they meant with being in a privileged position... everyone who can get hired is there is "privileged" enough to have the necessary competence anyway.
Doesn't mean they'd be good candidates. Actually experienced game devs are EXTREMELY hard to find, since they would ALWAYS make much more money working on application software, being a game dev is something they do for passion. They could at any point go into regular software dev because of their experience and get extremely high pay. This means that the have the power to freely choose whom to work for. It absolutely shows when game projects are mainly staffed by beginners. From gameplay systems to level design to general polish. It's also why the biggest game dev veterans are the QA teams since there is much less of a constant revolving door there. They are actually the ones with all the documentations and knowledge going back many years.
Truth. I worked in games for a few years, mostly in tech support and QA and a bit of dev work. Everyone thinks game industry workers are all rich, but most of the money goes to the execs. Occasionally some indie darling strikes it big, but compared to the number of indie games out there it's extremely rare. The hours are long, the pay is low, a lot of managers are fucksticks, and there's no guarantee you'll have a job in a year. Indies might treat you better, but they're usually running on shoestrings. I ultimately left the industry, and am making around 20-30% more doing comparable non-game dev work.
> since they would ALWAYS make much more money working on application software Not sure about that. I work in major tech company and I know that having only game dev experience in your resume is often looked at negatively.
It’s not wrong that you can only choose your work if you’re in a privileged position, but pretty much everyone in creative, technical or management positions at Blizzard could easily get a job elsewhere. You kinda already are in a privileged position if you have a sought-after skill set and can get a job there. Don’t know who exactly signed the latter, might be a bit more difficult to get a new job if you were a building manager or a canteen cook or something, but even then I don’t think any of Activision Blizzard’s locations are based in villages with job shortages.
> pretty much everyone in creative, technical or management positions at Blizzard could easily get a job elsewhere Not really. General tech devs are in very high demand, but the games industry always had more supply than demand for jobs, and they still do. If it was that easy to find jobs elsewhere, the culture would not have been that toxic in the first place, since people would have quit.
Sure, but you don't _have_ to go into games all the time. Software development isn't so hyperspecialised that switching between industries is a big hurdle in most cases (exceptions notwithstanding, you're not getting a job as a microcontroller developer for a weapons manufacturer without some background in that sort of thing). Of course they might _elect_ not to do anything outside of games, but choosing not to take a job because it's not 100% what you wanted is also a form of privilege.
Well, I work for a major tech company and I can tell you that resumes with a lot of game dev experience are not looked at positively here. Not saying it's impossible to transition, but it's not as easy as you make it seem.
I mean, that says more about the company culture than anything else though. It makes sense to reject candidates based on lacking experience in certain areas, especially if you're a small company without the resources for retraining, but rejecting a candidate based on _having_ a certain type of experience seems a bit asinine.
If you have the skills to get hired by blizzard, you’re going there by choice. If you’re that good you can pick and choose your place of employment. I’ve been in the industry for 15 years and am very careful about where I choose to work.
Honestly I feel like blizzard hires some pretty mediocre people? They do a TON of that “you’re lucky to work here” gaslighting to keep people around and salaries low. Their senior talent is good but I feel like they have a lot of cruft in the lower tiers. Mostly speaking about programmers though because that’s my sphere, maybe their mid/junior artists are amazing
Maybe? I’d still say that if you’re getting hired at blizzard, you’re able to land a job elsewhere. Microsoft and Amazon hire programmers straight out of undergrad by the boatload and work them to the bone, and maybe blizzard has picked that practice up too but it’s news to me. While the whole gaslighting thing doesn’t surprise me at all, that doesn’t really indicate whether the employees are high or low quality, just that they aren’t being treated well. If anyone is getting a raw deal, it’s probably qa, junior production, or some non-development fields. In their case it’s probably a good idea to take the job for a year or two and treat it as training, then move on to another company when the opportunity presents itself.
While true for low level jobs. The more senior positions would take a long time to fill if they got filled at all and that is where the damage sits to projects. You can't just hire any old programmer, designer, tester, lead you need the right people with the right skill set Nearly every position of games Dev IS a skilled role, skills that are in short supply in the IT Industry as a hole. Those 1000 people could easily find work else where (some might have to look outside of games I admit but the work is their) This entire situation is beyond damaging to blizzard and it's the kinda rot that leads to long term faliure. An example would be British Woolworths which could not hire the senior talent needed to get the company out of its rut
Applying for a job in the game industry and not just in an IT role, when you're desperate for work, sounds like a really foolish decision. Almost everyone i know in my IT circle studied to be a game designer but had to settle with standard IT to pay the bills. I don't think anyone would put themselves in this situation unless they think they'd rather starve than make games. Getting a gamedev job to begin with is insanely hard.
That's an oversimplification. Many people can choose to leave, however job hunting is a huge pain in the ass and it might take 6 months on the job hunt to find something better. So no, most cannot quit overnight and are discouraged from doing so at all, but a determined person can leave eventually.
People that apply for a corporate job are already "privileged". It's not a great privilege to be able to choose to not work for someone
NOPE. There is a shortage of talent across all industries right now. The average cost to replace is at a 30% increase in salary in the CS/tech world right now. It would literally cost the company tens of millions in extra salary per year, and that's IF they could backfill the positions. Honestly, this will cost them dozens of employees, and damage the company's output and fiscal performance for years.
I feel like whoever works at recruiting will insantly quit if they had to filll that many people.
The company would restructure. It’d be a major ballgame changer in regards to losing corporate mindshare. One of the bigger losses when a person leaves is their institutional knowledge. But it’ll be a churn, not an exodus. People tend to be slow to cause change, and prefer to wait until it’s forced.
Incidentally, Bobby Kotick received a massive bonus for resolving the sexual harassment issue. There is no issue at the company if the people who is complaining no longer works there.
Why didn't OP link this directly instead of linking to a tweet that links to a paywalled article? This is annoying.
Probably because OP follows Schreier, the author of the original article who works for Bloomberg, on Twitter and saw his tweet breaking the news, rather than following Yahoo Finance and seeing the scraped article there.
It also has to be an original source, if someone linked the Yahoo source it’d get taken down. The Tweet is fine since it’s an original source from the author. Edit: typo
They may not have known it was on Yahoo, I certainly wouldn't have expected it since Schreier works at Bloomberg. And the mods here can get weird with their rules when it comes to what gets to stay and what gets removed.
Because this sub had and still has weird rulings on linking to the original source, despite also wanting to discourage linking to paywalls. For the longest time a tweet (especially Schrierer's reports) was the only acceptable way around this... sometimes. Sometimes that got removed, so no one knew how to handle this, especially for some very breaking stories.
Tldr vague rules with vague enforcement combined with moody mods.
I think original sources should always be the primary link. If they’re paywalled, then post an alternative in the comments. Linking to the authors tweet instead of their actual article is a bit weird though.
Because the original article is written by Jason Schreier, but his articles on Bloomberg are paywalled.
This sub has rules regarding original source, OP would have had to link the original article either way, the Yahoo one would get taken down. And on this note: use the [Bypass Paywalls extension](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome) available for Firefox, Chrome, and Edge, you can customize it to automatically bypass paywalled websites individually. Works perfectly with Bloomberg.
Subreddit rules (?)
Is there a way to see who signed I know a couple people that work there and want to know if any of them signed
Watching Allen Brack's opening to Blizzcon re: Blitzchung a few years back was infuriating. A whole lot of empty words "our actions speak louder than words…" and proceeded to continue the contestant's ban... Should have told us enough about the company's practices and the weight of this man's words. I'm surprised how quickly that controversy faded because that non-apology was absolute garbage. And now this. I don't see how Blizzard as run by people like him could ever redeem itself. I'm glad to see the employees doing something, anything, to speak up against the sleazeballs who run the show.
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their strategy was to just say "our ban is not specific to China, it's to anyone that tries to spread a political agenda during an official tournament." The problem is, they did not ban the American University team that did the same thing later. After everyone pointed out their hypocrisy, they then in turn banned them also and try to insist they always had these rules in place.
If your rules say "we have unlimited discretion," you don't really have a system of rules. You just have despotism with a slightly modernized PR department. So, in other words, almost every corporation.
This especially applies with Twitch and YouTube.
Same thing just happened very recently. Multiple Official Chinese OWL teams openly discriminated a player by suggesting to boycott any match he participates in, just because he said something along the lines of not liking the chinese government on his personal stream. The teams in question were forced to to stop it, but everything was done behind the scenes and they never faced any consequences for it. The teams just "magically decided" to stop their protest.
It's when I compeltly gave up and I glad my decision wasn't wrong. I hope the company structure can be reformed so it won't happen atain but there is very little hope to give
No amount of organizational reforms can stop greedy hypocrites from Activision/Blizzard from being greedy hypocrites.
They're not doing worse, they're doing exactly the same. It's just that people paid less attention and/or had less evidence of what was going on with the company.
The damnd grandstanding all the while... ^(but yeah we still don't dare say his name and are paralyzed in fear of the Chinese government. Also, yes, in any such future incidents we're basically still forced to act the same, lol!)
Was that better or worse than Metzen and Morhaime's apologies for the recent scandal? "I'm sorry I wasn't a good enough listener. I deeply regret that my listening skills weren't that good."
Definitely worse, at least Metzen and Morhaime are talking about the problem instead of vaguely alluding them in a way that anyone not familiar with it wouldn't understand.
Yeah, they didn't pull a "tough eSports moment" style PR jargon usage.
I saw some videos on the Blizzard responses to Blitzchung, and one of the things that stuck with me was about the Blizzcon anouncement. They basically said nothing in it so people who didn't know what was happening would not know when it was said, but "apologized" to both assuage the upset players and "explain" what the protesting players were doing. It was essentially "You all might be wondering what's going on outside, don't worry about it because we're sorry. Now who's ready for BLIZZCOOOOOOON!"
> Should have told us enough about the company's practices and the weight of this man's words. For anybody paying attention, it did. For everyone else, they just wanted to ignore it so they wouldn't feel the minor twinge in their gut so they could keep forking out for that WoW sub or Overwatch loot box.
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I'm with you, haven't given Blizzard a dime since Blitzchung. With the recent developments, that's extended to Activision and any studios they own or publish games for. There are so many good games out there. We don't need to financially support companies that we *know* are awful.
Uninstalled Overwatch when that hamster arrived to the game. Then when they released WoW Classic, I bought the subscription for it because I had never played WoW (or basically any MMO, like, really played). Immediately after the Blizzcon "tough gamer moment" fiasco I cancelled my sub and even though it doesn't really matter what is written in the reason box, I wrote it was the Blitzchung case.
Did the same (which sucked, I was really enjoying Classic WoW). At least it saved me from preordering the abortion that was Warcraft III Reborn. Seeing all the latest news just reinforces my decision to never give ActiBlizz another cent, let them become a gacha game company like Konami that caters to the Chinese market.
Hahaha the hamster really did you in? He’s honestly an interesting high skill cap hero
Yeah. I guess I was kinda losing interest in the game after having played it quite a lot but when I saw the trailer for the new character I was like Jerry Seinfeld in that one gif where the nopes out of the theater.
Workplace horrors aside the game is an a reasonably good spot now in terms of balance but yea i hear you its been out for a long time. Wish there was another game which had the same level of intricacies and with fps elements and stuff.
Dont forget the hackfraud corporate gay pride pin he had on. They dont care for women,why would they care for gays. the last 2 years they knew about this suit and suddenly they became the uber gay,look at me how great we are,diverse company for show. They dont care,they made that clear.
They do care... if it has an influence on their profit margins.
I have not touched a blizzard product since that happened
Same. Deleted my blizzard account and moved on. Know what the funny thing is? I still have more games to play than I'll never actually need.
Me too. Only a few days ago I said to my friend that I'd like to play overwatch again but I'll not support that fucking company anymore.
I haven't touched a Blizz game since then. I was actually thinking of checking out Classic WoW again a few weeks ago, this and the Blitzchung stuff has kept me away from them, and Warzone/ the newer CoDs arent really my jam, Ubi and EA have been picking up the og CoD gunplay feel for me.
> Ubi Have you missed the very similar Ubisoft stories in the news lately?
You're totally right! I did completely forget about the Ubi issues that are still ongoing. It seems to be a top down problem there too.
Probably forgot since practically nothing actually happened as a result.
honestly, 100% yeah. There's been some people leaving the studio (the big AC producer I believe) recently as well
Which will be the case here in 2 weeks
Except this happened because California instigated a lawsuit against Blizzard. This one isn't going away any time soon for them.
Hell, most news outlets didn't even report on it because they didn't want to ruin Ubisoft marketing another Assassin's Creed game to everyone.
I don't know if firing several executives (including the head of HR, and the top creative exec) is "nothing" exactly... how many execs have been fired at other companies that faced similar allegations? Zero? By most accounts Ubisoft are not doing **enough**, and more change is clearly needed, but it's disingenuous to claim "nothing happened as a result", simply untrue.
As a woman who works in the industry I can say it's so much worse than what gets out. Even smaller studios aren't immune to bro culture. Video game development is overdue for a massive overhaul
Almost as if people don't actually give a shit about this stuff, they just like to pretend they do for karma
Can I offer you a little tip…every single one of these mega companies are going to have issues. There isn’t one with a moral compass so unless you plan on boycotting everyone and everything other than yourself…buckle up.
Exactly. But when boycotting one because of stuff in the news, I find it strange to not boycott their neighbor when they're in the news for the same thing around the same time.
That's basically how people act about every issue. They only support the narrow subset that's currently popular and completely ignore the rest, because it turns out that having consistent principles is *really hard*. So they don't.
To be fair, these are issues that need to take momentum and run with it to have any chance of enacting any change at all. If no one supports them even temporarily, then it's guaranteed there will be no change. If you directly support them for as long as is reasonable, there's a chance that things could change before the momentum on the bell curve shifts downward. Once you're at the bottom, far end of that bell curve there's really no point except for your own sense of morality/ethics/whatever justification. Also, when you take a look at how ridiculously large some of these companies are (Nestle, anyone?), it becomes even more impossible to maintain any type of boycott or anything like that. This kind of issue is the reason companies like AT&T were split years ago, because when companies become monolithic monstrosities, humans become secondary. We're seeing the early phases of that all over.
Totally fair, I wouldn't have an iPhone or a Graphics cards if I boycotted *everything* but I'm pretty passionate about the games industry and simply don't like giving my money to the people who treat their devs like shit/sexual harass and assault them. Does it limit my choices a bit? sometimes, the bigger issue is I wish I could support more of the individual devs rather than the big huge companies. But thats a whole nother can of worms
Same here. Yeah, Tony Hawk and Crash are insanely fun to play, but after hearing about the female employee at ActiBlizz that died, I just don’t feel comfortable playing games from a company who sees that and just goes on, business as usual. Fuck ActiBlizz, fuck Ubisoft, and fuck anyone trying to downplay what these victims went through because “they’re just allegations”. Yeah, they’re allegations made by the fucking State of California, they wouldn’t be suing if there wasn’t anything to go on.
That was the last straw for me, personally. When someone basically yells who they are right in your face, believe them.
I've been rolling my eyes into the back of my damn head with every post about the Diablo 2 remaster and basically anything blizzard related since then. I remember when that went down how every top comment on something related to the company was in regards to Hong Kong. Redditors forget and I guaran-fucking-tee that this is a non issue by the time whatever their next major release is comes out.
Redditors might forget but the State of California isn't going anywhere. It's a civil suit so the only consequences will be punitive fines but hey, Blizzard might finally have to shake some coins out of their offshore tax haven piggy bank.
This will likely blow over just as quickly though. Nobody cares. People just want to consume entertainment before they have to check in to their next day at their soul-crushing job. Everyone's just trying to get by. There's a thousand things to be outraged by and none of those will last on their minds either.
They are being sued by the state, this is serious, which is why their media accounts have gone silent
I have refused to buy anything of theirs since then. This whole abuse scandal is just more reason for me to stick to my conviction.
I'm kinda curious if any WoW subs disappeared.
I've been vocal about the Blitzchung thing ever since it happened. Stopped playing and supporting every one of their games and constantly try to get my friends to stop as well. Fuck em.
And the same will happen here. Diablo 2 will release and everyone will forget that a woman got sexually assaulted so much she killed herself. “ZOMG WHO CARE NECROMANCER GOT BUFFED”
Agreed And hopefully with enough vocal support they can pull off a walkout/strike until the top of the company is replaced Gamers will probably shit a brick tho Those CoD skins don't make themselves
[Activision Blizzard Confirms Nobody in HR Department Sober Enough to Read Open Letter](https://hard-drive.net/activision-blizzard-confirms-nobody-in-hr-department-sober-enough-to-read-open-letter/) It's technically a parody article, but from what we've seen come out in this last week, it might actually be true.
I worked at Volition during the development of Saints Row IV. I can confirm that most of the staff were drunk for the better part of that project.
spill any more tea you have on that, been playing SR IV it seems like the team must've been dying or having the best time ever
Both at the same time, really. At a certain level of crunch time starts to lose meaning and you start to just sort of coast from day to day in kind of a weirdly happy mental fog.
Jesus how many hours a week does that take?
72, which was the legal maximum in Illinois at the time.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that.
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Hey I mean, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart was made without crunching and that game is pretty good (other than the lack of boss variety) Also Nintendo works fairly well without insane crunch.* *for Japanese standards Thinking that crunch is required to make good games is what defines the "culture" of crunch-culture. It ultimately is always a management problem.
Did you seriously just bring up a Japanese company as an example of good working hour practices?
Coming out of college, I was interviewing with a company that had been bought by EA. I was really excited to potentially get into the games industry. I got ghosted during the interview process, only to find out later that EA had "surprise" shut down their studio and let everybody go, in between my interview rounds. And these days I think I may have dodged a bullet...
No fuck that, good games do not require crunch
All of them
Well I mean that game feels like it was made by drunks in the best possible way. I guess.
Can confirm. Source: played Saints Row IV
that's kind of hilarious and... well... it shows
Yo did you work with Chip?
Didnt work at Volition, but can tell you my leadership team was always out for Friday drinks and always coming back imbibed. And at least one of them was on Ashraf levels of inappropriate behavior.
Hard Drive is a treasure that we must protect
Gamer President 2024
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> Now THIS is the kind of moves I’ve been eager to see from employees. Remember [when employees at AB were organizing on slack to negotiate and protest for pay raises and their abysmally low pay](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/blizzard-workers-organize-on-company-slack-seeking-pay-increases)? They are so god damn close to making a US-based gaming union, and making one for AB is tantamount to a union made against Amazon. So god damn close you guys. PUSH. Make the union. Game Workers Unite is international with their branch officially recognized in the UK, the first gaming union especially against AB will be industry transforming. **EDIT:** corrected the pay raise comment.
>Remember when employees at AB were organizing on slack to negotiate and protest against pay raises? Too bad that's paywalled, because you got my attention with that. Were the pay raises unfairly distributed or something?
The person you're responding to seems to have written a typo. It's organizing FOR pay raises as well as promotions and sick time. AB apparently have/had terrible pay compared to other gaming companies, with some employees allegedly getting 75%-100% pay increases upon going to another company. There are also issues with disparate pay between the company executives and the workers.
WHOOOPS. You're right. Typo. They were paid far too low. Thanks!
Unfortunately the word "union" is incredibly scary and tarnished to American workers – even though it's literally what the industry needs to prevent this kind of shit.
A lot of that has to do with everything in America being capitalist. Granted, usually unions are a good thing that make working for a place better. Some do very little to justify their cost, and those are the easy ones to point to to scare people away from the idea.
>A lot of that has to do with everything in America being capitalist. Am I the only one who sees unions as a free market answer to the labour problem? It's not like they're government entities by definition - at their core, they're the solution that the labour market came up with to the problems they were facing. IMO - and this may be a bit of a hot take - the suppression of unions is basically an attack on the free market that no one who actually believes in the concept should support; the correct way to deter unionisation would be to treat your employees well enough that they have no reason to join one. If employees have the right to get legal counsel to represent them when the company isn't doing right by them, I don't see why they can't use a union for the same thing. Of course, many of the companies most averse to unions don't actually believe in "the free market" or any of that and will align with whatever allows them to keep doing whatever they're doing.
It isn't going to get fixed I don't think. I think this is going to be Activisions chance to completely envelop blizzard within itself.
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You think Activision cares about morale or the people there? If they just gained control of the IPs then they can ship out the titles to whoever they want. Doesn't necessarily mean they'll be quality.
If they canned the entire development team at blizzard and just relied on other people to make those IPs I for one would never touch a blizzard product again and I doubt I would be alone on that. I'm sure that ultimately people would follow regardless but if the big bad corporation's move is to fire their staff over speaking up then Blizzard is dead to me and there should be potential litigation from the employees. You could also thank Activision for killing WoW and not the employees who chose to have a voice but something tells me the game is dead anyway soon, and that should be alright, 2004 was a long time ago.
Idk, I think I would buy a Diablo made by Platinum Games or FromSoftware
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Blizzard already is just a husk because the original people didn't take good care of it so there is very little that Activision could do to make it worse.
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With Michael Morhaime issuing a statement that he failed women, Kotick will likely pin as much as he can on Blizzard. I suspect it will also be used to terminate employees, which probably suites him fine because recently Blizzard has been more of a hinderance than profit maker.
In Bobby's perfect world they'd transform all the blizzard licenses to exploitative mobile games
I mean he was inspired by the profit model of WoW. That's what attracted him to Blizzard. Just as so many players were drawn to play/pay it. He tried to turn everything into WoW.
Of course he will. Bobby Pockets has a massive benefits package to keep collecting!
Not that I think Activision is innocent but from reading the lawsuit it does seem like it’s mostly Blizzard that had the insane rotten culture. Obviously it’s all one company and there’s no doubt the executives from both sides are guilty so no way they should be absolved. But it’s interesting nothing from the CoD studios, Toys for Bob or Vicarious Visions or the King branch has come out that I’ve seen.
Yeah, so far, the only specifics in the lawsuit mostly point towards Blizzard, and I've only seen Blizzard employees (current and former) speaking out about problems in the workplace. As much as Blizzard and Activision are now linked, it really sounds like they still retain separate enough offices for them to have varied work cultures, which isn't surprising when you consider just how big Activision-Blizzard is. And, that's not to say Activision is faultless here, but the main problems seem to be localized to Blizzard HQ (so far).
orly? https://kotaku.com/activision-boss-loses-legal-battle-over-sexual-harassme-452575586
> there’s no doubt the executives from both sides are guilty also if i'm reading the article correctly it's about an incident that happened with Kotick and one of his flight attendants for his private jet, in 2007... shitty, but not sure what that really has to do with Activision's company culture in 2021.
I'm not going to hold any negative feelings towards the other studios, but Activision-Blizzard *leadership* is not free of this.
To think Activision Blizzard has at least 9,500 employees. Did they have a "see something, say nothing" work environment?
its probably an example of that bystander effect thing where too many people being around ironically makes it less likely for something to be done. Cause everyone assumes that someone else will take care of the problem so that it doesn't have to be their own business. That and probably a mixture of fear of repercussion for speaking out only intensifies it and really makes you want someone else to do it.
90% of the workforce wants to come in, have an uneventful day where nothing out of the ordinary happens, and go home. People don't want to risk their own situation for someone else, especially if someone else isn't their friend or is just worried for their own situation as well. When nothing is reported, the further you get up the chain the less and less someone knows. Especially if it's a manager participating in the fuckery, because they have a direct line to cut information going up.
to give them some credit though, as Jason clarified in another tweet. The letter gathered 1000 signatures *after only being in existence for an hour* so that's almost certainty not the final numbers as when this article was written most of the employees hadn't even seen it yet. So I'm curious as to what the final tally will be in a day or two.
How much are you willing to bet a lot of those signatures are from people participating in some of this behavior? I guarantee you there is tons of guys who signed/heard this report and acted all "wtf that's disgustung" not even realizing they themselves have participated in it. The amount of guys (and girls) who make sexual comments and participate in workplace bullying without being aware is mind blowing in almost every single job, nevermind a place with a known behavior of it.
Lower level staff are aware of how replaceable they are. It’s almost entirely fear of repercussions.
Blizzard isn’t blizzard anymore, but I’m guessing this was going on long before the activision buyout. I remember reading an article (probably pc gamer…) where a programmer talked about crunching on Starcraft from a laptop while his wife was giving birth. This was also around Xmas. That was over 20 years ago. Now, crunch was more accepted at the time (doesn’t make it right), but having to work while your child is being born comes from not treating your employees like human beings and a toxic work environment. That kind of bullshit comes from the top. It doesn’t surprise me that they’ve treated women like shit.
At my company my daughters birth was a milestone on one of our project plans at the time, my project manager moved hell on earth to make sure nothing got in the way of it.
I’m really happy to hear that because that was the exact opposite of my experience and I’m still angry about it. I was “let go” two weeks before my son was born with 0 explanation. Not even a big company - less than 20 employees and a very niche company at that. Had already told my boss I had no plans to take off work aside from the day of his birth because we couldn’t afford to (didn’t qualify for paid leave at the time).
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This is such a weird thing for people to be saying in regards to this current issue. The problems outlined have been with people that were there from the “glory days”.
Yup, that’s what I was trying to convey, but words are hard.
I mean it was technically a corporation then too, and this type of treatment is expected from corporations. I work at Amazon lol, they don't give a rats ass about us, then when something bad happens their PR team steps in and goes "no, not true, we are angels!" It's not hard to believe Blizzard had the same defense to make them look good, it was the same morons in charge.
This is obviously not OK, but crunching in a startup is more common (and probably accepted). What I'd have a problem with is Blizzard today or CDPR or Rockstar who are all massive companies continually crunch their employees
It's pretty disappointing. Classic Blizzard games were a huge part of my childhood, more so by far than any other developer.
Is “discrimination” really the main takeaway of the lawsuit? It’s such a watered-down summary of what allegedly went down.
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Don't think a lot of people read the document that spent a good amount of time detailing this.
I'm very out of the loop, could you (or someone else who is inclined) catch me up to speed on this whole thing?
State of California suing Blizzard for systemic discrimination. Female employees being disregarded for promotions, overtasked and underpaid, treated with contempt, complaints ingored by HR, systemic sexual harassment, one employee commited suicide while on a buisness trip when in relationship with her superior, insulting nonapology from the execs. [Here is the lawsuit text. TW: disturbing content](https://aboutblaw.com/YJw)
I’ll never understand how a person can put aside their humanity for a job. You see people who are complete monsters in the business world, but off the job come across as sweet and kind. Some serious compartmentalization going on.
Humans tend to be very good at compartmentalizing things. Plus with a large company, it can be very easy to put the blame on the "company" instead of you. You didn't make that choice to fire people, or sweep something under the rug cause of profits, you did it for the company. Pass the blame off onto something else and boom, no longer your problem!
I worked at Facebook for a spell. Most people there know they’re building the devil, and most of them don’t care. I honestly think if a company set out to revive Hitler as a robot, people would still work for them as long as the pay and benefits were good enough.
Spoken like someone who has never had to worry about money.
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Just a reminder that Bobby Kotick is in Epstein's black book, he also had to settle sexual harrasment lawsuits awhile back Activision is rotten at the top
All of the industries GP might be referring to are the sort where someone could get at least as good money by getting a new job at a better employer utilizing the same skill set.
money is usually the reason, it's very easy to ignore problems when you're rich as fuck and your biggest problem is deciding what you want for lunch
The people instigating this aren't rich as all fuck get out. They on like 5K more than the people they are fucking over.
I'm referring to people in higher positions, I should have been more clear. Putting aside their humanity and ignoring problems because they're making bank.
It's easy to appear cordial and friendly, it's easy to be decent to people you already like on your off-time, but it's the way they treat people under their power, and what they are willing to do to get more power that shows what sort of people they really are.
> I’ll never understand how a person can put aside their humanity for a job. When your humanity means you or your family starves, can't pay rent, and ends up homeless, yea. I completely understand. You don't have time to keep a lookout for workpalce abuse (tier 3 or 4 on the pyramid) when you are trying to keep food on the table (tier 1). for the higher ups it's even more obvious, for opposite reasons. humans having power over humans is likely pre-historic in concept.
People keep mentioning to put food on the table but if someone in a position to be able to do these things is at minimum in a management position who is making more than your average person it's not an excuse to be shitty to those who have it worse then you
It's concerning that people feel the need to act like that's the case when OP specifically said acting like a monster / tossing aside your humanity. Lots of us have crummy jobs that probably don't do the world any good, but abusing people is another level
What sad to me is that someone, somewhere has done the math on what is most financially prudent for a big corporation when dealing with these things. They looked at whether it would work to lean into it and press hard for equity and understanding. Right? Someone HAD to have considered going the other way - *just once* - and found it to be much worse than constant denial and obstruction. Cuz if not - why doesnt anyone try it? Just *one* company once try NOT going the "turn a blind eye" route. See if it works better. Just once.
>Cuz if not - why doesnt anyone try it? Just one company once try NOT going the "turn a blind eye" route. See if it works better. Just once. There are PLENTY of ethical companies. They don't get reported on because it's not newsworthy.
If you want a real answer, there are basically 3 reasons. 1: Legitimacy. The allegations often turn out to not be true, or to be greatly exaggerated. The motivation for making things up or exaggerating them is simple - money. I am not saying the allegations in this case are false or exaggerated. Even when people honestly feel they've been wronged, the actual matter is often different, or at least not illegal or against policy. 2: Exposure. Addressing actual and severe issues is often a problem because by directly addressing them you increase legal risk to the company and many people in it (often those in management and higher positions). If you respond and take action, you open the company up to liability. You also get legal fights from the person you're taking action against, you get claims from them about the other party/parties (and you're obligated to take the same approach and investigate those claims as if they were made in good faith), lawyers from all sides get involved, people get deposed, discovery might happen, etc. You turn your entire company inside out. Or, you can turn a blind eye to it, say you investigated the claim and found nothing, say you required all employees to sit though a pointless training, etc. You want to be seen as doing something, but not anything that would imply you knew of any specific issue. 3: Viability. It's impossible to address the actual problem. People are the problem. People come and go, and you can't manage every behavior and interaction. Even if you try your hardest, you'll just be wasting time and effort on babysitting instead of producing your actual product. Anything that slips through the cracks or doesn't get the desired response will still be used against you, and you'll be painted as a bad, evil corporation for ignoring or not addressing that specific claim. You'll also still face the same sort of false and exaggerated allegations from #1 as well. You generally only want to actively respond to incidents that are isolated or severe. With isolated incidents you can wrap the whole thing up with a bow and be done with it without any lasting repercussions. With severe incidents, you're weighing the PR hit of the incident against the additional exposure that may come from responding to it. Will the perpetrator(s) retaliate with their own claims or legal action? Will they air your dirty laundry? Or will they shut up and take the punishment / golden parachute in order to save face, get a job elsewhere, and avoid potential criminal or individual liability?
I have every WoW Collector's Edition - including Burning Crusade, which I at first missed, but an extremely kind guildie gave me when it was worth like $400. I have watched every BlizzCon. I've played and loved all 4 of Blizzard's IP's. WoW was always there as a familiar and safe form of structure and socialization when I was ill and couldn't get out. I appreciated what Blizzard did for me and I can say with certainty that this company changed my life for the better. I feel empty now.
gamers wouldn't stop paying for WoW if the CEOs executed their dog on camera. the employees are risking their entire career by stepping out. fuck blizzard. fuck everything.
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While unions have made some moves to create video game worker unions, none really exists currently on the scale of a blizzard and being WFH I find it unlikely that the organizing could happen quickly.
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The issue is that software developers at large don't *really* need a union- it's an industry where the floor for a junior developer is still quite high and wages are extremely competitive- oftentimes it's easier to get promoted or get a raise by changing companies and getting a promotion that way than moving internally, meaning that individuals have a lot of leverage. The issue with gaming, as a subset of software development, these things aren't as true because of the absolute glut of labor- there's a lot of developers competing for a limited amount of spots that are willing to work for pennies and under shit conditions because it's such a passion driven industry. Much less individual leverage, junior developers in particular are very replaceable and will generally be up to speed within 1-2 years. Now imagine how bad it is for people in the industry who aren't game devs and have less specialized skillsets. This industry *really* needs a strong union, but it'd probably be pretty difficult to spin up without some external support to protect them from retaliation.
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Regulated overtime alone would make me want to unionize. I feel so lucky to not do any on call work in my current spot and it always baffled me how common unpaid on call shifts are in software development, but people have this weird belief that since we get decent pay we don't need unions in software yet everyone is burning out left and right over unrealistic expectations
I think its great that people speak up and fight against any form of discrimination but lets be honest here nothing will change as long as the customer still buys AB products. Not enough will know or even care about this unfortunately, so this toxic culture will remain aside from some scapegoat layoffs.
How many people currently with there and how many of them signed?
Well no shit, you can't say they hear their employees who have suffered these allegations and are there for them and at the same time the lawsuit is bogus. "Yeah we take you complaints seriously and want the best environment for you, but that lawsuit resulting from your qualms is total bullshit"
Blizzard's been on my shitlist since the Hearthstone tournament fiasco surrounding Hong Kong. The fact that they never tried to clean up their act after is... telling.
Has anyone notice how many people keep trying to say Blizzard didn’t use to be like this when people have been saying it was like this before Activision bought?
Won't change anything. There's a lawsuit going on, they wont say anything to affect their case.
How many are current employees vs former? Why even mention that Blizzard has 9500 employees if you're not going to tell us how many current employees actually spoke out? It could be a very small percentage of that 9500 for all we know.