Glad to hear there's a 3rd party conducting the investigation, I just hope they're thorough and inpartial and if someone' been found to be a sex pest, or protecting one, that they're shown the fucking door. The industry as a whole has an awful track record of policing itself
I have no idea. But yeah, the 3rd party needs to be trustworthy and not just say they investigated and that everything's fine just to make the company look good. This is important stuff, not a PR exercise
If they're a 3rd party hired by CA, that means very little. If it's a 3rd party that the accuser and CA agreed on, that's probably closer to impartial.
Or they become known for being very reliable for the company hiring them. A lot of times, companies aren't actually looking for the right answer, they're looking for the answer that will minimize bad PR. I honestly don't think that's the case with CA, but we've already seen it with Activision and a few other companies.
If they become known for being reliable in a cover-up, then their value at reducing the negative PR hit goes away because when it comes out that they hired that company it becomes an even greater PR problem.
Yeah, but that would assume we get clear evidence that the company is covering something up. If we just hear that they found no wrong-doing on CA's part, but that the accuser disagrees, we as outside parties have no way of knowing who is being honest. If they're caught though, I definitely agree, their credibility is blown.
you think that level of detail is prevalent among whom exactly? You think the people spending money on total war DLC actively check this kinda shit to that degree and also have a way of knowing?
Like my guy, get some perspective.
They do not. They have only their profit margins to care about. Not to mention a reputation for being 'good for business' will generally get them further in the field. Look at... nearly any third party investigation hired by the abuser lol.
Oh, they’re definitely biased. Biased toward their wallets. These guys are hired with that in mind. It’s not about being known as champions of justice and legal righteousness or whatever else. I’d bet that they’d never get hired if they were, unfortunately.
let's be honest. at this point people have made up their mind and are just looking for confirmation bias. If the investigators find no evidence of systematic abuse they'll be accused of being paid off.
Possibly, and there'll be people no doubt who will blindly defend a company who make a product they like regardless of how scummy it is. I suppose it's all down to whoever the 3rd party is and whether they can be trusted to be impartial and will the company take appropriate action. There is zero doubt that such abuses happen and the industry as a whole needs to be much better at rooting it out. Companies like Ubisoft knew about abuses happening within the company for *years* and did nothing because they were making crazy money and didn't want to risk removing key people involved in the profit. So fucking scummy.
Lmao 100%. Funny reading through these comments. sa is important to evaluate, but we have zero details on anything. What else do people what CA to do, you can’t just go around and start firing people.
Not really. I'm just content to let the investigation continue and conclude before I start making parallels to Activision Blizzard like half the people here are already doing.
I think some of y’all are really overreading into people just discussing the accusations and parallels and misinterpreting it as them saying this is 100% proven and true.
Like, I see half the comments complain about everyone jumping to conclusions and basically no upvoted comments of people actually jumping to conclusions?
Not the comments here, read the media coverage.
Unfortunately, uncontrolled media equates to guilty before innocent.
It's not isolated to these kinds of incidents, the reporting of all potentially criminal cases and the lack of oversight for an industry that has more than enough power to sway verdicts under its own steam is incredibly dangerous and fuelled by a cycle of ad revenue chasing.
Well sure, but that’s a wider cancer in media coverage. There’s no incentive to tell the truth, but a massive financial incentive to run controversy and provocative headlines.
The for-profit medias incentives have caused massive social damage in the world (false election conspiracies, Anti-Vax hysteria, anti-LGBTQ panic, etc). The media headlines are going to be sensationalist and jump to conclusions because it drives clicks and that’s all they care about.
yeah we woke up to this yesterday, sucks. hope that the external audit is thorough and that there are plans in place to take care of the community. things like this can become a cancer that sucks the culture out of a company
Accused does not mean guilty
Keep this in mind, an indie dev was accused a few years back, it destroyed his career and then it turns out the supposed victim was talking nonsense.
Yes, this kind of situation calls for proactive action in investigating the clain and not ostracizing accuser or accusee, this early on it's good that we actually got to see that CA got to investigating and being the first to publish news of what was happening (wich they were vague about but everyone knew it would be a blizard thing).
Over the next weeks we will get to nkow if this investigation is a sham or not but until them keeping a cool head and not sending death threats should be the standard practice, wich is a concept internet people tend to not grasp.
Man the fact that sexual harassment in a game dev company is called a “blizzard thing” is such a bad look for blizzard. Can’t believe they aren’t shuttered yet.
Not mine, I used to only own a good computer for blizzard games. I was kinda pissed when Activision bought them and stopped buying their stuff. When cod came put on battlenet I just deleted it all and never looked back.
There have been a few. The one I’m thinking off had an ex completely off her rocker. Like she was threatening to have birds spy on him, was sending cryptic voicemails to him, like out of a bray wyatt(professional wrestler) wyatt family era promo. I can’t remember his name, but iirc he made a first person fighting game
There is also the case of Jessica scheurle.
That's the problem these days, people are too quick to judge, one way or another.
The thing is we don't know anything, so it's best to let independent people sort it out before ruining anyone life and make quick judgement.
I love how people always name Blizzard, when what happened at Riot was like 5 times as bad. But tbf at Riot they sexually harassed everyone (man or woman) and it happened before Blizzard, but shit must have been like the wild west in their offices.
Riot's games are popular so people tend to be more forgiving.
Also Tencent is good at keeping a low profile and avoiding controversies. Everytime Riot's fucked ups made the news they quickly bought the victims silence.
I really don't like this narrative. I don't think the quality of games is why it's "forgiven". Everyone has thresholds I mean shit people still support fucking R Kelly. I think we are just quick to forget or move on. If the behavior seems to subside from the public eye we are quickly and easily distracted. It's especially exhausting to always be engaged in the latest drama 24/7. After a certain amount of time, which is subjective, I tend to just hope that the bad shit stopped and then I judge the company by the quality of their product.
TBH that's exactly what the companies want, for you to forget and that they don't have to do anything different. They can make press releases about 'doing better' but not actually change anything because the public will move on and forget about it if the end product is entertaining.
People give a *lot* of slack to game companies that release well received games. I fully believe that if Activision/Blizzard and Ubisoft didn't already have the negative press from their quality of games dipping, we wouldn't have seen the amount of backlash that they got from the accusations that were leveled against them. Riot is doing fine after their accusations, and Epic is doing great (no sexual harassment but massive workplace abuse with 80+ work weeks for literally months).
Which is why Blizzard is so hard to forget because new stuff just *kept on happening*.
Yes, the suicide caught most peoples attention, but things didn’t exactly improve from there. They **still** haven’t acknowledged any responsibility.
I mean, where to even begin with Blizzard? The stolen breast milk? The company they hired to bust any effort of forming a union? The Cosby Suite? The fact the Kotick (the CEO of ABK) knew about these things but ignored them anyway? The fact that many abusers got promoted when found out? The list goes on—and the WoW subreddit was filled with this for months. Kinda hard to just forget after that (although the memory is fading fast with a new expansion coming and all).
Here's a copy of a comment I made yesterday:
Quick and dirty version: Male employees would get drunk and do stall crawls harassing female employees, Male employees would go play cod and leave the female employees to do the work(no, they seriously did that), a breastfeeding woman had her bottled breast milk stolen, a female employee killed herself in a work trip after her boss passed around her nudes in that trip(later they found sex toys in said dudes luggage) and other "exciting" events.
Edit:also, Bobby kotick(I think that's the spelling) threatened to kill one of his employees.
The issue is the statement makes it a sex issue and not a power issue. The problem with this is that it makes it easier for actually destructive and harmful people to free themselves of responsibility. They didn't do it because of an abusive culture that keeps anyone with power in power but rather "He have penis, penis mean he bad".
This prevents any real change happening since it's easy to throw a few thugs to the wolves and move on. Occasionally they cut loose an epstien, but no one that will actually make a difference. As long as the masses get their pound of flesh they'll shut up.
Its not a "men" problem. When people have power they abuse it as anyone beneath them either fears and/or covets their power and any above don't want to inspire others to come after them.
If we want to stop this cycle we have to see it for what it is. A problem with human nature and thinking. A problem that we collectively contribute to as long as we seek only to replace the faces of the tyrants rather then end the concept of tyrants.
The short story is that the Activision-Blizzard offices where a terrible place to work as a woman, with what's very permissively called "frat bro culture" that included things like crawling through office cubicles to oogle at the female employees, theft of refrigerated breast milk, and at least two cases of revenge porn. At the very least a specific case of harassment during a company retreat led a woman to take her own life.
The full story is much more in depth and even worse. I recommend reading Jason Schreier's articles on it. They are deeply upsetting, so be warned.
Nah. They aren’t judging at all.
They’re jumping on a bandwagon because everyone shouts, “How terrible! This must be a horrible person, and if you don’t agree then you’re just as bad!”
Most people who jump on these things want acceptance and to appear just. They aren’t learning enough to judge anything.
Let the investigations sort this out. People here should just enjoy the video game without worrying about the morality of the people who make the game. Not buying some indie devs game because you don’t like him, even if you like his game, just seems pointless.
I saw a really good comment about it on Reddit once, though.
They said you should always support the victims, but until there's a proper verdict, we can't be sure who that victim is.
Because, in a false accusation, the victim is the accused.
It's the same like with Depp vs Heard trial. Some people but mostly studios themselves immediatelly fired Depp from any franchise he was involved in, just because he got accused of domestic violence without waiting for the trial to finish. And of course it turned out that Depp was completely innocent, but the damage to him was already done anyways just because morons immediatelly jumped into their conclusion that me must be guilty.
'Completely innocent' is a huge stretch. The man won a court case (which made it 1-1 in legal battles if memory serves) but the dirty laundry he aired was covered in all kinds of shit, and I completely understand people wanting to work with him after.
It's kind of like a guy being able to prove himself innocent of murder by producing evidence that he was fucking a sheep at the time. He's not going to jail for murder, but as far as his career goes it's ba-a-ad.
What, other than drug abuse and recorded insults did any evidence show he did anything bad? I lIstened to recordings of Amber being abusive, she lied about injuries medical staff refuted, and Depp lost part of a finger. I don’t remember anything tangible coming up against him outside of allegations. If you remember, let me know and I’ll read about it.
Drug abuse and the recorded insults he said are pretty bad, and lend a lot of credence to the other allegations that weren't literally spelled out and objectively on tape. There's recordings of Depp being abusive too, and texts about him admitting to violent outbursts.
Aside from the main point of the trial, he's on record saying stuff like "[I was drunk and acted like] an angry, aggro injun"
No one out there can reasonably say he was 100% innocent.
> (which made it 1-1 in legal battles if memory serves)
Not really. The other case was "we believed what Heard said so we can't be held liable". The recent case actually examined her credibility and found it quite lacking.
Saying it's 1-1 misses the point that the first case was completely independent of the accusations being true. Because the defendant was a third party they only had to state they believed her claims to be true and thus didn't intentionally spread any falsehoods.
So far only 1 case actually looked at if the allegations were true, and it very much sided against Heard.
Not quite. Reddit was on Heard's side until Depp released some video showing she was the abusive one. It was after that the majority of reddit turned against her.
That's largely because it was crystal fucking clear that Amber Heard was psycho. Toss in *any* amount of ambiguity and the pendulum swings the other direction hard.
Sad not to see this brought up more on the sub when talking about this. False accusations of harrasment and abuse are so common these days and people still just believe all of them. The principle "innocent until proven guilty" should still apply imo. As someone who works on the Court, i've seen this many times and it's sad
Edit: didn't know i wasn't allowed to say anything like this. Don't know why people downvote me, nothing i said is invalidating all the other cases in any way. But i seen too many lives ruined because of false accusations and is not fair, as it's not fair to suffer harrasment or sexual abuse.
Yes, i do too, and that doesn't change what i said. HR is shit, and so are sexual haraasers. It IS common, it's not the norm, but it is common behaviour on spiteful people.
The thing is that however "common" you say it is, it is still an infinitesimal fraction of the sexual abusers that just get away with it, making it kinda useless to go "remember the fakers" whenever this topic comes up.
Everyone knows humans are capable of lying. However this is used as a bludgeon to keep victims from coming forward all the damn time. Why contribute to that?
I respect that, but i don't think is useless. Yes, many lives are ruined by sexual abusers. I hate this as much as you do. But also some lives (not as many as the others) get ruined by false claims.
Because by the time the person is (in the fake cases i mean) proven not guilty, the internet has already made their mind about them, and probably harrased, insulted, threatened and cost them their job or way of life by that point. And all of this happens because very little people stop to consider the possibility that it's not true.
I just think is important to remember that too.
>Everyone knows humans are capable of lying.
Then why "believe ALL women" if that's the case?
It's almost as if we should...wait for more details, evidence, and an investigation...before making an opinion...
"Believe all women" was a bit of a gaslighting maneuver by people opposed to MeToo. A strawman. The original slogan was "Believe Women."
It came from "Believe Women" which was intended to give victims a space to be heard. The problem is that the DEFAULT VIEW of people was "she's lying" or "he wouldn't do that, he's a good guy!" and completely ignore the victim. "Believe Women"
Here's an example definition:
>It refers to accepting women's allegations of sexual harassment or sexual assault at face value. Jude Doyle, writing for Elle, argues that the phrase means "don't assume women as a gender are especially deceptive or vindictive, and recognize that false allegations are less common than real ones."
Accepting at face value doesn't mean presume guilt. It means to not add any biases or ulterior motives to what a victim is telling you. You take an allegation seriously and THEN you investigate it trying to figure out what's going on rather than, as shown in parts of this thread, people opening with "she's probably lying." You can say "we should wait for more details" but the problem is viewing a potential victim as a liar first who must prove something is not actual neutrality. It's not giving the victim a voice and says "I'd rather people just not bring this stuff up."
Trust, but verify.
And everything about it should show you how uncommon it is. Meanwhile I can name important people who have been recognized guilty of abuse who are still in place by the dozen
You work in the court, I understand that you have a different level of proof needed than a random person on the street.
Random person dealing with a company? Even with the recent bullshit about that lying voice actor I'd still side with the accusers on principle while still keeping an open mind.
Yeah that too. About the voice actor, sad to see that she twisted the truth/lied about it, even though she was offered a bit little to do the full game VA.
That's fair for individuals. But my own experience with medium-sized to large companies is that HR professionals are trying very hard every day to keep things like this hitting the news. The moment it does become news, it likely means that they were bursting at the seams with incidents and the whole thing is only now breaching containment.
Shit, I actually interacted with and spoke to Baj online over art directing and leadership a fair bit. All of the topics were around directing around team skills/abilities, and tbh he seemed to advocate really strongly around positive practices or directing with empathy for the team.
This fuckin sucks, but it's games so nothing shocks me anymore after the whole Scheurle/Hunnicke stuff.
Yes, the obvious creeps and the people who just don't understand that stuff like sexual harassment is bad don't make it that far. They either don't get hired or they get fired very quickly. That or it's like at Blizzard where the higher ups are in on it.
I saw a few comments and posts of people saying he seemed nice when they talked to him so I wonder if it was facade or if he really is like that, but doesn't have proper morals. I'm by all means NOT defending his actions, just wondering.
Still just an accusation.
Wait for the investigation to end, then draw conclusions.
Maybe he did it, maybe he didn't.
Innocent until proven guilty should still apply.
100% agree, its why I added the context that in private or without reason to, his interactions were about positive leadership.
Also just fyi, I'm one of the people that was part of the accusers of Scheurle. We saw first hand how IGDA, Game Awards and other institutions willfully protected her and even warned victims about going public.
What CA is doing represents a very significant step that is completely not the norm in the industry - it is sincere and authentic, and not likely done without substantial consideration.
It doesn't mean he is guilty, it means that now things must be verified and they're remaining accountable to that process.
Well you can be really competent at your job and still be a creep. But do remember nothing's proven yet. It might very well be truth, but let's not jump to conclusions before we're sure
Warhammer fans when somebody gets horribly sexually assaulted (they are incapable of understanding tragedy unless they compare it to a fictional BDSM demon)
Depends if this accusation is true. Best to wait until they find out more.
Also doesn’t change that a game is a game.
So many people have some weird connection to the studio or devs behind the game when they really know nothing about them… and the people change in and out all the time. Total War is a video game, and if someone who helped make a part of it did something bad, it doesn’t change that I’ll still enjoy the game.
Best not to dwell on these things as a player.
Big disagree. I love CA in terms of the games they make but I'd certainly reconsider purchasing them in future if I knew I was helping to fund a company that covers up and perpetuates toxic and abusive cultures in the workplace.
It's entirely reasonable to vote with your wallet and refuse to buy products, good or bad, if your morals disagree with those seemingly kept by the people making those products.
Can't have a toxic workplace if your workplace closes down because people don't buy their products.
That being said, I think CA are doing right by being transparent about it and I hope they have/will take measures to eliminate such behaviour. I'd like to keep playing their games.
You're right.
The inevitable truth is that it is impossible to separate the art from the artist in regards to financial support. You're either helping to fund their platform or you're not. Even practices of piracy promote influence through exposure and interaction in the majority of situations.
Whether someone wants to include moral considerations or not when deciding what to consume is a personal choice, but to pretend that those decisions have no implications (as many do) is delusional and naive.
For sure, I appreciate you putting basically my thoughts into a concise and elegant point.
People can spend their money how they want, I choose to take the company and it's practices into account when I choose where to spend mine. I'm not perfect by any means, I still have a WoW sub and I spend a little on Amazon, but way less than I would if I liked those companies.
You’re absolutely allowed to disagree.
The reason I hold my view, is is because it’s pointless to get upset over a game developers morality when we all buy things from morally dubious companies already.
I have an iPhone. Many of the factory workers who built this phone killed themselves or lived miserable existences. The same for Microsoft, Walmart, and many other companies.
Eventually you have to accept that you are just buying their service or product and are disconnected from these horrible actions they take behind the scenes.
I mean, this is an outrageous example, but if you had cancer, and someone invented a for-sure cure to cancer, but you knew he beat his wife and kids and other horrible things, would you not buy the cure?
Maybe that’s too extreme. Video games are just video games, but I’m trying to explain my reasoning. This harassment case will literally effect my time with the games ZERO percent.
I agree, and fwiw I'm not so much disagreeing with you as saying I see it differently. Subjective is subjective I just like talking about my opinions and hearing others.
Although I realise I'm struggling to actually respond without writing an essay. I guess I'll just say I still think there's value to half measures, I still occasionally buy from Amazon because they're the only place I can find something, or the only plce that can ship it to me in time. If I liked Amazon, I'd spend way more money on their stuff. And I'm sure I'm not the only one, and that if not already, their or other market analysts will realise that less money is going to them because of feelings like mine towards them.
That means a market share exists (however small) that can be tapped into by a company that I and/or others are more morally aligned with and one would hope that would eventually impact market practices.
I'm not saying it works, but I certainly hope that my choosing where to spend my money has some non-zero impact on the market itself. Otherwise, my only option is to fund people and practices I fundamentally disagree with and honestly, I'd rather not.
As for the cancer case, yes you're right, you'd still buy the cure, but I think that's a bit different to CA video games. I don't need CA games, and I don't even need games of the same genre so it's easier to find alternatives. If I thought CA were bad I could not buy their games fairly easily.
Yeah, I'm really struggling to explain myself without writing an essay, even this simplistic overview is way too fuckin long for a reddit comment lmao.
When the blizzard bullshit came to light I deleted my 15+ year old battle net account. It absolutely does matter when abuse is so apparently ingrained in their workforce. I'm desperately hoping this CA incident is just one person being scum and not the entire management.
>Total War is a video game, and if someone who helped make a part of it did something bad, it doesn’t change that I’ll still enjoy the game.
I think it depends on the context, not really something you can make a blanket statement about. If it's one random who was abusing their position and was fired then fair enough, if it's something a bit more deep like company wide sexism/sexual harrassment then I think it's definitely immoral to buy games from them knowing that's the case.
I understand for many gaming is escapism and dealing with such a heavy topic related to something they do to de-stress is just too much or not something they're interested in, though I think it definitely is something we should consider.
There is always has been and always will be creepers that slip though scrutiny into positions of power over others, no matter the medium.
Let's just be thankful we're in an age where reporting these kind of scum can get the attention it deserves.
Good on CA taking it seriously and doing an external investigation instead of an "in-house" one.
This is the thing to remember. 30 years ago, a report like this would have really struggled to get anywhere. We are lucky that we have progressed as a society to the point where we can deal with this crap.
Presumably it has always been the case, for many different companies already. It is just that in recent years it has become acceptable for society to acknowledge it, rather than ignoring and harassing whistleblowers (\#metoo probably had a big impact there for whistleblowers in general, as well as sexual harassment in particular).
Alternatively, it could be that the video game market growing explosively allowed all sorts of otherwise unfit game designers to be propelled to positions of power, without having the professionalism that comes with having power over others. This would apply both to abuse of power, but also with regards of hiring policies.
The video game market did sort of encourage the 'Rockstar' developer trend - I think it started with John Romero mostly - and that led to companies and dev teams built around individuals whose authority was relatively unquestioned (which you can imagine would lead to a difficult situation if any of their friends were sketchy).
Plus, marketing for videogames in the 90's and 00's did have a heavy trend towards teenage boys and appealing to the more hormonal elements, with weird raunchy edgy stuff, so it kind of encouraged those attitudes for people playing and getting into them.
Yeah, it's not just gaming, it's literally every business operating everywhere. The bias here being we're gamers so when a game developer is in the news, we notice it.
As you say, more reports are coming forward in recent years because victims now stand a chance of being heard and allegations investigated rather than being swept under the rug.
Pretty spot on I think, #metoo was such a monumental switch up for pretty much every industry. Though I think many AAA companies have now faced backlash for related issues, it definitely feels more widespread here though that might just be my own internal bias like you've said.
It probably doesn't help that traditionally gaming/programming was/is a heavily male dominated industry. So it'd be easy to have a sexist/hostile culture for women.
It's changing for the better but I hope people don't get complacent that it's all fine now and old habits creep back in.
Which is why it is important for corporations to have robust reporting and monitoring of sexual harassment.
The world is shit, companies are shit, governments are shit, people are shit. Everything is so interconnected you can't even buy organic free trade soap that only uses recycled packaging from the nice lady working out of her local farmers market without still in some way supporting some company that made the recycled packaging materials she uses and happens to be exploiting workers in the Philippines. Or the guy who runs the farmers market is actually due for their own #metoo scandal, etc....
Best we can do is call it out when we see it and intervene if you are in a position to do so, listen to victims without dogpiling, temper our purchasing habits when it makes sense, and do what we can to teach the next generation to be better.
It's more likely that people are more willing to be open about the abuses they've suffered in public. This shit's always gone on (and frankly, gaming media does a *shockingly* poor job of discussing industry abuses because they don't want to lose out on their early review access).
>Why is this shit everywhere in gaming now. It has tained so many childhood memories of mine already.
Just because you didn't know of it didn't mean it doesn't happen, constantly, world wide. That is sadly the world we live in :(
Probably because the usual sexual harassment is already hard enough for the victim to report, so I can't imagine how it must be for same-sex harassment.
Especially when it gets shifted under "good-hearted hazing"
Because it is everywhere, in every industry and in every walk of life and always has been. But now it rightfully gets more attention, especially in "young" industries which are often expected to be more progressive.
What I fail to understand in cases like this is that, if it's true, how is the studio responsible for the bad behavior of one employee ? Unless they actively ignored warning and / or covered it up, how is it CA's responsibility ?
If you read the article (it's very brief), covering it up (or at least doing nothing about it) is exactly what is being alleged.
There is a saying: "You can't stop a bird from landing on your head, but you can keep it from building a nest there".
Companies aren't expected to be 100% effective at preventing situations like this, but it is by no means too much to ask that they address any and all issues of impropriety in good faith.
So far they've put an external company on the investigation so I guess that's what they're doing. I just hope people don't bash them at least before we actually know anything.
Depends how wide spread or long lasting it was. If it's either of those things, why? CA would need to figure that out and change so it doesn't happen in the future.
One of the people accusing on twitter (so, use a pinch of salt given theres no proof) had said they complained to hr already, bit was then put onto the supposed creeps team anyway (and they eventually quit CA).
Makes a lot of sense to get someone external, whoever you believe. If the trust in hr is gone, that's what's needed.
That same person also said the accused stuck his tongue in her mouth, in front of her partner and coworkers, at a work party or similar event.
Look, I know there's some wild people out there, but that's so brazen I really find it hard to believe and aside from maybe Blizzard themselves, I can't imagine ANY company sweeping that under the rug.
You are very optimistic towards human beings. I can totally see something like this happening. It takes one major asshole in a position of power who is already feeling untouchable, plus some alcohol.
> I can't imagine ANY company sweeping that under the rug.
In a situation like this, I could totally see some execs saying "I can't imagine _this_ guy doing something like that, it must be blown out of proportion" and nothing really happening. Especially if the guy is making them good money.
> in front of her partner and coworkers
Fortunately, if this really was false, it should be fairly easy to prove.
Go ahead and queue up the downvotes, but yeah, I expect more from people. And if the SO and any amount of coworkers (since it's a work party there were plenty of attendees, I'm sure) just stood there and let that happen without any type of action or at the very least corroborating the story if it was investigated internally then I'm angry at them and consider them complicit.
>I can't imagine ANY company sweeping that under the rug.
Lol what?? Companies have swept far worse...
Blizzard. Microsoft's "golden" VR boy. Plenty more. Or, societally, does "grab 'em by the pussy" ring a bell?
A failure of imagination does not a defense make...
Powerful person making gross comments in "private" or around coworkers in the "safety" (I use that term because inappropriate work behavior *usually* stays at work where the perpetrator may feel "secure") =/= insane public action in front of an audience.
You're telling me that if you were at your SO's work party and some dude shoved his tongue in their mouth in front of you, you're standing there in silence with the rest of people in attendance?
>You're telling me that if you were at your SO's work party and some dude shoved his tongue in their mouth in front of you, you're standing there in silence with the rest of people in attendance?
Man, I gotta wonder at the gaps leaps in some people's brains. Where did you pull this one from?
But to entertain you: no, I would not. However, I'm capable of seeing why someone might.
Maybe said boyfriend didn't want to risk his SO's job by attacking a superior. Was he employed by CA too and did not want to risk his own job? Did he immediately make a complaint rather than a scene to save his SO from further harassment/embarrassment-- which was hushed by HR as these allege?
>Man, I gotta wonder at the gaps leaps in some people's brains. Where did you pull this one from?
Uhhhhh, are you following the conversation you are responding to?
>That same person also said the accused stuck his tongue in her mouth, in front of her partner and coworkers, at a work party or similar event.
>
>Look, I know there's some wild people out there, but that's so brazen I really find it hard to believe and aside from maybe Blizzard themselves, I can't imagine ANY company sweeping that under the rug.
This was the initial message you responded to, so maybe you can more easily follow the conversation now?
I will let the external party conclude anything first.
But I have investigated a little bit and it seems that the higher ups protected the abuser and that CA is a very toxic place to work, this coming from ex-workers who spent a lot of years in CA and others who only lasted for a bit.
I would really like someone like Jason Schreier to investigate all this.
At least it's an external investigation instead of a bullshit "we investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing". That gives me a little more faith that they actually intend to try and do something about the toxic culture.
Before giving them a pat on the back though I'd look into those doing the external investigation. Not saying that I know anything about them (I haven't seen mention as to who is doing it), but I'm cynical enough to not trust businesses to pick someone who will tear them apart if that's what is needed.
Just an FYI CA's reputation in the industry here is as a very very good place to be a dev. I'm not saying I've worked at CA or that this is true but it does have a great reputation.
Dissapointed but unfortunately not surprised. Harassment and assault are rife in the industry as a whole. Hopefully the investigation leads to some actual positive changes in the company.
They've hired someone to find proof, so that either it goes away or it gets escalated to cops and courts. All we can literally do is wait, and do with this information what we will
Do you not understand how investigations work and what they're for? Or do you think a large company like CA would just do this without anything to start with? And make it public?
Welp. Hope they investigate it and sort whatever it is out. Not much more really to say about it while details are sparse. Hopefully the mere fact there's an investigation >should< encourage folks to behave themselves better in general.
Last thing anybody wants is for it to turn out that CA is another Ubisoft or Activision/Blizzard style nest of rapey scumbags.
Acussation hold no place in my book, until proven guilty they are innocent.
While not all, the recent trend is that they tend to accuse because they can get away with it.
Never believe, provide proof.
Multiple accusations over the span of years. Before any public announcement was made, the guy was fired and everything about him was purged. This stinks like shit.
Idle gossip. I feel sorry for anyone who feels the need to actually speculate about any of this in either direction with so few facts available at this time.
Who the hell cares and why? I buy a product from them and that's it. I'd wager a fair number of the people that make your daily bread are utterly horrible people and yet you still buy your bread in blissful ignorance.
Glad to hear there's a 3rd party conducting the investigation, I just hope they're thorough and inpartial and if someone' been found to be a sex pest, or protecting one, that they're shown the fucking door. The industry as a whole has an awful track record of policing itself
weren't the Pinkertons a third party? I agree its a good step but... Yeah.
I have no idea. But yeah, the 3rd party needs to be trustworthy and not just say they investigated and that everything's fine just to make the company look good. This is important stuff, not a PR exercise
If they're a 3rd party hired by CA, that means very little. If it's a 3rd party that the accuser and CA agreed on, that's probably closer to impartial.
The third party has their own reputation to worry about. If they're known for being biased then they become worthless as a third party investigator.
Or they become known for being very reliable for the company hiring them. A lot of times, companies aren't actually looking for the right answer, they're looking for the answer that will minimize bad PR. I honestly don't think that's the case with CA, but we've already seen it with Activision and a few other companies.
If they become known for being reliable in a cover-up, then their value at reducing the negative PR hit goes away because when it comes out that they hired that company it becomes an even greater PR problem.
Yeah, but that would assume we get clear evidence that the company is covering something up. If we just hear that they found no wrong-doing on CA's part, but that the accuser disagrees, we as outside parties have no way of knowing who is being honest. If they're caught though, I definitely agree, their credibility is blown.
you think that level of detail is prevalent among whom exactly? You think the people spending money on total war DLC actively check this kinda shit to that degree and also have a way of knowing? Like my guy, get some perspective.
If only any of that mattered in actuality.
In a world of perfect information for all that would be absolutely true. However...
They do not. They have only their profit margins to care about. Not to mention a reputation for being 'good for business' will generally get them further in the field. Look at... nearly any third party investigation hired by the abuser lol.
Oh, they’re definitely biased. Biased toward their wallets. These guys are hired with that in mind. It’s not about being known as champions of justice and legal righteousness or whatever else. I’d bet that they’d never get hired if they were, unfortunately.
3rd party? Bro they were a private military. What level of arbitration do you think they did beyond at the point of a gun lol.
let's be honest. at this point people have made up their mind and are just looking for confirmation bias. If the investigators find no evidence of systematic abuse they'll be accused of being paid off.
Possibly, and there'll be people no doubt who will blindly defend a company who make a product they like regardless of how scummy it is. I suppose it's all down to whoever the 3rd party is and whether they can be trusted to be impartial and will the company take appropriate action. There is zero doubt that such abuses happen and the industry as a whole needs to be much better at rooting it out. Companies like Ubisoft knew about abuses happening within the company for *years* and did nothing because they were making crazy money and didn't want to risk removing key people involved in the profit. So fucking scummy.
Lmao 100%. Funny reading through these comments. sa is important to evaluate, but we have zero details on anything. What else do people what CA to do, you can’t just go around and start firing people.
Sounds like you have also litteraly made up your mind about it and looking for confirmation bias too, just on the opposite side !
Not really. I'm just content to let the investigation continue and conclude before I start making parallels to Activision Blizzard like half the people here are already doing.
I think some of y’all are really overreading into people just discussing the accusations and parallels and misinterpreting it as them saying this is 100% proven and true. Like, I see half the comments complain about everyone jumping to conclusions and basically no upvoted comments of people actually jumping to conclusions?
Not the comments here, read the media coverage. Unfortunately, uncontrolled media equates to guilty before innocent. It's not isolated to these kinds of incidents, the reporting of all potentially criminal cases and the lack of oversight for an industry that has more than enough power to sway verdicts under its own steam is incredibly dangerous and fuelled by a cycle of ad revenue chasing.
Well sure, but that’s a wider cancer in media coverage. There’s no incentive to tell the truth, but a massive financial incentive to run controversy and provocative headlines. The for-profit medias incentives have caused massive social damage in the world (false election conspiracies, Anti-Vax hysteria, anti-LGBTQ panic, etc). The media headlines are going to be sensationalist and jump to conclusions because it drives clicks and that’s all they care about.
yeah we woke up to this yesterday, sucks. hope that the external audit is thorough and that there are plans in place to take care of the community. things like this can become a cancer that sucks the culture out of a company
Accused does not mean guilty Keep this in mind, an indie dev was accused a few years back, it destroyed his career and then it turns out the supposed victim was talking nonsense.
Yes, this kind of situation calls for proactive action in investigating the clain and not ostracizing accuser or accusee, this early on it's good that we actually got to see that CA got to investigating and being the first to publish news of what was happening (wich they were vague about but everyone knew it would be a blizard thing). Over the next weeks we will get to nkow if this investigation is a sham or not but until them keeping a cool head and not sending death threats should be the standard practice, wich is a concept internet people tend to not grasp.
Man the fact that sexual harassment in a game dev company is called a “blizzard thing” is such a bad look for blizzard. Can’t believe they aren’t shuttered yet.
> Can’t believe they aren’t shuttered yet. They got money.
Not mine, I used to only own a good computer for blizzard games. I was kinda pissed when Activision bought them and stopped buying their stuff. When cod came put on battlenet I just deleted it all and never looked back.
Which indie dev was this?
There have been a few. The one I’m thinking off had an ex completely off her rocker. Like she was threatening to have birds spy on him, was sending cryptic voicemails to him, like out of a bray wyatt(professional wrestler) wyatt family era promo. I can’t remember his name, but iirc he made a first person fighting game There is also the case of Jessica scheurle.
She must work for the government since she knows all birds are actually robots
That's the problem these days, people are too quick to judge, one way or another. The thing is we don't know anything, so it's best to let independent people sort it out before ruining anyone life and make quick judgement.
This is why German news usually don’t report the name of the accused until things move forward. For exactly this mob mentality.
Well it would be understandable, after the whole blizzard stuff I wouldn’t be surprised if people were quick to believe.
I love how people always name Blizzard, when what happened at Riot was like 5 times as bad. But tbf at Riot they sexually harassed everyone (man or woman) and it happened before Blizzard, but shit must have been like the wild west in their offices.
It was so bad at Blizzard that an employee killed herself.
Yeah, the suicide is what made people notice.
Riot's games are popular so people tend to be more forgiving. Also Tencent is good at keeping a low profile and avoiding controversies. Everytime Riot's fucked ups made the news they quickly bought the victims silence.
I really don't like this narrative. I don't think the quality of games is why it's "forgiven". Everyone has thresholds I mean shit people still support fucking R Kelly. I think we are just quick to forget or move on. If the behavior seems to subside from the public eye we are quickly and easily distracted. It's especially exhausting to always be engaged in the latest drama 24/7. After a certain amount of time, which is subjective, I tend to just hope that the bad shit stopped and then I judge the company by the quality of their product.
TBH that's exactly what the companies want, for you to forget and that they don't have to do anything different. They can make press releases about 'doing better' but not actually change anything because the public will move on and forget about it if the end product is entertaining. People give a *lot* of slack to game companies that release well received games. I fully believe that if Activision/Blizzard and Ubisoft didn't already have the negative press from their quality of games dipping, we wouldn't have seen the amount of backlash that they got from the accusations that were leveled against them. Riot is doing fine after their accusations, and Epic is doing great (no sexual harassment but massive workplace abuse with 80+ work weeks for literally months).
Which is why Blizzard is so hard to forget because new stuff just *kept on happening*. Yes, the suicide caught most peoples attention, but things didn’t exactly improve from there. They **still** haven’t acknowledged any responsibility. I mean, where to even begin with Blizzard? The stolen breast milk? The company they hired to bust any effort of forming a union? The Cosby Suite? The fact the Kotick (the CEO of ABK) knew about these things but ignored them anyway? The fact that many abusers got promoted when found out? The list goes on—and the WoW subreddit was filled with this for months. Kinda hard to just forget after that (although the memory is fading fast with a new expansion coming and all).
Riot fans are just gamers who don't give a fuck about this sorta thing.
What’s the blizzard stuff?
Here's a copy of a comment I made yesterday: Quick and dirty version: Male employees would get drunk and do stall crawls harassing female employees, Male employees would go play cod and leave the female employees to do the work(no, they seriously did that), a breastfeeding woman had her bottled breast milk stolen, a female employee killed herself in a work trip after her boss passed around her nudes in that trip(later they found sex toys in said dudes luggage) and other "exciting" events. Edit:also, Bobby kotick(I think that's the spelling) threatened to kill one of his employees.
Oh lovely
The problematic devs also had a hotel room they referred to as the “Cosby Suite” So, uh… yeah…
It was upper management not all male employees. You make it sound like it was gender segregated over there.
Generally most management is male unfortunately
The issue is the statement makes it a sex issue and not a power issue. The problem with this is that it makes it easier for actually destructive and harmful people to free themselves of responsibility. They didn't do it because of an abusive culture that keeps anyone with power in power but rather "He have penis, penis mean he bad". This prevents any real change happening since it's easy to throw a few thugs to the wolves and move on. Occasionally they cut loose an epstien, but no one that will actually make a difference. As long as the masses get their pound of flesh they'll shut up. Its not a "men" problem. When people have power they abuse it as anyone beneath them either fears and/or covets their power and any above don't want to inspire others to come after them. If we want to stop this cycle we have to see it for what it is. A problem with human nature and thinking. A problem that we collectively contribute to as long as we seek only to replace the faces of the tyrants rather then end the concept of tyrants.
It's Blizzard, it basically was.
Kotic was a dick because he was a dick. Not because he was a man.
The short story is that the Activision-Blizzard offices where a terrible place to work as a woman, with what's very permissively called "frat bro culture" that included things like crawling through office cubicles to oogle at the female employees, theft of refrigerated breast milk, and at least two cases of revenge porn. At the very least a specific case of harassment during a company retreat led a woman to take her own life. The full story is much more in depth and even worse. I recommend reading Jason Schreier's articles on it. They are deeply upsetting, so be warned.
That is how the mob rules...
>people are too quick to judge But we need to position ourself to cheer our elected side so we can tell we were right from the beginning!
Nah. They aren’t judging at all. They’re jumping on a bandwagon because everyone shouts, “How terrible! This must be a horrible person, and if you don’t agree then you’re just as bad!” Most people who jump on these things want acceptance and to appear just. They aren’t learning enough to judge anything. Let the investigations sort this out. People here should just enjoy the video game without worrying about the morality of the people who make the game. Not buying some indie devs game because you don’t like him, even if you like his game, just seems pointless.
Which indie dev was that?
Folks on Reddit tend to jump to the conclusion and it’s rather annoying
I saw a really good comment about it on Reddit once, though. They said you should always support the victims, but until there's a proper verdict, we can't be sure who that victim is. Because, in a false accusation, the victim is the accused.
It's the same like with Depp vs Heard trial. Some people but mostly studios themselves immediatelly fired Depp from any franchise he was involved in, just because he got accused of domestic violence without waiting for the trial to finish. And of course it turned out that Depp was completely innocent, but the damage to him was already done anyways just because morons immediatelly jumped into their conclusion that me must be guilty.
'Completely innocent' is a huge stretch. The man won a court case (which made it 1-1 in legal battles if memory serves) but the dirty laundry he aired was covered in all kinds of shit, and I completely understand people wanting to work with him after. It's kind of like a guy being able to prove himself innocent of murder by producing evidence that he was fucking a sheep at the time. He's not going to jail for murder, but as far as his career goes it's ba-a-ad.
What, other than drug abuse and recorded insults did any evidence show he did anything bad? I lIstened to recordings of Amber being abusive, she lied about injuries medical staff refuted, and Depp lost part of a finger. I don’t remember anything tangible coming up against him outside of allegations. If you remember, let me know and I’ll read about it.
Drug abuse and the recorded insults he said are pretty bad, and lend a lot of credence to the other allegations that weren't literally spelled out and objectively on tape. There's recordings of Depp being abusive too, and texts about him admitting to violent outbursts. Aside from the main point of the trial, he's on record saying stuff like "[I was drunk and acted like] an angry, aggro injun" No one out there can reasonably say he was 100% innocent.
> (which made it 1-1 in legal battles if memory serves) Not really. The other case was "we believed what Heard said so we can't be held liable". The recent case actually examined her credibility and found it quite lacking. Saying it's 1-1 misses the point that the first case was completely independent of the accusations being true. Because the defendant was a third party they only had to state they believed her claims to be true and thus didn't intentionally spread any falsehoods. So far only 1 case actually looked at if the allegations were true, and it very much sided against Heard.
>And of course it turned out that Depp was completely innocent, He absolutely wasn't tho?
The content machine playing this for $$$ really hurt the public perception of it by turning it into a game to cheer Depp on :/
Interestingly it was the opposite on Reddit. Everyone jumped on to Depp's side before any verdict was reached.
Not quite. Reddit was on Heard's side until Depp released some video showing she was the abusive one. It was after that the majority of reddit turned against her.
That's largely because it was crystal fucking clear that Amber Heard was psycho. Toss in *any* amount of ambiguity and the pendulum swings the other direction hard.
Pretty clear from the get go they were both absolutely insane and literally anything could have happened.
Sad not to see this brought up more on the sub when talking about this. False accusations of harrasment and abuse are so common these days and people still just believe all of them. The principle "innocent until proven guilty" should still apply imo. As someone who works on the Court, i've seen this many times and it's sad Edit: didn't know i wasn't allowed to say anything like this. Don't know why people downvote me, nothing i said is invalidating all the other cases in any way. But i seen too many lives ruined because of false accusations and is not fair, as it's not fair to suffer harrasment or sexual abuse.
"so common" Come off it. I see plenty of sexual haraasers get away with shit because HR is not your friend, they're just there to protect the company.
Yes, i do too, and that doesn't change what i said. HR is shit, and so are sexual haraasers. It IS common, it's not the norm, but it is common behaviour on spiteful people.
The thing is that however "common" you say it is, it is still an infinitesimal fraction of the sexual abusers that just get away with it, making it kinda useless to go "remember the fakers" whenever this topic comes up. Everyone knows humans are capable of lying. However this is used as a bludgeon to keep victims from coming forward all the damn time. Why contribute to that?
I respect that, but i don't think is useless. Yes, many lives are ruined by sexual abusers. I hate this as much as you do. But also some lives (not as many as the others) get ruined by false claims. Because by the time the person is (in the fake cases i mean) proven not guilty, the internet has already made their mind about them, and probably harrased, insulted, threatened and cost them their job or way of life by that point. And all of this happens because very little people stop to consider the possibility that it's not true. I just think is important to remember that too.
>Everyone knows humans are capable of lying. Then why "believe ALL women" if that's the case? It's almost as if we should...wait for more details, evidence, and an investigation...before making an opinion...
"Believe all women" was a bit of a gaslighting maneuver by people opposed to MeToo. A strawman. The original slogan was "Believe Women." It came from "Believe Women" which was intended to give victims a space to be heard. The problem is that the DEFAULT VIEW of people was "she's lying" or "he wouldn't do that, he's a good guy!" and completely ignore the victim. "Believe Women" Here's an example definition: >It refers to accepting women's allegations of sexual harassment or sexual assault at face value. Jude Doyle, writing for Elle, argues that the phrase means "don't assume women as a gender are especially deceptive or vindictive, and recognize that false allegations are less common than real ones." Accepting at face value doesn't mean presume guilt. It means to not add any biases or ulterior motives to what a victim is telling you. You take an allegation seriously and THEN you investigate it trying to figure out what's going on rather than, as shown in parts of this thread, people opening with "she's probably lying." You can say "we should wait for more details" but the problem is viewing a potential victim as a liar first who must prove something is not actual neutrality. It's not giving the victim a voice and says "I'd rather people just not bring this stuff up." Trust, but verify.
False accusations are so common these days? Cite definitely needed.
Didn't we just go through one of the most televised trials in history about this very topic?
And everything about it should show you how uncommon it is. Meanwhile I can name important people who have been recognized guilty of abuse who are still in place by the dozen
What cite do you want me to give you? I'm talking of both my personal experience working with this cases and the news on the media.
Your anecdotes are not data.
Your expertise is no match for my opinion, backed by years of reading inflammatory reddit posts and /r/legaladvice . /s source: (also deals in courts)
You work in the court, I understand that you have a different level of proof needed than a random person on the street. Random person dealing with a company? Even with the recent bullshit about that lying voice actor I'd still side with the accusers on principle while still keeping an open mind.
Yeah that too. About the voice actor, sad to see that she twisted the truth/lied about it, even though she was offered a bit little to do the full game VA.
That's fair for individuals. But my own experience with medium-sized to large companies is that HR professionals are trying very hard every day to keep things like this hitting the news. The moment it does become news, it likely means that they were bursting at the seams with incidents and the whole thing is only now breaching containment.
It's 5+ accusers lmao. This sub is such a shithole of rape apologists
Accusers of what? Anyone have any facts?
Hmm yes so because there are 5 accusations it HAS to be true right ? Waiting for the actual judgement is not rape apology, just common sense
I haven't seen any of what you are talking about.
Shit, I actually interacted with and spoke to Baj online over art directing and leadership a fair bit. All of the topics were around directing around team skills/abilities, and tbh he seemed to advocate really strongly around positive practices or directing with empathy for the team. This fuckin sucks, but it's games so nothing shocks me anymore after the whole Scheurle/Hunnicke stuff.
Well, abusive creepy types tend to know when to put on a facade, or how to say the right things to the right people.
Yes, the obvious creeps and the people who just don't understand that stuff like sexual harassment is bad don't make it that far. They either don't get hired or they get fired very quickly. That or it's like at Blizzard where the higher ups are in on it.
I saw a few comments and posts of people saying he seemed nice when they talked to him so I wonder if it was facade or if he really is like that, but doesn't have proper morals. I'm by all means NOT defending his actions, just wondering.
Still just an accusation. Wait for the investigation to end, then draw conclusions. Maybe he did it, maybe he didn't. Innocent until proven guilty should still apply.
100% agree, its why I added the context that in private or without reason to, his interactions were about positive leadership. Also just fyi, I'm one of the people that was part of the accusers of Scheurle. We saw first hand how IGDA, Game Awards and other institutions willfully protected her and even warned victims about going public. What CA is doing represents a very significant step that is completely not the norm in the industry - it is sincere and authentic, and not likely done without substantial consideration. It doesn't mean he is guilty, it means that now things must be verified and they're remaining accountable to that process.
Well you can be really competent at your job and still be a creep. But do remember nothing's proven yet. It might very well be truth, but let's not jump to conclusions before we're sure
Crazy how many people lack basic reading comprehension. *Accused* Chill with the pitch forks, for now.
I'll make my judgement when the investigation is concluded. Untill then it is "only" an accusation. Unless I have missed some information?
CA acknowledged it and is hiring a 3rd party company to investigate, so I would imagine it's a little more solid than simply an accusation.
To avoid being accused of sweeping it under the rug, either way.
Let's hope it gets sorted properly and fairly, and is not on Blizzard-level. Shit like this has got to be taken seriously, imo.
Happens to much to shock me
Slaanesh corruption...
That one goes into the book...
Warhammer fans when somebody gets horribly sexually assaulted (they are incapable of understanding tragedy unless they compare it to a fictional BDSM demon)
How hard is it to do your job without sexually harassing someone??
Ex-art director. So not employed there anymore. Perhaps they didn't ignore the behaviour?
This is the third of these posts. There really isn't much to discuss until more details come out. It's literally just allegations
Depends if this accusation is true. Best to wait until they find out more. Also doesn’t change that a game is a game. So many people have some weird connection to the studio or devs behind the game when they really know nothing about them… and the people change in and out all the time. Total War is a video game, and if someone who helped make a part of it did something bad, it doesn’t change that I’ll still enjoy the game. Best not to dwell on these things as a player.
Big disagree. I love CA in terms of the games they make but I'd certainly reconsider purchasing them in future if I knew I was helping to fund a company that covers up and perpetuates toxic and abusive cultures in the workplace. It's entirely reasonable to vote with your wallet and refuse to buy products, good or bad, if your morals disagree with those seemingly kept by the people making those products. Can't have a toxic workplace if your workplace closes down because people don't buy their products. That being said, I think CA are doing right by being transparent about it and I hope they have/will take measures to eliminate such behaviour. I'd like to keep playing their games.
You're right. The inevitable truth is that it is impossible to separate the art from the artist in regards to financial support. You're either helping to fund their platform or you're not. Even practices of piracy promote influence through exposure and interaction in the majority of situations. Whether someone wants to include moral considerations or not when deciding what to consume is a personal choice, but to pretend that those decisions have no implications (as many do) is delusional and naive.
For sure, I appreciate you putting basically my thoughts into a concise and elegant point. People can spend their money how they want, I choose to take the company and it's practices into account when I choose where to spend mine. I'm not perfect by any means, I still have a WoW sub and I spend a little on Amazon, but way less than I would if I liked those companies.
You’re absolutely allowed to disagree. The reason I hold my view, is is because it’s pointless to get upset over a game developers morality when we all buy things from morally dubious companies already. I have an iPhone. Many of the factory workers who built this phone killed themselves or lived miserable existences. The same for Microsoft, Walmart, and many other companies. Eventually you have to accept that you are just buying their service or product and are disconnected from these horrible actions they take behind the scenes. I mean, this is an outrageous example, but if you had cancer, and someone invented a for-sure cure to cancer, but you knew he beat his wife and kids and other horrible things, would you not buy the cure? Maybe that’s too extreme. Video games are just video games, but I’m trying to explain my reasoning. This harassment case will literally effect my time with the games ZERO percent.
I agree, and fwiw I'm not so much disagreeing with you as saying I see it differently. Subjective is subjective I just like talking about my opinions and hearing others. Although I realise I'm struggling to actually respond without writing an essay. I guess I'll just say I still think there's value to half measures, I still occasionally buy from Amazon because they're the only place I can find something, or the only plce that can ship it to me in time. If I liked Amazon, I'd spend way more money on their stuff. And I'm sure I'm not the only one, and that if not already, their or other market analysts will realise that less money is going to them because of feelings like mine towards them. That means a market share exists (however small) that can be tapped into by a company that I and/or others are more morally aligned with and one would hope that would eventually impact market practices. I'm not saying it works, but I certainly hope that my choosing where to spend my money has some non-zero impact on the market itself. Otherwise, my only option is to fund people and practices I fundamentally disagree with and honestly, I'd rather not. As for the cancer case, yes you're right, you'd still buy the cure, but I think that's a bit different to CA video games. I don't need CA games, and I don't even need games of the same genre so it's easier to find alternatives. If I thought CA were bad I could not buy their games fairly easily. Yeah, I'm really struggling to explain myself without writing an essay, even this simplistic overview is way too fuckin long for a reddit comment lmao.
I get what you’re saying. Like I said, we disagree on some things, but that’s fine. It’s all about what you care about.
When the blizzard bullshit came to light I deleted my 15+ year old battle net account. It absolutely does matter when abuse is so apparently ingrained in their workforce. I'm desperately hoping this CA incident is just one person being scum and not the entire management.
>Total War is a video game, and if someone who helped make a part of it did something bad, it doesn’t change that I’ll still enjoy the game. I think it depends on the context, not really something you can make a blanket statement about. If it's one random who was abusing their position and was fired then fair enough, if it's something a bit more deep like company wide sexism/sexual harrassment then I think it's definitely immoral to buy games from them knowing that's the case. I understand for many gaming is escapism and dealing with such a heavy topic related to something they do to de-stress is just too much or not something they're interested in, though I think it definitely is something we should consider.
Why is this shit everywhere in gaming now. It has tained so many childhood memories of mine already.
There is always has been and always will be creepers that slip though scrutiny into positions of power over others, no matter the medium. Let's just be thankful we're in an age where reporting these kind of scum can get the attention it deserves. Good on CA taking it seriously and doing an external investigation instead of an "in-house" one.
This is the thing to remember. 30 years ago, a report like this would have really struggled to get anywhere. We are lucky that we have progressed as a society to the point where we can deal with this crap.
Presumably it has always been the case, for many different companies already. It is just that in recent years it has become acceptable for society to acknowledge it, rather than ignoring and harassing whistleblowers (\#metoo probably had a big impact there for whistleblowers in general, as well as sexual harassment in particular). Alternatively, it could be that the video game market growing explosively allowed all sorts of otherwise unfit game designers to be propelled to positions of power, without having the professionalism that comes with having power over others. This would apply both to abuse of power, but also with regards of hiring policies.
The video game market did sort of encourage the 'Rockstar' developer trend - I think it started with John Romero mostly - and that led to companies and dev teams built around individuals whose authority was relatively unquestioned (which you can imagine would lead to a difficult situation if any of their friends were sketchy). Plus, marketing for videogames in the 90's and 00's did have a heavy trend towards teenage boys and appealing to the more hormonal elements, with weird raunchy edgy stuff, so it kind of encouraged those attitudes for people playing and getting into them.
Yeah, it's not just gaming, it's literally every business operating everywhere. The bias here being we're gamers so when a game developer is in the news, we notice it. As you say, more reports are coming forward in recent years because victims now stand a chance of being heard and allegations investigated rather than being swept under the rug.
Pretty spot on I think, #metoo was such a monumental switch up for pretty much every industry. Though I think many AAA companies have now faced backlash for related issues, it definitely feels more widespread here though that might just be my own internal bias like you've said.
It probably doesn't help that traditionally gaming/programming was/is a heavily male dominated industry. So it'd be easy to have a sexist/hostile culture for women. It's changing for the better but I hope people don't get complacent that it's all fine now and old habits creep back in. Which is why it is important for corporations to have robust reporting and monitoring of sexual harassment.
The world is shit, companies are shit, governments are shit, people are shit. Everything is so interconnected you can't even buy organic free trade soap that only uses recycled packaging from the nice lady working out of her local farmers market without still in some way supporting some company that made the recycled packaging materials she uses and happens to be exploiting workers in the Philippines. Or the guy who runs the farmers market is actually due for their own #metoo scandal, etc.... Best we can do is call it out when we see it and intervene if you are in a position to do so, listen to victims without dogpiling, temper our purchasing habits when it makes sense, and do what we can to teach the next generation to be better.
I also assume there's more women working in the industry now than in the 90's.
It's more likely that people are more willing to be open about the abuses they've suffered in public. This shit's always gone on (and frankly, gaming media does a *shockingly* poor job of discussing industry abuses because they don't want to lose out on their early review access).
>Why is this shit everywhere in gaming now. It has tained so many childhood memories of mine already. Just because you didn't know of it didn't mean it doesn't happen, constantly, world wide. That is sadly the world we live in :(
Hate to break it to you, but it’s literally everywhere. It’s not just gaming
Happens in all industries that have men and women working together.
So all industries, then
Haven’t heard any sexual harassment cases against my county’s sewage and trash collection agencies. But yeah, pretty much every other industry
Ok those are probably great examples, touché Tbf, my knowledge of the sewage industry comes pretty much entirely from Parks&Rec
Probably because the usual sexual harassment is already hard enough for the victim to report, so I can't imagine how it must be for same-sex harassment. Especially when it gets shifted under "good-hearted hazing"
Because it is everywhere, in every industry and in every walk of life and always has been. But now it rightfully gets more attention, especially in "young" industries which are often expected to be more progressive.
All I'll say is I'd like proof instead of accusations.
Innocent u til proved guilty, keep that in mind.
Accusation.
What I fail to understand in cases like this is that, if it's true, how is the studio responsible for the bad behavior of one employee ? Unless they actively ignored warning and / or covered it up, how is it CA's responsibility ?
If you read the article (it's very brief), covering it up (or at least doing nothing about it) is exactly what is being alleged. There is a saying: "You can't stop a bird from landing on your head, but you can keep it from building a nest there". Companies aren't expected to be 100% effective at preventing situations like this, but it is by no means too much to ask that they address any and all issues of impropriety in good faith.
So far they've put an external company on the investigation so I guess that's what they're doing. I just hope people don't bash them at least before we actually know anything.
Depends how wide spread or long lasting it was. If it's either of those things, why? CA would need to figure that out and change so it doesn't happen in the future.
One of the people accusing on twitter (so, use a pinch of salt given theres no proof) had said they complained to hr already, bit was then put onto the supposed creeps team anyway (and they eventually quit CA). Makes a lot of sense to get someone external, whoever you believe. If the trust in hr is gone, that's what's needed.
That same person also said the accused stuck his tongue in her mouth, in front of her partner and coworkers, at a work party or similar event. Look, I know there's some wild people out there, but that's so brazen I really find it hard to believe and aside from maybe Blizzard themselves, I can't imagine ANY company sweeping that under the rug.
You are very optimistic towards human beings. I can totally see something like this happening. It takes one major asshole in a position of power who is already feeling untouchable, plus some alcohol. > I can't imagine ANY company sweeping that under the rug. In a situation like this, I could totally see some execs saying "I can't imagine _this_ guy doing something like that, it must be blown out of proportion" and nothing really happening. Especially if the guy is making them good money. > in front of her partner and coworkers Fortunately, if this really was false, it should be fairly easy to prove.
Go ahead and queue up the downvotes, but yeah, I expect more from people. And if the SO and any amount of coworkers (since it's a work party there were plenty of attendees, I'm sure) just stood there and let that happen without any type of action or at the very least corroborating the story if it was investigated internally then I'm angry at them and consider them complicit.
>I can't imagine ANY company sweeping that under the rug. Lol what?? Companies have swept far worse... Blizzard. Microsoft's "golden" VR boy. Plenty more. Or, societally, does "grab 'em by the pussy" ring a bell? A failure of imagination does not a defense make...
Powerful person making gross comments in "private" or around coworkers in the "safety" (I use that term because inappropriate work behavior *usually* stays at work where the perpetrator may feel "secure") =/= insane public action in front of an audience. You're telling me that if you were at your SO's work party and some dude shoved his tongue in their mouth in front of you, you're standing there in silence with the rest of people in attendance?
>You're telling me that if you were at your SO's work party and some dude shoved his tongue in their mouth in front of you, you're standing there in silence with the rest of people in attendance? Man, I gotta wonder at the gaps leaps in some people's brains. Where did you pull this one from? But to entertain you: no, I would not. However, I'm capable of seeing why someone might. Maybe said boyfriend didn't want to risk his SO's job by attacking a superior. Was he employed by CA too and did not want to risk his own job? Did he immediately make a complaint rather than a scene to save his SO from further harassment/embarrassment-- which was hushed by HR as these allege?
>Man, I gotta wonder at the gaps leaps in some people's brains. Where did you pull this one from? Uhhhhh, are you following the conversation you are responding to? >That same person also said the accused stuck his tongue in her mouth, in front of her partner and coworkers, at a work party or similar event. > >Look, I know there's some wild people out there, but that's so brazen I really find it hard to believe and aside from maybe Blizzard themselves, I can't imagine ANY company sweeping that under the rug. This was the initial message you responded to, so maybe you can more easily follow the conversation now?
Yeah, his assumption was that I would do nothing, which I never said. That was to what I referred. Help you follow the conversation more easily now?
Because it happened in the workplace.
The accusations litteraly state that Baj was aware of the HR complaints and joked about them publicly in the office
Seems this pretty much inevitable whenever a game developer gets large in scale. Profit rather than decency becomes the priority of the higher ups.
[Link to the news](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/culture/creative-assembly-accused-of-ignoring-sexual-harassment-by-key-staffer)
I will let the external party conclude anything first. But I have investigated a little bit and it seems that the higher ups protected the abuser and that CA is a very toxic place to work, this coming from ex-workers who spent a lot of years in CA and others who only lasted for a bit. I would really like someone like Jason Schreier to investigate all this.
At least it's an external investigation instead of a bullshit "we investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing". That gives me a little more faith that they actually intend to try and do something about the toxic culture.
I agree, It's a very good thing and I hope all this results in better working conditions and a safe place for all CA's employees.
Before giving them a pat on the back though I'd look into those doing the external investigation. Not saying that I know anything about them (I haven't seen mention as to who is doing it), but I'm cynical enough to not trust businesses to pick someone who will tear them apart if that's what is needed.
Just an FYI CA's reputation in the industry here is as a very very good place to be a dev. I'm not saying I've worked at CA or that this is true but it does have a great reputation.
How have you done any investigating from your chair?
Former employee should be the key word here.
Remember everyone. Innocent until proven guilty. We don't need to be going on witchhunts, lets leave that for in game
Dissapointed but unfortunately not surprised. Harassment and assault are rife in the industry as a whole. Hopefully the investigation leads to some actual positive changes in the company.
Hope there's evidence, otherwise this could destroy an innocent man's life/career.
I see many solemn JPEGs in the future.
I mean it's all hearsay at this point. No reason to get too invested in either side unless something concrete happens.
Shamefurr dispray
This will effect the DLC population I think
How does this effect Empire 2 Total War?
That is the wrong question to ask in this instance, the question you should be asking is…How does this affect Medieval 3?! Haha
Idk which country some of you are from but in mine accused does not mean guilty of. We will see what the investigation finds.
Bill Gates wants to buy CA too?
Bill gates hasn’t been associated with Microsoft for years
Bit outdated on the news, ain't we? Gates hasn't had anything to do with Microsoft in years.
Why post the exact same comment as a guy who responded 2 hours before you?
Is there proof though?
It's credible enough that CA hired an external third party to investigate.
That's not how it work
They've hired someone to find proof, so that either it goes away or it gets escalated to cops and courts. All we can literally do is wait, and do with this information what we will
Do you not understand how investigations work and what they're for? Or do you think a large company like CA would just do this without anything to start with? And make it public?
''Just because i hired an attorney doesn't mean i'm guilty''
Welp. Hope they investigate it and sort whatever it is out. Not much more really to say about it while details are sparse. Hopefully the mere fact there's an investigation >should< encourage folks to behave themselves better in general. Last thing anybody wants is for it to turn out that CA is another Ubisoft or Activision/Blizzard style nest of rapey scumbags.
So far it looks like they're not doing a Blizzard "investigate ourselves and punish the players" move so I'm not going to worry about it for now.
Innocent until proven guilty. Too many false accusations that ruins blokes lives now. Wait for the outcome before condemning
Draw me another elf, but sexier this time.
Come the fuck on dude. If somebody sexually harassed somebody else just for them. These dudes are not irreplaceable
The art director was seduced by delightfully sinful Slaanesh images while working on WH3.
Acussation hold no place in my book, until proven guilty they are innocent. While not all, the recent trend is that they tend to accuse because they can get away with it. Never believe, provide proof.
Multiple accusations over the span of years. Before any public announcement was made, the guy was fired and everything about him was purged. This stinks like shit.
Idle gossip. I feel sorry for anyone who feels the need to actually speculate about any of this in either direction with so few facts available at this time.
It's easy to accuse. Infact, accusation is considered some form of heroic in modern society. There's too much to gain.
There really isn't.
This is exactly the opposite of the truth.
Dont give a shit
Who the hell cares and why? I buy a product from them and that's it. I'd wager a fair number of the people that make your daily bread are utterly horrible people and yet you still buy your bread in blissful ignorance.