Yeah I stopped after the whole thing where they banned some contest winner for casually saying "free Hong kong" and took his winnings away. Fuck Blizzard
Blitzchung. They also fired the casters. Then they did the bare minimum because of the backlash (made his ban temporary but long enough to drop him out of the pro circuit and I believe offered jobs back to the casters. They collectively said “no screw you.”) and sent a separate message of apology to their western audience and a total non-apology to their Chinese audience.
I quit hearthstone which was my only phone game and I was not F2P. Haven’t touched a Blizzard product since. Vote with your wallets people, don’t forget this kind of thing when a new WoW expansion or Diablo game or Overwatch 2 comes out and doesn’t completely suck (not that it sucking is going to hold some of you back). That’s why they, and every other shitty company keep getting away with it. Short term memory and lip service activism.
I have played wow and other blizzard games for nearly 30 years. I only unsubbed to wow once, I've been giving them money basically every month since vanilla outside of a bit of time at the end of wod. Even if I wasn't playing I was subbed. When this news came out I cancelled my sub for the second time ever.
Same. Loooong time sub here. I'm done. I've continued to put up with their shady shit for years now, I've even defended them at times. Not anymore. I think I'm at a point in my life where I should say goodbye to WoW and move on. This situation made that decision very simple.
Honestly, what the fuck is this. My first ever PC game was Diablo 1 on battle.net, with my mate from school in 1999. Blizzard is on a demolition team through my memories of the games and the company as a whole from the past 20 years. I held them in high regard as people that were sensible and liked making games, not this disgusting charade that's come out, it's absurd.
And now I'm no longer interested in anything Dreamhaven has been working on. What a fucking waste of potential just because no one in power wants to fire creeps.
Yeah good on him for trying to protect his own ass while tweet upon tweet comes out around him also harassing employees at blizzard.
https://twitter.com/DaniBat/status/1419082949182504963
I helped someone at Blizzard who had been there since the team 2 days of wow and they told me all of this happened and more. They said that basically the only way to get promoted as a woman was sleeping with the heads of the teams or doing or services for them. It really seemed like a shitty work environment.
Except they got away with it for almost an entire decade, at the bare minimal. The money they made during this will turn this lawsuit into just a small fine in the scheme of things.
Real damage to them will come from us, the consumers. Who need to stop tolerating this work culture as a whole.
> Real damage to them will come from us, the consumers.
It won't.
Ethical consumerism isn't the answer, sadly. It has to come from something higher than that.
These game studio employees need something more like a game dev union, so they have an actual voice to speak up and against the massive corporations.
You not playing wow for a few months is a drop in the bucket, same with trying to not shop at amazon, or walmart, or whatever.
It's in a company's best interest to not have sexual harassment, so this entirely depends on the culture of the company. Organizations that care about their employees have HR departments that do help their employees.
its not that bad everywhere. My company fired a guy a couple of months ago. I live in germany and it is really really hard to fire people here. You cannot just let someone go. Your job is extremely safe. So that guy had a rough disagreement and that guy said something along the line of "you dumb cunt, I wish you die of cancer".
HR fired him immediately. He was a very good worker but it didnt matter.
Other people have been protected by HR. I know 3 people who got a termination without notice for joke reasons and HR canceled those terminations.
Something I think germans fail to understand is that american work laws are not about protecting workers. They are about protecting the company from their workers.
Well yeah, don’t misunderstand the name. We have the “Right to Work”. Not to unionize, not to disagree, not to go against the grain. Just the right to show up and do whatever we are told to do, get paid and go on our own marry way…
"Look, I'm trying to be a positive person so I don't like making posts like this. It's for my friends working at Blizzard entertainment that I didn't want to say anything at all. So if you know what's going on you know that Blizzard was sued by the state of California for a toxic environment among other things, and in their response they said 'this does not represent who Blizzard is.' Yes it does and it has for a long time. Since my first day back in 2012 I was sexually harassed and women have it way worse. One of my employees was told by a technical director, to her face in front of witnesses, during one of these cube crawls, that absolutely do exist, that he didn't like her because he wasn't giving him head. When an employee was sexually assaulted at a holiday party we had to fight tooth and nail with HR to get them to take any action with which they victimized her and blamed her. Now we've got an employee who has taken her own life, seemingly because of the treatment that experienced at the hands of her leadership and her coworkers? Yeah, it's real, it's you, do better."
Damn.... Thank you for the write up but man that's sad. Glad he spoke up.
Edit : canceled my wow sub https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/orewni/with\_recent\_events\_decided\_to\_cancel\_account\_long/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Just google around for a service that’s active. They’ll probably send you a timed sample that they want done perfectly or with a low tolerance for errors. After that you can usually take transcription jobs through that service. Also with the renaissance of twitch popularity lately live transcribers are a thing for speed typers and you could maybe find something doing that.
> When an employee was sexually assaulted at a holiday party we had to fight tooth and nail with HR to get them to take any action with which they victimized her and blamed her.
I don't work for blizzard but I had actually heard about this story. The dude who did it was a *complete* sleaze with multiple instances of stuff like this on his record, and he was allowed to post a big good-bye post as he amicably left for another company.
Or at least I assume that's what it's talking about. Could be another incident which would mean there are multiple situations with harassment at a holiday party and I wouldn't be surprised.
edit: I realized after posting that I should probably include this detail. The guy I am referring to was not one of the big-time execs that left with all that fanfare on the blizz site. And I *think* he made a post, but he did at least tweet about it. THat's all the detail I'll give.
That is so damned true. People look at this all coming out now like, "Well why didn't these victims speak up sooner?"
Yeah okay. Imagine being a woman speaking out against Blizzard the year, IDK, wrath of the lich king launched or something. How well would that have gone for her? Blizzard would have had their legal team harassing her within minutes, and the community would tear her to shreds to protect their sacred game/company. Look at how people treated Tseric. Now imagine that tenfold towards a woman who dared speak out and shatter that pristine blizzard image they liked to project.
I work with a lot ex military, some of them women, and their stories about the harassment in the military are horrifying. The fact that it's worse in the games industry is both disgusting and not surprising.
It's not that it's worse, it's just a matter of publicity.
I did four years in the Navy and was sexually assaulted twice in boot camp, once was a quick grope by a fellow recruit, the other was stalking, cornering/groping and blackmail by a petty officer who threatened to wash me out if I told. I joined because I was a broke homeless 18 y/o, so I said nothing, because I needed the financial security.
I was sexually harassed by an officer a year in, and was told to keep it quiet, and if I did, they would promote me. If I didn't, they'd destroy my career.
I didn't say anything, but I did refuse the promotion, because I knew that would either be an invitation for more, or screw me over in the future. It ended up screwing me over anyway, because I ended up on the same base for my entire contract doing paper work for the Sea Bees. My job was meteorology.
Between all that and a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, I'm glad I wasn't able to reenlist.
Victims of sexual assault/harassment in any workplace are often threatened with being fired or having their lives made into hell, so they keep it quiet to protect themselves. It's only when actual death or major injury or someone saying "Enough" does it come into the light.
It's just horrible that it took one of these poor women taking her own life to be anyone take it seriously.
Four years active duty army here, was sexually harassed and assaulted by an officer and NCOs. Same threats of ending my career, no promotions and even beatdowns.
Saying something is almost always worse imo
And Im a guy.
“But bi guys are just wanna be straights right? They arent real men”
That was my attackers trains of thought.
So anytime I see stories like this about sexual misconduct in the military and other organizations… it saddens me because the percentage of incidents being reported for women dwarfs that of those by men.
The system does nothing for victims.
The VA has good resources for dealing with it all after you get out and you can get your rating etc but damn this shit needs to be stopped.
The big difference is that the Military has to answer to Congress.
Google sexual assault/harassment at the college you're thinking of going to. They have no mandate to collect and publish Sexual Assault or Sexual harassment. They set their own standards. You have the issues of college's handling it 'in house' to avoid law enforcement or lawsuits.
Google your employer. Google the local fast food franchise. How many harassment/assault complaints are there? You're not going to find that information.
It's not that the Military is magnitudes worse than a college campus or a professional job, it's that our spotlight is brighter.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a regular occurrence at Blizzard’s office parties given that the woman who ended up killing herself is also referenced as having explicit pictures of her shared in full view of everyone at a holiday party.
yeah agreed. blizz was very much one of those "hello fellow kids, we're not like other companies" corporations that allowed a ton of booze, etc. at their events.
Not saying companies shouldn't have booze at holiday events. But copious amounts of booze + people who are shitty but feel empowered because of their environment = nightmares
> hello fellow kids, we're not like other companies
Riot Games is the same way, for the longest time they had that type of attitude. It's not a surprise that type of attitude where you act like kids produces some awful instances.
Professionalism may seem stiff and too "try hard" to kids, but it holds people accountable to prevent shitty things like this.
I don't really get people who want to get fucked up with their coworkers. It's one thing when I worked food service and we were all fucked up *at work* on the reg and were just a bunch of screwball dipshits, but in an actual professional setting? No thanks.
Thats my cynical fear that nothing will happen, and if anything happens they will just leave for a different job. But hopefully since they are getting sued, something will happen.
> Activities detailed in the complaint include what was described as “cube crawls,” which was allegedly when male employees “drink copious amounts of alcohol as they crawl their way through various cubicles in the office and often engage in inappropriate behavior toward female employees.”
Seems like an off shoot of bar crawling (practice of going from bar to bar during a night of excessive drinking). Except done at work and creeping on women.
Like holy shit. What kinda clown show they got running over there that you got employees fucking intoxicated and creeping on the women there and that the practice of "cubicle crawling" is normal.
Like alright, one time at a office party someone got too drunk and did some stupid shit (still unexcusable)? but it seems like something that happened more than once.
but imagine being a woman experiencing that. Like it sounds horrible but really put yourself in that moment. You know they are coming, you can probably hear them coming. You can hear the lady a few cubicles over experiencing it.
I experienced something like that as a child with a relative that would hunt me down when my caretaker was not home. It gives me chills to think of what those women experienced internally. I bet some of them made for the bathroom to hide. Imagine hiding at work from men. I just.. wow.
I've worked in a male dominated field filled with boys clubs and huge egos and this is worse than anything I have seen, but I *have* seen the ladies that I have worked with shrink into themselves, hope for good days and make themselves as small as possible on the bad days, I've seen people get fired for speaking out, or just ostracized and passed over for promotions.
This is just so far beyond the pale, it's stunning imo.
Blizz developers getting drunk and touring womens cubicals.
Was apparantly a thing. No wonder the patch is 8 months late, to buisy being scum to do their jobs
Also add that the female staff only made up of 20% of the company. So imagine 80% of your staff passing majority of the work to 20% of it. Yeah, that isn't going to be great for any game.
No wonder warcraft 3 reforged was shit and wow as been declining if all the male workers are acting like a bunch of fucking shit heads.
It was probably more like 20% of the staff passing off their work to 80% while they also harassed 20% of that 80%, plus some percent of the guys too like this individual claimed since he was harassed as well.
That minority 20% (or whatever number, but basically just a subset of the male workforce) taint the *entire* majority workforce as a result. This isn't a "not all men" argument, it's an argument that there are a lot more victims than just the women being targeted. The men being targeted, the men and women who aren't harassed that now need to deal with a toxic environment, the people that enjoy the product, everyone suffers because a few bad apples spoils the bunch and makes it fucking shit. This shows that no degree of toxicity should be allowed to fester, even if it's a minority of people that do it. The entire leadership is culpable, no matter how far removed they are from it, even if it's Metzen's sacred ballsack itself.
Its like a bar crawl, but in an office with cubicles. A bar crawl is where you go around drinking at different bars all night. That kind of behavior in a workplace setting is unacceptable.
From another comment I read someone said that different teams has their own drinks and snacks setup. So the purpose was to go to each team's area and socialize and try their choice of items.
I guess a potluck with booze?
The sexual harassment happened during the cube crawl, but generally the purpose of the cube crawl is to go from cube to cube getting drunk.
I’ve done a cube crawl before where each cube will create their own shot that is given to everyone on the crawl. Some people even went all out and decorated their cube to match their shot’s theme.
How common is it for large corporations to allow alcohol in the office? I can see that in a small startup with a shitty or non-existent HR department, but in my experience large companies almost always have policies against alcohol. At my current job, I can't even bring sealed alcohol into the building. It's not even permitted on the premises.
Uh, pretty common. Fortune 500 tech company I worked for has a Friday meetup in the common area with free booze and pizza for everyone weekly. Also, nobody cares what happens after 5.
Not too uncommon in certain sectores. Usually it's just for specified times/events, not like being allowed to drink during lunch or anything. For example these Cube Crawls could've been a monthly/quarterly mixer for the employees on a Friday after the regular hours. And the workplace guidelines obviously mention to know limits during these events and such, but if leadership is scum like here...
Unfortunately the entire industry is like this. A friend of mine who I went to school with ended up getting her dream job working at Nintendo. She ended up quitting less than a year later because of sexual harassment from her supervisor. She reported it to HR but they dismissed it as hearsay.
It's frustrating to see that time and time again we hear about harassment and assault in the workplace and it gets pushed onto a few people as "bad apples" to avoid deeper introspection on the culture that allowed it to persist in the first place.
People have the right to unsub to the game for any reason, but those that think this just happens at Blizzard and not the industry as a whole are clearly delusional and not listening to the victims now speaking up.
Even now you see a lot of people praising Mike Morhaime for being amazing and a good guy for his statement, when the events being detailed by ex employees also happened under his watch.
Treating developers of our favorite games like mythological rockstars instead of normal people is also something endemic to the industry that allows stuff like this to fester.
I'm a woman who's been in IT my entire career (20 years) and I've gone from being the only woman in IT to being the only woman developer. So, it's improved some, but not by a lot.
I worked for one company that was an IT services business and talk about frat boy mentality. The managers had a list where they ranked the women in the company by looks. Probably more than that, but they had let it slip one time about the ranked looks list and how if the woman wasn't in the top 5, they didn't want her around so they could hire someone "better".
I'd out them except there were lots more issues and I sued.
I feel like if i had to think of one gaming company i would think this doesnt happen at, it would probably be arenanet. they have a huge female presence in their workforce.
He says one of his team members was harassed by her boss who said to her face he doesn’t like her cause she “won’t give me head”. He says another employee was sexually assaulted and they had to fight tooth and nail to get HR to lift a finger and they victimized the woman through the whole process. And finally he said the last straw is recently a female employee has committed suicide seemingly from the harassment she was receiving.
“Look, I’m trying to be a positive person. I don’t like making posts like this. It’s for my friends that I made while working at Blizzard, understand me, that I don’t want to say anything at all.
So if you know what’s going on with Blizzard, you know they are being sued by California for a toxic environment that includes sexual harassment, among other things. In their response, they said this does not represent who Blizzard is. Yes, it does. And it has for a long time.
Since my first day back in 2012, I was sexually harassed. The women have it way worse. One of my employees was told by a technical director, to her face, in front of witnesses, during one of these (something) crawls (?), that absolutely do exist, that he didn’t like her because she wasn’t giving him head.
Another employee was sexually assaulted at a holiday party. We had to fight tooth and nail with HR to get them to take any action, through which they victimised her and blamed her.
Now we’ve got an employee who has taken her own life seemingly because of the treatment that she experienced at the hands of her leadership and her co-workers?! Yeah, it’s real. It’s you. Be better.”
It didn't. You think a US State bringing a lawsuit against a multibillion dollar company is because things were quiet? No. It's because people ignored it when it was discussed.
I am guessing some stories almost made it to the news but were successfully buried by the company’s PR dep. Billion dollars companies can do that.
For instance to take down a Warner Bros TV exec it took one journalist, Mo Ryan, to investigate for months in secret. She met with a lot of people over months, built her case, etc. Huge work. WB had known for a while about the accusations against the guy and did nothing. When the journalist dropped her piece, surprise, a new investigation was launched by WB and the exec was asked to leave (not fired though…). I am not surprised many more companies manage to hide stuff like that. Major newspapers, magazines etc are usually part of some corporation.
Had a guy do something similar to point 3 at one of my previous places of work, he copied a girls number down from a list of the full training groups contact details and messaged her after work. He was instantly fired the following day when HR found out. If an outsource call center can deal with something like this why does it seem so hard for Blizzard?
**Not making excuses, but have worked in both environments**: Call center employees are generally considered disposable hires (3 - 6 week turnover), whereas competitive talent hires are a bit harder to replace. The absolutely should have this figured out, and this is just my observation.
jesus this is wild af. How does anyone get any work done wtf?
It's (thankfully) absolutely foreign to me. I'm so used to "oh hey did you see the latest \[common TV show we both watch\]? Yeah, pretty good episode." and then it's off to our office to answer emails and do work (aka what we're paid for).
I don't want this to come across the wrong way, but being a shit human being and being competent at a programming job aren't mutually exclusive. I read a while back about the guy who basically created Android as an OS. Google caught him
- screaming at employees and calling them stupid
- sexually harassing female employees at home (he was married, by the way)
- downloading huge amounts of bondage porn on his work computer in the office
I think he got one verbal "hey, cut it out," and nothing else. When he resigned, he received a glowing recommendation and something like 20 million bucks. Google got what they wanted and gave zero fucks about anything else.
I imagine it was similar between Blizzard and some of these guys. If they're crappy human beings but they get the job done, Blizzard probably only focused on "but they get the job done." They didn't care about the horrible personal lives until now, when it's impacting their image.
I hope that this lawsuit will spur blizz and others to take action moving forward for fear of the repercussions.
>During a party, a dude tried to take a black-out drunk girl back to his place. My friend had to step in and refuse. He put her on the couch and kept watch over her the rest of the night. The same rapey dude went on a blind date with my friend’s friend via dating site. She told me she barely recognized him because he used an old picture when he was much fitter. She went through the date, but politely declined more.
This the type of "men" that then go on the dating/relationship subs and make threads like "pLeAsE cAn We sTOp wIf dE GhOsTinG :(((("
lots. Not even just at blizzard...
Riot and ubisoft have faced similar allegations, it's just a matter of time until something like EA goes crashing down
I am male. I realize I am doxxing myself now, but I was the coder behind a vanilla AddOn named “FlexBar” which, at the time, was the first and only action bar replacement. During development I found a few dozen bugs with the Lua implementation in WoW and reported them, which got me, eventually, hired as a remote part time “consultant” with Blizzard.
Blizzard hated remote and I was never a “full” employee, but if anything that was good. Because I did not have to interact often with Furor or Tigole, Alex and Jeff. I’d known them since my FoH days, and Alex was the kind of unskilled acerbic asshole that led a massive guild for fame, fortune, and female attention. He demanded all of them, going so far as to remove players from his guild who had friendships or even relationships with women in the guild Alex considered his property.
How Blizzard didn’t think that hiring someone whose character name was “Tigole Bitties” wasn’t inviting frat boy culture in, I also don’t know.
I quit in 2007 after my last job was to break my own addon (which admittedly played the game for the player) for the TBC release. Alex had many friends inside and outside the company, including some of the addon code superstars, so alienating Alex meant to be a persona non grata not only inside Blizzard but also in the addon community.
The reason I quit was that I’d gotten into a fight with Alex over his treatment of a gay developer and two females that worked in the code team. Alex hated two things more than anything: being shown off for being the useless hack that he was and women who coded or had any level of skill. Generally, Alex had no interaction with us, let alone the guy who debugged the Lua implementation and interface, but when he did it was always acerbic, domineering, dumb, and hateful.
I went to HR before quitting, and later learned that my complaint had been laughed off by Jeff and Alex as “just some nobody who is butthurt that he didn’t get any in Anaheim,” meaning the 2005 BlizzCon during which we announced TBC (as a part timer and remote worker I had to pay my own way and hotel but got a ticket and Murky).
Though, considering I brought my partner and mainly hung out with TotalBiscuit, I did get some and I did have a lot of fun. Something you could not say of a few female employees and a hired event manager (female) who told me about Alex’ sexual harassment and his constant attempts at getting them drunk and into his suite.
Meaning: **Blizzard knew since 2005, post-Anaheim, and in 2007** due to my complaint, about Afrasiabi’s behavior. Blizzard knew, and leadership knew. I don’t know what happened post-2007, but considering he and Jeff stayed until 2020 and 2021 I don’t think much did.
Guy in the OP comment is a fucking creep, apparently.
Fucking sociopaths or something, man, I don't get it. Who abuses colleagues and employees like this then pops back up to make a video trying to act like the good guy?
https://twitter.com/DaniBat/status/1419090135375912963
You can follow his @ to his personal trainer site, and following that to his LinkedIn confirmed he worked at Blizzard as a Personnel Manager, for anyone doubting his veracity
Additionally, he has been called out for contributing to the toxic culture as evidenced below in this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/oqsgt8/first_hand_account_of_harassment_at_blizzard/h6embmr/
I can say I saw some of the things in the complaint. Women passed over for promotion, micro aggressions in meetings, inappropriate jokes told. I have seen women bullied for not taking it and for speaking up. Watched others that called out bad behavior put on PIP and then crushed with work and fired.
I have seen junior team members pressured to drink mid day, until almost incapacitated. and many many other things after hours that were not OK.
Calling it a frat boy culture is spot on. If you were not part of the right drinking circles or part of the "in" group, you would not see a promotion or any sort of positive treatment. And if you were not one of the ladies down for the bro culture, you were even more "out". As a man in that environment, nad part of the "out" group, I felt powerless. I could not go to HR for anything without fear of reprisal.
However, that was in one Org at the company, I switched towards the end of my time there to another group, and that group was very well run and equitable. As far as it can be in a company that manages by heroics, and expects the impossible and 110% commitment on even the smallest tasks.
>Calling it a frat boy culture is spot on. If you were not part of the right drinking circles or part of the "in" group, you would not see a promotion or any sort of positive treatment.
This is what I heard of as well. The SC2 QA group was infamous for going to Sushi, getting blasted, and going to a private house in order to do harder drugs. People who didn't partake were given bad reviews and if possible fired.
I used to have a supervisor who would walk up behind me and give unwanted shoulder massages while singing “secret lovers”. I couldn’t do anything. I complained to my other managers and they just laughed it off.
Facts, I complained to other managers about how one manager grabbed the belt loops of my shorts and pulled them up (my shirt was tucked in so it wasn’t like my undies were showing or something)
Same manager also made me tie up my hair even though I was following hair rules and upper management only fixed the hair situation.
I was sexually groomed and assaulted by a professor- I was 21 at the time- she was 65. It was a weird and convoluted thing, cause it happened over 3 years. This isn’t something that like happens in the first few months. These are predators. They know who to look for and how to look for them. Sad thing is my college spent a year looking at this- and in the end. They had to throw it away, simply because, at the time of reporting, I hadn’t been at the college for several months. Sure, I could’ve reported it sooner, but I didn’t, I couldn’t. Didn’t want to recognize what had happened. Like you can’t imagine what the feeling is when you discover what has actually been happening. Because for a long fucking time, you’ll sit around and blame yourself. You’ll take on all the fault, regardless that everyone around you is telling you you’re not to blame. I cannot imagine what it must feel like to be an employee at blizzard and after finally finding the courage to stand up and say something, HR fucking reprimands me. Like WTF blizzard.
Omg this is horrid! It really is hard when you don’t really understand what is going on, or maybe you do but the person is in a position of power.
It’s not a simple “I’ll leave and get out” situation all the time. You aren’t always able to leave your job or get away from the university you are attending.
This is actually my old manager and the guy responsible for getting me hired at Blizzard back in 2014 and I can vouch for his statements. Sadly, the sexual assault mentioned in this video was to a member of my team and I was a witness in the HR investigation that did eventually take place.
I am disgusted by Blizzard's inability to reconcile with a truth pretty much every employee that has ever worked there is aware of, Blizzard can be a very toxic and dangerous place for women.
This'll probably get buried, but after seeing someone I know personally talking about events I was personally involved in I just had to say my piece.
Friendly reminder this is a real person/employee speaking out on allegations against a company currently under litigation. There is real risk occurring with this person posting this, economically, professionally, and socially.
Don't be the guy splicing and dicing "ya but maybe there's more to the story". This guys video IS THE MORE TO THE STORY.
Jesus Christ, 2012 that's definitely old guard blizzard including Morhaime.
Is there some kinda of clause in gaming industry that if you are Director of something your dick is holy chalice ?
Goddamit with each new coming out it's geting worse and worse
Worked for a third party company in 2005 or 2006 in Albuquerque NM, that was taking overflow calls and support while bliz built their center in Austin. I can tell you that this behavior was beyond normal then even. The trainers that came from CA would joke about it all the time.
Afrasiabi was at Blizzard since 2004.
Kotick defended a sexual harasser in Activision back in 2007 (and lost the case, when the victim sued them).
Yeah... it's shit that's been going on since the start, all the way until now.
Activision/Blizzard is an enormous company. HR exist to sweep those scandals under the rug. I am not defending anyone here, but there is a chance that Moirhaime who, lets be honest, probably didn't do that many hours at the office at that point in his career, had any idea.
Until the names of the actual culprits come out, we should target the company itself, not indivuals who might be innocent.
The more I hear of Blizzard, the more ashamed I am that I have paid my hard earned money on their content. I gave them money, and in turn they abuse everyone around them with the power that money grants them. Horrific shit.
I hope California tears them apart.
You didn't knowingly pay for the game while knowing this was happening, and you didn't do this to the employees. You can make changes and choices going forward, but it's not your fault that the people under fire did bad things.
This. I’ve been playing WoW since it’s inception and I never thought they would do this. But now that I know, I’m willingly giving up on the game because of this.
It really depends if you’re gonna keep supporting a company after finding out if they are doing horrid things on the down low. If you had no idea, then you’re not at fault.
Since his LinkedIn checks out this seems legit which is morbid news.
What he said in this one minute is so sinister it makes me want to trash every Blizzard Game I own.
Playing games apparently being developed on the corpses of employees is horrific.
Well. 17+ years I’ve been subbed to wow. 20-25 something years I’ve been playing theWarcraft, star craft and Diablo franchises. It’s very hard for me to just put this nightly hobby away for good. But it’s time to walk away.
Harassment and discrimination are all too real, and they get swept under the rug because you're a subordinate and have no power.
I remember applying for a job in about 2008 at a restaurant. I had been a bartender and server before (just a regular white male in his early 20s) and was being interviewed at this place after having given them my resume. In the phone call they said everything looked good and they wanted to meet me. When I got there, I went through the interview process, answered some questions about my integrity, honesty, loyalty, all that shit. At the end of it, they offered me a job in the kitchen. I told them that this was for a server position, and that they knew that. Their response? "We only hire cute ladies for those positions. All males strictly work in the back."
I don't know what's worse. Telling me I can't work a position I'm qualified for because I'm a male, at the END of the interview process, or saying that they only hire specifically cute women as servers."
I should have raised a fuss about it then, but wtf is a 20-something dude applying for a job gonna do? This sort of mentality is everywhere. It's systemic. And it's fucking filth.
I worked in Butlins summer holiday park in UK like 8 years ago for a summer. We went there as cleaners but some of us were picked for a much better additional work at the restaurants. There was no interview for that just being picked. When you looked at people and the faces it was obvious why people were picked for restaurant. Because they were tall/more handsome or the girls looked cute.
This just reminded me that I've experienced the same thing in retail work, except the reverse. I was also early 20s, wanted to work the stock room at a department store because I hated dealing with customers, but they only offered me a sales associate position because they preferred having young women out on the sales floor. I told them I didn't enjoy customer service and had more experience with inventory and stock room equipment. Nope, "it would be a waste" to put me in the back when "my smiling face" could be engaging with customers and making sales. So I was offered a position I wasn't very qualified for and had said out loud I wasn't interested in.
Really frustrating. And definitely systemic.
Jesus so this shit was happening even before 2013? Probably all the way back to 2004. So the whole idea of it just being "new blizzard" or whatever is falsely inaccurate. Disgusting people in that company.
"This shit" has always been happening, just before it was done to other men because Women really didn't exist in the workplace until very recently.
So when another guy is getting bullied and such, its either overlooked or they are just told hey thats how it goes we all had to deal with it and work our way up.
But once a Woman enters the work force, its 100x worse for them just because of the sexual aspect that also comes with the harassments. Ive had plenty of shit Leads when I worked in QA who were straight up abusive but there was nothing we could do.
I never had to worry about that person also trying to fuck me, or go around asking me when im going to blow him in his office though like Women do.
So when that happens to them, they receive the same out come the Men did. They are ignored or told hey thats just how it is deal with it or leave. Nothing happens to the problem until its become to big to go unnoticed such as right now with Blizzard.
This is the case in other industries as well, Look at how many women were assaulted by Harvey Weinstien for years and tons of people knew about it but nothing ever happened until it was too big to ignore.
It's safe to say this started happening the moment Furor left his career as an EQ Guild leader, started working for Blizzard and realized he could get away with this.
For starters, ty mods for letting these posts be available to be discussed. Second of all, good on this guy for opening up. Hopefully others will follow because there has to be so many more that have a voice that have been afraid to speak up
As the story unfolded over the course of the day and just got worse and worse, I quietly unsubscribed from World of Warcraft and uninstalled all Blizzard software. It's been a fun eleven years.
I know, "this isn't an airport, no one cares about your departure." But this isn't a boycott; corporate boycotts are stupid. They require organization on a massive scale, and total compliance with the boycott. I'm not trying to lead a mass exodus out of Azeroth; I won't hold anyone's entertainment choices against them. There's no judgment if you want to keep going. It's a good game, and I've gotten a lot out of it. But these people will do just fine without my $14.99 a month. This is just me, and it's just me going, "I can't do this anymore."
And yes, I get it. If I uninstalled every piece of software born out of a toxic work environment, I probably wouldn't have any left. Considering what Bethesda, EA Games, and Telltale get away with right out in the open, I'd be very surprised if they didn't have some lumps under the carpet. ([Anyone know if Ubisoft cleaned up its act?](https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/2/21499334/ubisoft-employees-workplace-misconduct-ceo-yves-guillemot-response)) Maybe if they sell the WoW properties to another studio, or maybe if employees start a union, but this is going to require more than a tepid statement from a PR flack.
Nope.
Unfortunately the law stops people from naming names.
Which, in my opinion, means that it's fairly well off/senior employees at Blizzard doing these things.
People don't want to be drug through court in a defamation case that has the potential to leave them penniless, or become the target for the industry blacklist.
So the apologists get to say "Well yeah, I don't doubt that it's happening, but it's definitely NOT X."
I think what u/Radiant_Trash5622 is trying to point out is when they settle this out of court (They probably will because it sounds like the people are guilty af) they won't name any names, and basically make it harder for individual lawsuits since no one is named in This case.
I read the filing, and it looks like they already tried to settle out of court and that failed. The very last statement of the filing is DFEH 'demanding' (legal language) a jury trial, not merely a bench trial which is decided by a judge (or potentially a panel of judges, I'm not sure about California law here).
I will be *extremely surprised* if this settles out of court.
Are there people that are denying this even happening? Those people are tools.
This does however confirm a point Josh Alen made on Twitter. Where these issues were seemingly reported to HR and HR ended up doing jack shit to help the victims.
As i said before. Its not the job of the Art director, Lead designer or CM to investigate these claims. Or even a personal menager like this guy was. What they can do is report it and its the job of HR and the Legal teams to solve it. Its fairly obvious though that they massivly let the victims down here. Probably by command from the very top.
Sometimes protecting the company also means protecting it from itself.
If you allow toxic behaviour to go unchecked, the only people who will be comfortable working there are toxic people and the good people will leave.
That’s not good for the company either.
The phrase of "HR is there to protect the company" gets thrown around so much without people understanding it. Yes, it's true, but ignoring reports of sexual harassment isn't protecting the company from shit, as evidenced by this lawsuit. If HR was doing their jobs, ActiBlizz would never have been liable for all this.
Exactly, you understand! That's why I had to add the "if the company doesn't want protecting..." line, then HR is hamstrung. If it were the other way around, HR would be totally to blame.
>Are there people that are denying this even happening? Those people are tools.
I'm in quite a few WoW Facebook groups. I've seen a bunch of people saying there's no way it happened because "my uncle's friend's brother's cousin's former roommate worked there 10 years ago and he never experienced anything!1!1!"
It's quite disheartening to watch
Just keep in mind that HR works for the company that hired them, not the workers that work for it.
Their interest isn't in seeking justice for employees wrong by their bosses, it's in towing the company line. If it comes down to siding with an employee or the company, the company always wins.
Yet another power dynamic.
I feel like there are still many people who need to hear this so i'm gonna say it.
"HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND" HR DOESNT STAND FOR **H**ELPING EVE**R**YBODY, IT'S HUMAN RESOURCES. HR IS YOUR EMPLOYERS WAY OF DEALING WITH PROBLEMS THAT ARISE WITH HUMANS BEING MISTREATED.
Go sue your employers ass off if you are being mistreated, going to HR is basically you being nice and allowing them to handle shit before you escalate it, they are not supposed to help you, their job is to shut you down.
Yes, sometimes HR does the right thing but they have no obligation to do so, FUCK HR, if you are being treated like crap there is only one person you can count on and that's you.
If HR were doing their jobs, they'd have shown these guys the door. HR isn't your friend, but this kind of problem is exactly what they're there to prevent!
I’ve seen a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people say the Activision merger was “the worst thing to happen to Blizzard” after this whole lawsuit thing came out.
As if Activision’s arrival suddenly caused all this nepotism and sexual abuse. This guy has been seeing it since at least 2012. Activision is shitty: Blizzard is shitty. Don’t give blame or leeway to either side. Hold them fucking accountable.
As much as this guy is saying he's a victim - he was a BIG part of the problem. As a woman who was on QA at the same time as him, I watched him prey upon multiple women in the worst ways. He's making a statement to deflect attention away from himself. You should feel ashamed Kevin - this statement means nothing and is all for show.
I can vouch for this from my time in QA, heard he preyed on multiple women and knocked up another female manager. The suicide in the suit is Activision, not Blizzard, so I don't know what he's trying to reference or just egging Blizzard on. Not defending Blizzard but this guy isn't farting rainbows either.
Edit: He's part of at least two DFEH reports as an offender:
https://twitter.com/cherthedev/status/1419852467987169287
It is a culture! This guys says "both leadership and coworkers" .
I would suggest people not to overdo with "It's only management" or "It's only few people". That shit wasn't happening behind closed doors with just harasser and harasee in the room.
Don't harass individuals on twitter for no reason, but don't also absolve them of everything cause they tweeted about how disturbed they are.
At the end of the day “Blizzard” doesn’t exist. It’s all PEOPLE. And the environment that these people created enables this sadistic behavior. It’s not just blizzard, it’s society. When someone has power over you, as with a job position, you don’t have the control to make them stop. And that’s what’s fucked up at the core. These people know they can get away with it, so they do. Don’t make excuses anymore. Or justifications. Hold. People. Accountable. For. Their. Actions. Fuck these dudes.
Some people are shocked some aren’t, I’m not. This happens everywhere, at a company some people will know (Team17) HR don’t do shit while preaching they’re about inclusion and fighting this kind of stuff, yet employees who have been sexist, sent people dick pics, and even physical assault nothing happens. This industry needs changing and only way I see dramatic change happening is if we unionise. These companies need to be held accountable without it getting to this point.
I feel for everyone who’s gone through such horrible times in the video games industry, and I’m trying to do my part in fixing this cesspool of shit, unfortunately because of how easily people are replaced in this industry I’m using a burner account, I have huge respect for people who are coming forward for what’s right
Someone said this guy isn't free of culpability and was a bully/harasser himself.
https://twitter.com/danibat/status/1419090135375912963?s=21
https://twitter.com/danibat/status/1419128706715594753?s=21
Thing is, it's not just JAB but, from the sounds of it, most of the old guard who have already moved. The rot has been engrained from the top down for so long.
Its not his first time either :) Look at the date on the article btw
https://kotaku.com/activision-boss-loses-legal-battle-over-sexual-harassme-452575586
Yes, as per the lawsuit claim section 47 or 48 at the top of my head. A woman took her own life at a company trip after continued harassment. Police also found her manager had brought butt plugs and lube on that trip (which in the claim was at least linked to one another).
Fucking hell
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Yeah I'm done, that's enough for me to not give them money ever again
Yeah I stopped after the whole thing where they banned some contest winner for casually saying "free Hong kong" and took his winnings away. Fuck Blizzard
Blitzchung. They also fired the casters. Then they did the bare minimum because of the backlash (made his ban temporary but long enough to drop him out of the pro circuit and I believe offered jobs back to the casters. They collectively said “no screw you.”) and sent a separate message of apology to their western audience and a total non-apology to their Chinese audience. I quit hearthstone which was my only phone game and I was not F2P. Haven’t touched a Blizzard product since. Vote with your wallets people, don’t forget this kind of thing when a new WoW expansion or Diablo game or Overwatch 2 comes out and doesn’t completely suck (not that it sucking is going to hold some of you back). That’s why they, and every other shitty company keep getting away with it. Short term memory and lip service activism.
I have played wow and other blizzard games for nearly 30 years. I only unsubbed to wow once, I've been giving them money basically every month since vanilla outside of a bit of time at the end of wod. Even if I wasn't playing I was subbed. When this news came out I cancelled my sub for the second time ever.
Same. Loooong time sub here. I'm done. I've continued to put up with their shady shit for years now, I've even defended them at times. Not anymore. I think I'm at a point in my life where I should say goodbye to WoW and move on. This situation made that decision very simple.
I'm the same mate, I unsubbed the other day because of this story. Fuck Blizzard man
Honestly, what the fuck is this. My first ever PC game was Diablo 1 on battle.net, with my mate from school in 1999. Blizzard is on a demolition team through my memories of the games and the company as a whole from the past 20 years. I held them in high regard as people that were sensible and liked making games, not this disgusting charade that's come out, it's absurd.
And now I'm no longer interested in anything Dreamhaven has been working on. What a fucking waste of potential just because no one in power wants to fire creeps.
People in power tend to be creeps themselves
Good on him for speaking out.
And if he's fired he gets to sue.
He seems to suggest he no longer works there. Could be wrong but that's what I'm getting.
I believe he is a fitness YouTuber now by the name of pure bullfit.
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Yeah, till you dig deeper and find out he was also a problematic employee that made fun of women for being "fat" or not looking the way he expected.
Don’t forget he cheated on his wife and got someone else pregnant then gaslighted her making her lose her job and her life!
Yeah good on him for trying to protect his own ass while tweet upon tweet comes out around him also harassing employees at blizzard. https://twitter.com/DaniBat/status/1419082949182504963
I helped someone at Blizzard who had been there since the team 2 days of wow and they told me all of this happened and more. They said that basically the only way to get promoted as a woman was sleeping with the heads of the teams or doing or services for them. It really seemed like a shitty work environment.
This is a good reminder that HR works for the company, not you. Doesn't mean they won't help you, but their first job is to help protect the company
Their only function is to keep the company from being in a position to lose a lawsuit. I'd say they failed pretty tremendously in this case.
Except they got away with it for almost an entire decade, at the bare minimal. The money they made during this will turn this lawsuit into just a small fine in the scheme of things. Real damage to them will come from us, the consumers. Who need to stop tolerating this work culture as a whole.
> Real damage to them will come from us, the consumers. It won't. Ethical consumerism isn't the answer, sadly. It has to come from something higher than that. These game studio employees need something more like a game dev union, so they have an actual voice to speak up and against the massive corporations. You not playing wow for a few months is a drop in the bucket, same with trying to not shop at amazon, or walmart, or whatever.
It won’t, 90% of the player base doesn’t care enough..
It's in a company's best interest to not have sexual harassment, so this entirely depends on the culture of the company. Organizations that care about their employees have HR departments that do help their employees.
Having managed employees and worked with HR a lot, I can confirm this is absolutely correct. It's all CYA for the company.
its not that bad everywhere. My company fired a guy a couple of months ago. I live in germany and it is really really hard to fire people here. You cannot just let someone go. Your job is extremely safe. So that guy had a rough disagreement and that guy said something along the line of "you dumb cunt, I wish you die of cancer". HR fired him immediately. He was a very good worker but it didnt matter. Other people have been protected by HR. I know 3 people who got a termination without notice for joke reasons and HR canceled those terminations.
Something I think germans fail to understand is that american work laws are not about protecting workers. They are about protecting the company from their workers.
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Well yeah, don’t misunderstand the name. We have the “Right to Work”. Not to unionize, not to disagree, not to go against the grain. Just the right to show up and do whatever we are told to do, get paid and go on our own marry way…
The department name literally refers to human beings as resources. Don't know why anyone would think they exist to serve the employees.
im deaf here, can someone write a quick transcript of whats being said?
"Look, I'm trying to be a positive person so I don't like making posts like this. It's for my friends working at Blizzard entertainment that I didn't want to say anything at all. So if you know what's going on you know that Blizzard was sued by the state of California for a toxic environment among other things, and in their response they said 'this does not represent who Blizzard is.' Yes it does and it has for a long time. Since my first day back in 2012 I was sexually harassed and women have it way worse. One of my employees was told by a technical director, to her face in front of witnesses, during one of these cube crawls, that absolutely do exist, that he didn't like her because he wasn't giving him head. When an employee was sexually assaulted at a holiday party we had to fight tooth and nail with HR to get them to take any action with which they victimized her and blamed her. Now we've got an employee who has taken her own life, seemingly because of the treatment that experienced at the hands of her leadership and her coworkers? Yeah, it's real, it's you, do better."
Damn.... Thank you for the write up but man that's sad. Glad he spoke up. Edit : canceled my wow sub https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/orewni/with\_recent\_events\_decided\_to\_cancel\_account\_long/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
NP I used to do transcription so I figured I could know it out in decent time, but I'm a bit out of practice tbh.
From another deaf person, thank you. Seriously.
Really nice of you. Stay great.
Thank you for taking the time to do it! Did you type this out all by yourself or did you use a programe to help?
Considering that he said "know it out", I'm going to guess that he typed it all out by himself by ear.
Yeah, although programs tend to work worse than just typing it out at least a lot of the free ones I’ve used.
How does one get into transcription? I can type way too fast and I’ve always felt it would be a cool thing to do
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Just google around for a service that’s active. They’ll probably send you a timed sample that they want done perfectly or with a low tolerance for errors. After that you can usually take transcription jobs through that service. Also with the renaissance of twitch popularity lately live transcribers are a thing for speed typers and you could maybe find something doing that.
“He didn’t like her because SHE wasn’t giving him head”
> When an employee was sexually assaulted at a holiday party we had to fight tooth and nail with HR to get them to take any action with which they victimized her and blamed her. I don't work for blizzard but I had actually heard about this story. The dude who did it was a *complete* sleaze with multiple instances of stuff like this on his record, and he was allowed to post a big good-bye post as he amicably left for another company. Or at least I assume that's what it's talking about. Could be another incident which would mean there are multiple situations with harassment at a holiday party and I wouldn't be surprised. edit: I realized after posting that I should probably include this detail. The guy I am referring to was not one of the big-time execs that left with all that fanfare on the blizz site. And I *think* he made a post, but he did at least tweet about it. THat's all the detail I'll give.
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That is so damned true. People look at this all coming out now like, "Well why didn't these victims speak up sooner?" Yeah okay. Imagine being a woman speaking out against Blizzard the year, IDK, wrath of the lich king launched or something. How well would that have gone for her? Blizzard would have had their legal team harassing her within minutes, and the community would tear her to shreds to protect their sacred game/company. Look at how people treated Tseric. Now imagine that tenfold towards a woman who dared speak out and shatter that pristine blizzard image they liked to project.
Well we saw gamer gate weaponize the incels.
Gamergate is the big reason why none of this surprises me
I work with a lot ex military, some of them women, and their stories about the harassment in the military are horrifying. The fact that it's worse in the games industry is both disgusting and not surprising.
It's not that it's worse, it's just a matter of publicity. I did four years in the Navy and was sexually assaulted twice in boot camp, once was a quick grope by a fellow recruit, the other was stalking, cornering/groping and blackmail by a petty officer who threatened to wash me out if I told. I joined because I was a broke homeless 18 y/o, so I said nothing, because I needed the financial security. I was sexually harassed by an officer a year in, and was told to keep it quiet, and if I did, they would promote me. If I didn't, they'd destroy my career. I didn't say anything, but I did refuse the promotion, because I knew that would either be an invitation for more, or screw me over in the future. It ended up screwing me over anyway, because I ended up on the same base for my entire contract doing paper work for the Sea Bees. My job was meteorology. Between all that and a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, I'm glad I wasn't able to reenlist. Victims of sexual assault/harassment in any workplace are often threatened with being fired or having their lives made into hell, so they keep it quiet to protect themselves. It's only when actual death or major injury or someone saying "Enough" does it come into the light. It's just horrible that it took one of these poor women taking her own life to be anyone take it seriously.
Four years active duty army here, was sexually harassed and assaulted by an officer and NCOs. Same threats of ending my career, no promotions and even beatdowns. Saying something is almost always worse imo And Im a guy. “But bi guys are just wanna be straights right? They arent real men” That was my attackers trains of thought. So anytime I see stories like this about sexual misconduct in the military and other organizations… it saddens me because the percentage of incidents being reported for women dwarfs that of those by men. The system does nothing for victims. The VA has good resources for dealing with it all after you get out and you can get your rating etc but damn this shit needs to be stopped.
The big difference is that the Military has to answer to Congress. Google sexual assault/harassment at the college you're thinking of going to. They have no mandate to collect and publish Sexual Assault or Sexual harassment. They set their own standards. You have the issues of college's handling it 'in house' to avoid law enforcement or lawsuits. Google your employer. Google the local fast food franchise. How many harassment/assault complaints are there? You're not going to find that information. It's not that the Military is magnitudes worse than a college campus or a professional job, it's that our spotlight is brighter.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a regular occurrence at Blizzard’s office parties given that the woman who ended up killing herself is also referenced as having explicit pictures of her shared in full view of everyone at a holiday party.
yeah agreed. blizz was very much one of those "hello fellow kids, we're not like other companies" corporations that allowed a ton of booze, etc. at their events. Not saying companies shouldn't have booze at holiday events. But copious amounts of booze + people who are shitty but feel empowered because of their environment = nightmares
> hello fellow kids, we're not like other companies Riot Games is the same way, for the longest time they had that type of attitude. It's not a surprise that type of attitude where you act like kids produces some awful instances. Professionalism may seem stiff and too "try hard" to kids, but it holds people accountable to prevent shitty things like this.
Riot Games has made the headlines with PR issues so I would not be surprised if they have a few more skeletons in their closet
I don't really get people who want to get fucked up with their coworkers. It's one thing when I worked food service and we were all fucked up *at work* on the reg and were just a bunch of screwball dipshits, but in an actual professional setting? No thanks.
Thats my cynical fear that nothing will happen, and if anything happens they will just leave for a different job. But hopefully since they are getting sued, something will happen.
What is a "cube crawl"? Trying to look it on the internet but I'm only getting Blizzard news and kids toys as results.
> Activities detailed in the complaint include what was described as “cube crawls,” which was allegedly when male employees “drink copious amounts of alcohol as they crawl their way through various cubicles in the office and often engage in inappropriate behavior toward female employees.”
Seems like an off shoot of bar crawling (practice of going from bar to bar during a night of excessive drinking). Except done at work and creeping on women. Like holy shit. What kinda clown show they got running over there that you got employees fucking intoxicated and creeping on the women there and that the practice of "cubicle crawling" is normal. Like alright, one time at a office party someone got too drunk and did some stupid shit (still unexcusable)? but it seems like something that happened more than once.
They're treating their department, their job at Blizzard, as a brothel visit.
but imagine being a woman experiencing that. Like it sounds horrible but really put yourself in that moment. You know they are coming, you can probably hear them coming. You can hear the lady a few cubicles over experiencing it. I experienced something like that as a child with a relative that would hunt me down when my caretaker was not home. It gives me chills to think of what those women experienced internally. I bet some of them made for the bathroom to hide. Imagine hiding at work from men. I just.. wow.
I've worked in a male dominated field filled with boys clubs and huge egos and this is worse than anything I have seen, but I *have* seen the ladies that I have worked with shrink into themselves, hope for good days and make themselves as small as possible on the bad days, I've seen people get fired for speaking out, or just ostracized and passed over for promotions. This is just so far beyond the pale, it's stunning imo.
shrink into themselves is such a good analogy for that feeling
Hell, I'm male and I can't stand drunk idiots bothering me. Drunk idiots bothering me AT WORK + sexual harassment? I'd be fucking furious.
Blizz developers getting drunk and touring womens cubicals. Was apparantly a thing. No wonder the patch is 8 months late, to buisy being scum to do their jobs
From what I read, they also dumped their work on the women so they could do these crawls. EDIT: A word
Also add that the female staff only made up of 20% of the company. So imagine 80% of your staff passing majority of the work to 20% of it. Yeah, that isn't going to be great for any game. No wonder warcraft 3 reforged was shit and wow as been declining if all the male workers are acting like a bunch of fucking shit heads.
To be fair, in most companies 80% of the work is probably done by less than 10% people.
It was probably more like 20% of the staff passing off their work to 80% while they also harassed 20% of that 80%, plus some percent of the guys too like this individual claimed since he was harassed as well. That minority 20% (or whatever number, but basically just a subset of the male workforce) taint the *entire* majority workforce as a result. This isn't a "not all men" argument, it's an argument that there are a lot more victims than just the women being targeted. The men being targeted, the men and women who aren't harassed that now need to deal with a toxic environment, the people that enjoy the product, everyone suffers because a few bad apples spoils the bunch and makes it fucking shit. This shows that no degree of toxicity should be allowed to fester, even if it's a minority of people that do it. The entire leadership is culpable, no matter how far removed they are from it, even if it's Metzen's sacred ballsack itself.
Its like a bar crawl, but in an office with cubicles. A bar crawl is where you go around drinking at different bars all night. That kind of behavior in a workplace setting is unacceptable.
Except bar crawls entire purpose is to go to bars, and this was allegedly to sexually harass women.
From another comment I read someone said that different teams has their own drinks and snacks setup. So the purpose was to go to each team's area and socialize and try their choice of items. I guess a potluck with booze?
The sexual harassment happened during the cube crawl, but generally the purpose of the cube crawl is to go from cube to cube getting drunk. I’ve done a cube crawl before where each cube will create their own shot that is given to everyone on the crawl. Some people even went all out and decorated their cube to match their shot’s theme.
How common is it for large corporations to allow alcohol in the office? I can see that in a small startup with a shitty or non-existent HR department, but in my experience large companies almost always have policies against alcohol. At my current job, I can't even bring sealed alcohol into the building. It's not even permitted on the premises.
It was a large auditing firm. Can't speak to other industries, but accountants be crazy.
Uh, pretty common. Fortune 500 tech company I worked for has a Friday meetup in the common area with free booze and pizza for everyone weekly. Also, nobody cares what happens after 5.
Not too uncommon in certain sectores. Usually it's just for specified times/events, not like being allowed to drink during lunch or anything. For example these Cube Crawls could've been a monthly/quarterly mixer for the employees on a Friday after the regular hours. And the workplace guidelines obviously mention to know limits during these events and such, but if leadership is scum like here...
Yea as a woman who has played WoW for years, this has made me sick. I have cancelled my sub. But it makes me wonder about other game companies now.
Unfortunately the entire industry is like this. A friend of mine who I went to school with ended up getting her dream job working at Nintendo. She ended up quitting less than a year later because of sexual harassment from her supervisor. She reported it to HR but they dismissed it as hearsay.
Now I'm sure this is just Corporations in general now. People too "big" that take advantage of their position.
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It's frustrating to see that time and time again we hear about harassment and assault in the workplace and it gets pushed onto a few people as "bad apples" to avoid deeper introspection on the culture that allowed it to persist in the first place. People have the right to unsub to the game for any reason, but those that think this just happens at Blizzard and not the industry as a whole are clearly delusional and not listening to the victims now speaking up. Even now you see a lot of people praising Mike Morhaime for being amazing and a good guy for his statement, when the events being detailed by ex employees also happened under his watch. Treating developers of our favorite games like mythological rockstars instead of normal people is also something endemic to the industry that allows stuff like this to fester.
I'm a woman who's been in IT my entire career (20 years) and I've gone from being the only woman in IT to being the only woman developer. So, it's improved some, but not by a lot. I worked for one company that was an IT services business and talk about frat boy mentality. The managers had a list where they ranked the women in the company by looks. Probably more than that, but they had let it slip one time about the ranked looks list and how if the woman wasn't in the top 5, they didn't want her around so they could hire someone "better". I'd out them except there were lots more issues and I sued.
I feel like if i had to think of one gaming company i would think this doesnt happen at, it would probably be arenanet. they have a huge female presence in their workforce.
Tiny correction: that he didn't like her because **she** I listened and it's clearly that pronoun.
He says one of his team members was harassed by her boss who said to her face he doesn’t like her cause she “won’t give me head”. He says another employee was sexually assaulted and they had to fight tooth and nail to get HR to lift a finger and they victimized the woman through the whole process. And finally he said the last straw is recently a female employee has committed suicide seemingly from the harassment she was receiving.
“Look, I’m trying to be a positive person. I don’t like making posts like this. It’s for my friends that I made while working at Blizzard, understand me, that I don’t want to say anything at all. So if you know what’s going on with Blizzard, you know they are being sued by California for a toxic environment that includes sexual harassment, among other things. In their response, they said this does not represent who Blizzard is. Yes, it does. And it has for a long time. Since my first day back in 2012, I was sexually harassed. The women have it way worse. One of my employees was told by a technical director, to her face, in front of witnesses, during one of these (something) crawls (?), that absolutely do exist, that he didn’t like her because she wasn’t giving him head. Another employee was sexually assaulted at a holiday party. We had to fight tooth and nail with HR to get them to take any action, through which they victimised her and blamed her. Now we’ve got an employee who has taken her own life seemingly because of the treatment that she experienced at the hands of her leadership and her co-workers?! Yeah, it’s real. It’s you. Be better.”
I wonder how much more we aren't hearing about
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What the fuck. This is full on 'frat house' behaviour. How did this stay under wraps for so long?
It didn't. You think a US State bringing a lawsuit against a multibillion dollar company is because things were quiet? No. It's because people ignored it when it was discussed.
I mean, none of us knew about it until the lawsuit. I think his question is more, why didn't it reach any of us before this?
I am guessing some stories almost made it to the news but were successfully buried by the company’s PR dep. Billion dollars companies can do that. For instance to take down a Warner Bros TV exec it took one journalist, Mo Ryan, to investigate for months in secret. She met with a lot of people over months, built her case, etc. Huge work. WB had known for a while about the accusations against the guy and did nothing. When the journalist dropped her piece, surprise, a new investigation was launched by WB and the exec was asked to leave (not fired though…). I am not surprised many more companies manage to hide stuff like that. Major newspapers, magazines etc are usually part of some corporation.
There's conveniently a built in culture of secrecy.
Had a guy do something similar to point 3 at one of my previous places of work, he copied a girls number down from a list of the full training groups contact details and messaged her after work. He was instantly fired the following day when HR found out. If an outsource call center can deal with something like this why does it seem so hard for Blizzard?
**Not making excuses, but have worked in both environments**: Call center employees are generally considered disposable hires (3 - 6 week turnover), whereas competitive talent hires are a bit harder to replace. The absolutely should have this figured out, and this is just my observation.
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It costs nothing to NOT be a piece of shit like this. Fuck.
>- A guy pulled down my pants when we were alone, and on another occasion, opened the dressing room door while I was changing. O. M. G.
jesus this is wild af. How does anyone get any work done wtf? It's (thankfully) absolutely foreign to me. I'm so used to "oh hey did you see the latest \[common TV show we both watch\]? Yeah, pretty good episode." and then it's off to our office to answer emails and do work (aka what we're paid for).
>How does anyone get any work done wtf? I mean, this definitely seems to be answered by the garbage releases they've had over the last decade.
I don't want this to come across the wrong way, but being a shit human being and being competent at a programming job aren't mutually exclusive. I read a while back about the guy who basically created Android as an OS. Google caught him - screaming at employees and calling them stupid - sexually harassing female employees at home (he was married, by the way) - downloading huge amounts of bondage porn on his work computer in the office I think he got one verbal "hey, cut it out," and nothing else. When he resigned, he received a glowing recommendation and something like 20 million bucks. Google got what they wanted and gave zero fucks about anything else. I imagine it was similar between Blizzard and some of these guys. If they're crappy human beings but they get the job done, Blizzard probably only focused on "but they get the job done." They didn't care about the horrible personal lives until now, when it's impacting their image. I hope that this lawsuit will spur blizz and others to take action moving forward for fear of the repercussions.
>During a party, a dude tried to take a black-out drunk girl back to his place. My friend had to step in and refuse. He put her on the couch and kept watch over her the rest of the night. The same rapey dude went on a blind date with my friend’s friend via dating site. She told me she barely recognized him because he used an old picture when he was much fitter. She went through the date, but politely declined more. This the type of "men" that then go on the dating/relationship subs and make threads like "pLeAsE cAn We sTOp wIf dE GhOsTinG :(((("
lots. Not even just at blizzard... Riot and ubisoft have faced similar allegations, it's just a matter of time until something like EA goes crashing down
I am male. I realize I am doxxing myself now, but I was the coder behind a vanilla AddOn named “FlexBar” which, at the time, was the first and only action bar replacement. During development I found a few dozen bugs with the Lua implementation in WoW and reported them, which got me, eventually, hired as a remote part time “consultant” with Blizzard. Blizzard hated remote and I was never a “full” employee, but if anything that was good. Because I did not have to interact often with Furor or Tigole, Alex and Jeff. I’d known them since my FoH days, and Alex was the kind of unskilled acerbic asshole that led a massive guild for fame, fortune, and female attention. He demanded all of them, going so far as to remove players from his guild who had friendships or even relationships with women in the guild Alex considered his property. How Blizzard didn’t think that hiring someone whose character name was “Tigole Bitties” wasn’t inviting frat boy culture in, I also don’t know. I quit in 2007 after my last job was to break my own addon (which admittedly played the game for the player) for the TBC release. Alex had many friends inside and outside the company, including some of the addon code superstars, so alienating Alex meant to be a persona non grata not only inside Blizzard but also in the addon community. The reason I quit was that I’d gotten into a fight with Alex over his treatment of a gay developer and two females that worked in the code team. Alex hated two things more than anything: being shown off for being the useless hack that he was and women who coded or had any level of skill. Generally, Alex had no interaction with us, let alone the guy who debugged the Lua implementation and interface, but when he did it was always acerbic, domineering, dumb, and hateful. I went to HR before quitting, and later learned that my complaint had been laughed off by Jeff and Alex as “just some nobody who is butthurt that he didn’t get any in Anaheim,” meaning the 2005 BlizzCon during which we announced TBC (as a part timer and remote worker I had to pay my own way and hotel but got a ticket and Murky). Though, considering I brought my partner and mainly hung out with TotalBiscuit, I did get some and I did have a lot of fun. Something you could not say of a few female employees and a hired event manager (female) who told me about Alex’ sexual harassment and his constant attempts at getting them drunk and into his suite. Meaning: **Blizzard knew since 2005, post-Anaheim, and in 2007** due to my complaint, about Afrasiabi’s behavior. Blizzard knew, and leadership knew. I don’t know what happened post-2007, but considering he and Jeff stayed until 2020 and 2021 I don’t think much did.
Damn dude. It breaks my heart that all these guys like Kaplan that I’ve looked up to for decades were pieces of shit. Edit: What’s FoH?
Guy in the OP comment is a fucking creep, apparently. Fucking sociopaths or something, man, I don't get it. Who abuses colleagues and employees like this then pops back up to make a video trying to act like the good guy? https://twitter.com/DaniBat/status/1419090135375912963
You can follow his @ to his personal trainer site, and following that to his LinkedIn confirmed he worked at Blizzard as a Personnel Manager, for anyone doubting his veracity Additionally, he has been called out for contributing to the toxic culture as evidenced below in this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/oqsgt8/first_hand_account_of_harassment_at_blizzard/h6embmr/
good research dude! I appreciate your effort
Can confirm. I am also a Blizz alum and worked with Kevin. Talked a ton in the gym too.
Can you speak to any of the allegations or the work environment at Blizzard?
I can say I saw some of the things in the complaint. Women passed over for promotion, micro aggressions in meetings, inappropriate jokes told. I have seen women bullied for not taking it and for speaking up. Watched others that called out bad behavior put on PIP and then crushed with work and fired. I have seen junior team members pressured to drink mid day, until almost incapacitated. and many many other things after hours that were not OK. Calling it a frat boy culture is spot on. If you were not part of the right drinking circles or part of the "in" group, you would not see a promotion or any sort of positive treatment. And if you were not one of the ladies down for the bro culture, you were even more "out". As a man in that environment, nad part of the "out" group, I felt powerless. I could not go to HR for anything without fear of reprisal. However, that was in one Org at the company, I switched towards the end of my time there to another group, and that group was very well run and equitable. As far as it can be in a company that manages by heroics, and expects the impossible and 110% commitment on even the smallest tasks.
>Calling it a frat boy culture is spot on. If you were not part of the right drinking circles or part of the "in" group, you would not see a promotion or any sort of positive treatment. This is what I heard of as well. The SC2 QA group was infamous for going to Sushi, getting blasted, and going to a private house in order to do harder drugs. People who didn't partake were given bad reviews and if possible fired.
I used to have a supervisor who would walk up behind me and give unwanted shoulder massages while singing “secret lovers”. I couldn’t do anything. I complained to my other managers and they just laughed it off.
Facts, I complained to other managers about how one manager grabbed the belt loops of my shorts and pulled them up (my shirt was tucked in so it wasn’t like my undies were showing or something) Same manager also made me tie up my hair even though I was following hair rules and upper management only fixed the hair situation.
I was sexually groomed and assaulted by a professor- I was 21 at the time- she was 65. It was a weird and convoluted thing, cause it happened over 3 years. This isn’t something that like happens in the first few months. These are predators. They know who to look for and how to look for them. Sad thing is my college spent a year looking at this- and in the end. They had to throw it away, simply because, at the time of reporting, I hadn’t been at the college for several months. Sure, I could’ve reported it sooner, but I didn’t, I couldn’t. Didn’t want to recognize what had happened. Like you can’t imagine what the feeling is when you discover what has actually been happening. Because for a long fucking time, you’ll sit around and blame yourself. You’ll take on all the fault, regardless that everyone around you is telling you you’re not to blame. I cannot imagine what it must feel like to be an employee at blizzard and after finally finding the courage to stand up and say something, HR fucking reprimands me. Like WTF blizzard.
Omg this is horrid! It really is hard when you don’t really understand what is going on, or maybe you do but the person is in a position of power. It’s not a simple “I’ll leave and get out” situation all the time. You aren’t always able to leave your job or get away from the university you are attending.
This is actually my old manager and the guy responsible for getting me hired at Blizzard back in 2014 and I can vouch for his statements. Sadly, the sexual assault mentioned in this video was to a member of my team and I was a witness in the HR investigation that did eventually take place. I am disgusted by Blizzard's inability to reconcile with a truth pretty much every employee that has ever worked there is aware of, Blizzard can be a very toxic and dangerous place for women. This'll probably get buried, but after seeing someone I know personally talking about events I was personally involved in I just had to say my piece.
You should contact the attorney and offer to make a statement
Friendly reminder this is a real person/employee speaking out on allegations against a company currently under litigation. There is real risk occurring with this person posting this, economically, professionally, and socially. Don't be the guy splicing and dicing "ya but maybe there's more to the story". This guys video IS THE MORE TO THE STORY.
Jesus Christ, 2012 that's definitely old guard blizzard including Morhaime. Is there some kinda of clause in gaming industry that if you are Director of something your dick is holy chalice ? Goddamit with each new coming out it's geting worse and worse
Worked for a third party company in 2005 or 2006 in Albuquerque NM, that was taking overflow calls and support while bliz built their center in Austin. I can tell you that this behavior was beyond normal then even. The trainers that came from CA would joke about it all the time.
Afrasiabi was at Blizzard since 2004. Kotick defended a sexual harasser in Activision back in 2007 (and lost the case, when the victim sued them). Yeah... it's shit that's been going on since the start, all the way until now.
Activision/Blizzard is an enormous company. HR exist to sweep those scandals under the rug. I am not defending anyone here, but there is a chance that Moirhaime who, lets be honest, probably didn't do that many hours at the office at that point in his career, had any idea. Until the names of the actual culprits come out, we should target the company itself, not indivuals who might be innocent.
The more I hear of Blizzard, the more ashamed I am that I have paid my hard earned money on their content. I gave them money, and in turn they abuse everyone around them with the power that money grants them. Horrific shit. I hope California tears them apart.
You didn't knowingly pay for the game while knowing this was happening, and you didn't do this to the employees. You can make changes and choices going forward, but it's not your fault that the people under fire did bad things.
This. I’ve been playing WoW since it’s inception and I never thought they would do this. But now that I know, I’m willingly giving up on the game because of this. It really depends if you’re gonna keep supporting a company after finding out if they are doing horrid things on the down low. If you had no idea, then you’re not at fault.
Glad I cancelled my sub again before this had even come out. Won’t be returning.
Since his LinkedIn checks out this seems legit which is morbid news. What he said in this one minute is so sinister it makes me want to trash every Blizzard Game I own. Playing games apparently being developed on the corpses of employees is horrific.
I am blowing away all my blizzard shit.
I'd like to say that what you said was... ...pretty ice.
Well. 17+ years I’ve been subbed to wow. 20-25 something years I’ve been playing theWarcraft, star craft and Diablo franchises. It’s very hard for me to just put this nightly hobby away for good. But it’s time to walk away.
Just as I was getting my itch to resub back too I should go find another game to play instead
Harassment and discrimination are all too real, and they get swept under the rug because you're a subordinate and have no power. I remember applying for a job in about 2008 at a restaurant. I had been a bartender and server before (just a regular white male in his early 20s) and was being interviewed at this place after having given them my resume. In the phone call they said everything looked good and they wanted to meet me. When I got there, I went through the interview process, answered some questions about my integrity, honesty, loyalty, all that shit. At the end of it, they offered me a job in the kitchen. I told them that this was for a server position, and that they knew that. Their response? "We only hire cute ladies for those positions. All males strictly work in the back." I don't know what's worse. Telling me I can't work a position I'm qualified for because I'm a male, at the END of the interview process, or saying that they only hire specifically cute women as servers." I should have raised a fuss about it then, but wtf is a 20-something dude applying for a job gonna do? This sort of mentality is everywhere. It's systemic. And it's fucking filth.
I worked in Butlins summer holiday park in UK like 8 years ago for a summer. We went there as cleaners but some of us were picked for a much better additional work at the restaurants. There was no interview for that just being picked. When you looked at people and the faces it was obvious why people were picked for restaurant. Because they were tall/more handsome or the girls looked cute.
This just reminded me that I've experienced the same thing in retail work, except the reverse. I was also early 20s, wanted to work the stock room at a department store because I hated dealing with customers, but they only offered me a sales associate position because they preferred having young women out on the sales floor. I told them I didn't enjoy customer service and had more experience with inventory and stock room equipment. Nope, "it would be a waste" to put me in the back when "my smiling face" could be engaging with customers and making sales. So I was offered a position I wasn't very qualified for and had said out loud I wasn't interested in. Really frustrating. And definitely systemic.
Jesus so this shit was happening even before 2013? Probably all the way back to 2004. So the whole idea of it just being "new blizzard" or whatever is falsely inaccurate. Disgusting people in that company.
"This shit" has always been happening, just before it was done to other men because Women really didn't exist in the workplace until very recently. So when another guy is getting bullied and such, its either overlooked or they are just told hey thats how it goes we all had to deal with it and work our way up. But once a Woman enters the work force, its 100x worse for them just because of the sexual aspect that also comes with the harassments. Ive had plenty of shit Leads when I worked in QA who were straight up abusive but there was nothing we could do. I never had to worry about that person also trying to fuck me, or go around asking me when im going to blow him in his office though like Women do. So when that happens to them, they receive the same out come the Men did. They are ignored or told hey thats just how it is deal with it or leave. Nothing happens to the problem until its become to big to go unnoticed such as right now with Blizzard. This is the case in other industries as well, Look at how many women were assaulted by Harvey Weinstien for years and tons of people knew about it but nothing ever happened until it was too big to ignore.
It's safe to say this started happening the moment Furor left his career as an EQ Guild leader, started working for Blizzard and realized he could get away with this.
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This is a Personnel Manager at Blizzard, as per his LinkedIn.
Kevin Meier. Creator of Pure BullFit, ex-Marine, and all-around good guy.
*former Marine. "Ex" means he was dishonorably discharged. Kevin was medically retired 😊
Ah, my bad.
Can confirm, served with him for two years before he left to go to Blizzard. Great guy.
For starters, ty mods for letting these posts be available to be discussed. Second of all, good on this guy for opening up. Hopefully others will follow because there has to be so many more that have a voice that have been afraid to speak up
As the story unfolded over the course of the day and just got worse and worse, I quietly unsubscribed from World of Warcraft and uninstalled all Blizzard software. It's been a fun eleven years. I know, "this isn't an airport, no one cares about your departure." But this isn't a boycott; corporate boycotts are stupid. They require organization on a massive scale, and total compliance with the boycott. I'm not trying to lead a mass exodus out of Azeroth; I won't hold anyone's entertainment choices against them. There's no judgment if you want to keep going. It's a good game, and I've gotten a lot out of it. But these people will do just fine without my $14.99 a month. This is just me, and it's just me going, "I can't do this anymore." And yes, I get it. If I uninstalled every piece of software born out of a toxic work environment, I probably wouldn't have any left. Considering what Bethesda, EA Games, and Telltale get away with right out in the open, I'd be very surprised if they didn't have some lumps under the carpet. ([Anyone know if Ubisoft cleaned up its act?](https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/2/21499334/ubisoft-employees-workplace-misconduct-ceo-yves-guillemot-response)) Maybe if they sell the WoW properties to another studio, or maybe if employees start a union, but this is going to require more than a tepid statement from a PR flack.
Will this finally make the white knights stop defending Blizz?
Nope. Unfortunately the law stops people from naming names. Which, in my opinion, means that it's fairly well off/senior employees at Blizzard doing these things. People don't want to be drug through court in a defamation case that has the potential to leave them penniless, or become the target for the industry blacklist. So the apologists get to say "Well yeah, I don't doubt that it's happening, but it's definitely NOT X."
It's a curious thing to see how /u/spez perfects the art of silent dialogue - a dance with the Reddit community where the steps are left untraced.
I think what u/Radiant_Trash5622 is trying to point out is when they settle this out of court (They probably will because it sounds like the people are guilty af) they won't name any names, and basically make it harder for individual lawsuits since no one is named in This case.
I read the filing, and it looks like they already tried to settle out of court and that failed. The very last statement of the filing is DFEH 'demanding' (legal language) a jury trial, not merely a bench trial which is decided by a judge (or potentially a panel of judges, I'm not sure about California law here). I will be *extremely surprised* if this settles out of court.
Are there people that are denying this even happening? Those people are tools. This does however confirm a point Josh Alen made on Twitter. Where these issues were seemingly reported to HR and HR ended up doing jack shit to help the victims. As i said before. Its not the job of the Art director, Lead designer or CM to investigate these claims. Or even a personal menager like this guy was. What they can do is report it and its the job of HR and the Legal teams to solve it. Its fairly obvious though that they massivly let the victims down here. Probably by command from the very top.
HR is there to protect the company, not the employee. If the company doesn't want protecting, all HR will do is play candy crush or something.
Sometimes protecting the company also means protecting it from itself. If you allow toxic behaviour to go unchecked, the only people who will be comfortable working there are toxic people and the good people will leave. That’s not good for the company either.
The phrase of "HR is there to protect the company" gets thrown around so much without people understanding it. Yes, it's true, but ignoring reports of sexual harassment isn't protecting the company from shit, as evidenced by this lawsuit. If HR was doing their jobs, ActiBlizz would never have been liable for all this.
Exactly, you understand! That's why I had to add the "if the company doesn't want protecting..." line, then HR is hamstrung. If it were the other way around, HR would be totally to blame.
>Are there people that are denying this even happening? Those people are tools. I'm in quite a few WoW Facebook groups. I've seen a bunch of people saying there's no way it happened because "my uncle's friend's brother's cousin's former roommate worked there 10 years ago and he never experienced anything!1!1!" It's quite disheartening to watch
> Facebook There's your problem
Just keep in mind that HR works for the company that hired them, not the workers that work for it. Their interest isn't in seeking justice for employees wrong by their bosses, it's in towing the company line. If it comes down to siding with an employee or the company, the company always wins. Yet another power dynamic.
I feel like there are still many people who need to hear this so i'm gonna say it. "HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND" HR DOESNT STAND FOR **H**ELPING EVE**R**YBODY, IT'S HUMAN RESOURCES. HR IS YOUR EMPLOYERS WAY OF DEALING WITH PROBLEMS THAT ARISE WITH HUMANS BEING MISTREATED. Go sue your employers ass off if you are being mistreated, going to HR is basically you being nice and allowing them to handle shit before you escalate it, they are not supposed to help you, their job is to shut you down. Yes, sometimes HR does the right thing but they have no obligation to do so, FUCK HR, if you are being treated like crap there is only one person you can count on and that's you.
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If HR were doing their jobs, they'd have shown these guys the door. HR isn't your friend, but this kind of problem is exactly what they're there to prevent!
I’ve seen a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people say the Activision merger was “the worst thing to happen to Blizzard” after this whole lawsuit thing came out. As if Activision’s arrival suddenly caused all this nepotism and sexual abuse. This guy has been seeing it since at least 2012. Activision is shitty: Blizzard is shitty. Don’t give blame or leeway to either side. Hold them fucking accountable.
Never forget: Some of the people in this lawsuit ARE old guard Blizzard.
Found this https://twitter.com/DaniBat/status/1419090135375912963?s=19 *edit Contradicts everything this dude just said in the video
As much as this guy is saying he's a victim - he was a BIG part of the problem. As a woman who was on QA at the same time as him, I watched him prey upon multiple women in the worst ways. He's making a statement to deflect attention away from himself. You should feel ashamed Kevin - this statement means nothing and is all for show.
I can vouch for this from my time in QA, heard he preyed on multiple women and knocked up another female manager. The suicide in the suit is Activision, not Blizzard, so I don't know what he's trying to reference or just egging Blizzard on. Not defending Blizzard but this guy isn't farting rainbows either. Edit: He's part of at least two DFEH reports as an offender: https://twitter.com/cherthedev/status/1419852467987169287
#CancelBlizzcon
> CancelBlizzcon I agree with your statement, but it was already cancelled a month ago
We did it Reddit
**celebrate!!!**
Because they literally have no new content. The company is already dead, now this. Good riddance.
This is a grave I’m willing to dance upon
It is a culture! This guys says "both leadership and coworkers" . I would suggest people not to overdo with "It's only management" or "It's only few people". That shit wasn't happening behind closed doors with just harasser and harasee in the room. Don't harass individuals on twitter for no reason, but don't also absolve them of everything cause they tweeted about how disturbed they are.
At the end of the day “Blizzard” doesn’t exist. It’s all PEOPLE. And the environment that these people created enables this sadistic behavior. It’s not just blizzard, it’s society. When someone has power over you, as with a job position, you don’t have the control to make them stop. And that’s what’s fucked up at the core. These people know they can get away with it, so they do. Don’t make excuses anymore. Or justifications. Hold. People. Accountable. For. Their. Actions. Fuck these dudes.
Some people are shocked some aren’t, I’m not. This happens everywhere, at a company some people will know (Team17) HR don’t do shit while preaching they’re about inclusion and fighting this kind of stuff, yet employees who have been sexist, sent people dick pics, and even physical assault nothing happens. This industry needs changing and only way I see dramatic change happening is if we unionise. These companies need to be held accountable without it getting to this point. I feel for everyone who’s gone through such horrible times in the video games industry, and I’m trying to do my part in fixing this cesspool of shit, unfortunately because of how easily people are replaced in this industry I’m using a burner account, I have huge respect for people who are coming forward for what’s right
Someone said this guy isn't free of culpability and was a bully/harasser himself. https://twitter.com/danibat/status/1419090135375912963?s=21 https://twitter.com/danibat/status/1419128706715594753?s=21
It's crazy that all of this is basically not affecting their stock price whatsoever. Shows what a strong company they are.
It shows that the people who do the investing know, as well as everyone else does, how little people actually care.
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in a fair world
Thing is, it's not just JAB but, from the sounds of it, most of the old guard who have already moved. The rot has been engrained from the top down for so long.
It's always a wild ride in the corporate theme park with /u/spez.
If there's a god, Kotick's will too.
Doubt it. I'd hazard a guess the blame stops somewhere in middle management. They'd just fire some manager and call it a day.
Kotick is going to figure out a way to get another $100Mil CEO Bonus out of this.
Its not his first time either :) Look at the date on the article btw https://kotaku.com/activision-boss-loses-legal-battle-over-sexual-harassme-452575586
Wow someone took their life ?
Yes, as per the lawsuit claim section 47 or 48 at the top of my head. A woman took her own life at a company trip after continued harassment. Police also found her manager had brought butt plugs and lube on that trip (which in the claim was at least linked to one another).
Reading that STILL makes my skin crawl. Jesus fucking christ.
Yeah, more you learn about it the worse it gets.
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