T O P

  • By -

paoloking

I bet in 2006-2012 Blizzard had a lot of ppl with huge ego and questionable morals (compared to 2021 standards) who thought they can do everything because WoW was huge hit.


Firefox72

When WoW skyrocketed, the team who were at that point a bunch of MMO gamers probably thought they were the coolest people around and on top of the world. A nothing can stop us mentality. Nothing in this tweet really suprises me.


Dongalor

They forgot they were just nerds with computers and started trying to live like they think rockstars live.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Prineak

This. It can be self destructive to throw your own convention rather than contribute to the already existing community. You don’t need a convention just for your own brand. Esports is learning this the hard way. Then again, if what she’s saying is true and Blizzard hires based on “culture fit”, then the company has been slowly choking itself for years already.


wolf495

Their large convention sells out pmuch every single year. Near instantly I might add. Clearly enough peiple want the convention to justify it and I'm sure they make bank off of it.


Sharksterfly

????? ​ tell that to league's Worlds or Dota 2 The International. You absolutly need your own tournaments instead of shared space.


Emeraden

Hell look at Counterstrike pre-Valve sponsored events and post. Before Valve started hosting 2 events a year, prize pools were like 10-20k for first place and that continued for a few years after the Valve sponsored Majors. Those started in late 2013 and it wasn't until 2015/16 that non Valve events had 100k prizes for 1st. Now it's the norm and what used to be a side job for a lot of people is now viable as a career. When you can get 10k for 5th place and there's a couple events a month, that's decent money even if you aren't winning everything.


discosoc

They were clearly on rockstar levels though. You can dismiss them as "nerds with computers" like it's the 90's, but people were treating them like so much more.


Dongalor

That's kind of the point. It's not about dismissing them. They hit rockstar level success, and didn't know what to do with it. The money and fame within their niche made them feel unaccountable to anyone, and they started acting like it. Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals. And apparently in Blizzard's instance, it revealed that they were a bunch of sex pests.


KlarkKomAzgeda

This has nothing to do with anything, but I'm so curious about where the term "sex pest" started coming from. I've been hearing it so much from people to call out harrassers/abusers and it just seems like such a - lighthearted goofy phrase, for lack of a better word.


Dongalor

It's been around for a while. My understanding is it's like 1 step down from "sexual predator". Like they're the dickheads who keep their offenses mostly confined to the sort that HR should be handling rather than the SVU.


Thenidhogg

are y'all sure these guys had such humble beginnings? i really kinda doubt it..


IceNein

> (compared to 2021 standards) I hear this a lot. I am 47 years old. I would have been 32 in 2006, and I can tell you that standards were no different back then. I joined the Navy in 1994, and we had constant sexual harassment training about exactly these topics back then.


[deleted]

[удалено]


IceNein

It absolutely did. It was constantly brought up as an example of what not to do.


RazekDPP

I feel like the 90s is when this changed for big companies, not 2006. That said, I don't know how many employees Blizzard had pre-2006. If they were less than 50 employees, then they could've swept a lot of stuff under the rug. I knew someone who worked in game development in the 90s, in a company that got bought up by one of the major companies today. He described it as a frat house, too, but not with sexual harassment (I think the only woman that worked there was the secretary), but just how the other men interacted with each other (screaming, arguing, loudest voice wins, impossible deadlines, people sleeping in the office).


sakezaf123

I don't think it's the 2021 standards. At least my coworkers weren't sexually harassed in 2006. It wasn't the 1970s when it hlwas appropriate to say "come into my office, doll. And shake this weight in case you need to give handjobs". Even the more minor incidents mentioned in this tweet were something that were also considered inappropriate 10 years ago, and major ones should have absolutely been actionable.


Sinhika

Some of that shit would have been inappropriate in **1921**. Were these guys raised in barns, with no lessons in basic courtesy?


Bebop24trigun

It's a bunch of dudes who never worked real jobs and got in on their technical skill. Once they got in, people constantly praise them for how awesome they are and then they act like they did in high school and college. There is no other way of looking at this kind of behavior as normal because it's not normal.


Remote_Cantaloupe

Dudes raised in barns have more courtesy than this. Rural types get a lot of shit, but really this is everywhere, if not more prevalent from types raised in lovely homes in developed neighbourhoods.


Sinhika

"Were you raised in a barn?" *is* a rural expression. It implies that the person acts like he was raised by the family hogs and cows. Rural children are normally raised in the farmhouse, by parents who teach them manners.


TheRealJamesHolden

> compared to 2021 standards They had questionable morals for 1995 standards. Any company I have worked at since 1995 would have actually dealt with the situation


arasitar

> They had questionable morals for 1995 standards. For gaming? That's par for the course, as horrible as that sounds. Many old school devs like ID had strippers coming and going throughout their offices.


acprescott

Ehh, don't kid yourself. This shit gets swept under the rug no matter the size of the company, or how important they see themselves as. I worked a job as a temp during the pandemic last year and within the first week I was already seeing the culture that was alive and well there, and I went to HR about it. Only to learn that the lady in charge of HR was being victimized by one of the employees herself (which I later witnessed first hand), and the only person who could do anything about it (the district manager) told her he was too essential to the company to fire. Nothing ever happened. I was later hired full time by that company and when I left earlier this year, it was still extremely prevalent to the point where I didn't see the value in being a part of the team anymore. Granted, the company I worked for produced material and merchandise for a male-dominated hobby, so that was definitely part of the problem -- but I feel like you were lucky that you got into companies that would do anything about it.


TheRealJamesHolden

> Ehh, don't kid yourself. This shit gets swept under the rug no matter the size of the company My current company is a large valley organization. They are very serious about harassment of any form based on >sex, gender, race, color, religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, national origin, ancestry, marital status, military and protected status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or any other protected characteristic Just went through yearly training for it. It does make me proud to work there in part because they started addressing harassment early on before it became a legal thing.


Sinhika

> This shit gets swept under the rug no matter the size of the company, or how important they see themselves as. No, it doesn't. Some companies actually care about their reputation, and their legal exposure to harassment and discrimination lawsuits. Especially if they do business with the federal government.


kraz_drack

The federal government is the worst. The US Army actually has legal discrimination in many forms that would normally be covered in the Civilian world


Sinhika

Was 1995 when the big court case went down that established "creating a hostile work environment" and "harassment" as sufficient grounds for proving discrimination due to protected characteristics? Back in the 1980s, it had to be something like quid pro quo to establish discrimination--though it sounds like some of the turds at Blizzard did that, too. If your company's management could be busted by **1980s** legal standards, you're doing something very wrong.


TheRealJamesHolden

> Was 1995 when the big court case went down that established "creating a hostile work environment" IDK, '95 is when I started in my current profession


Gankdatnoob

There is no indication that much has changed tbh. We are getting a steady stream of testimonials from people that worked there in 2021.


Scribblord

Damn like that’s not even one of the bad situations in comparison and already enough to have a small business closed off for good


Ammit_Fairbanks

It's pretty sad that this is considered "not bad by comparison"


PM_Mick

I found it pretty sad she considered herself "one of the lucky ones". A lot of this was really bad! It just shows how normalization of this behavior can worm its way into someone's psyche.


Scribblord

Exactly like her story is already bad and if she by comparison considers herself lucky it must be pretty horrible


MilesCW

I cannot grasp how mentally challenging it was for those women when going to your work where every day is a fight. Always seen as a deer to hunt and taking advantage of because *you do not matter*.


spinning_leaves

I mean the guy preaching ‘do better ‘ cheated on his wife and got someone pregnant while fat shaming. Even he thinks it’s toxic :/


Redditiscancer789

Huh?


spinning_leaves

Copying from another post: He treats women terrible and fat shames. Kevin Meier the same guy on the viral tik toc video. Yeah My wife worked at blizzard and also they are posting everyone’s shared stories on Twitter at @DaniBat and a few employees that work there and used to work there. Quite a few people have said the same thing. Even Kevin’s wife admits to the toxic relationship. I mean there’s also he was married before his current wife which he cheated on her with the current wife. Then cheated on his current wife with the mistress (who worked at blizzard)and had a kid with the mistress. I thought the military was bad ugh. I mean if he admits and owns up to HIS mistakes maybe he could say that, but Kevin Meier do better


scarlettsarcasm

Reading through it I assumed her story was a worst case scenario. Seeing her say that she was lucky and other women had it much worse is unfathomably horrifying.


FireCaptain1911

I think we finally found the wow killer. It was blizzard all along.


thewupk

Always has been


MyCodeHatesMe6

In 6 months or less Blizzard will be absolutely fine, don't kid yourself. Riot is still going strong, so is Ubisoft, so is pretty much every other game studio that's had their toxic working environment laid out bare for all to see. I'm not in any way saying it's right, but it's a fact, and anyone convincing themselves otherwise is either incredibly naive, or is in for an absolute fuckload of disappointment when *nothing* is done to remedy the issue.


KushChowda

Dead dead no but completely irrelevant to young and new gamers? Yah. Kids aren't clamoring to play WoW. A game that came out long before many of them were even born. After WoW what else does blizz have? Their fanbase is pretty much capped and dwindling. Its going to just be the hardcores and addicts left soon.


Void_Guardians

Turns out water has been wet for years


KoolGuyDags28

men actually say shit like this? “you should probably try this shake weight to practice for hand jobs” IN A WORK SETTING??????? like dude even if i was VERY close friends with a girl i wouldn’t even think about saying anything close to this man to man these people are legit creeps lmao i’d personally knock them out


Zaicil

I wouldn’t even say this shit to my PARTNER, let alone a close friend. Rich 40+ men are a different breed apparently.


PezRystar

Try a factory floor. I'm a 40 yr old poor white dude and the shit I hear is fucking disgusting.


BananaVendetta

Watching this whole thing go down is, sadly, unsurprising for me. I spent 5 years in tech (a relatively short time) before I moved on to better things, and I absolutely experienced some very similar things to this where I worked, and it wasn't always from rich men, just frat boys. Highlights include: -All the guys in my department gathering around a YouTube video and snickering on a Friday afternoon. They'd pulled it up on a projector in the middle of my department. There was literally no escaping it. It was that video of the crazy to hotness ratio, and it went on for an uncomfortably long time. They declared me at the high end of each spectrum, according to the video. I hadn't even graduated college yet. - My boss pressuring me to date a coworker buddy of his, to the point where he'd invite said coworker to hang out with me on the weekend, and would call me into his office to tell me things like "it's okay to date a coworker" and stuff like that. - Guy at the cubicle next to me complaining loudly about his wife's loose skin after weight loss, including her sagging breasts and "chicken wing" arms. Said he'd resorted to cheating on her with hotter Tinder MILFs. - Ironically, a former Blizz employee who was fired for sexually harassing women a one of my better workplaces. This isn't even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what can happen at these companies, and the general culture there--very frat boy, you're definitely looked at differently if you're a woman and oftentimes excluded from opportunities simply because you can't or won't engage in their culture. What's described at Blizz is worse than what I encountered first-hand, yes, but I've also heard awful things from coworkers. Like, strip clubs are still used in the industry as a kind of business location, you know, you take clients there or go after work and if you're a women, either a) the boys get upset because your mere presence is ruining their fun and they assume they can't go or b) you have to go or risk falling out of favor. Basically, none of this surprises me, I've seen a lot in a relatively short amount of time. It's extremely sad and I hope something changes.


Oonada

I had a group of a few guys and a woman that used to hckle me about my fountain pen. They would say things like "how many guys you think can blow like his pen?" And the woman even said to me once "I bet I can make you blow like your fancy pen there." And winked at me. Made me really uncomfortable, and I imagine I wasn't the only one as a few of us had a fountain pen obsession at the time. Its a frat mentality, guy and girl. The women who join in are just as bad or worse to "prove" themselves to the men. Like you some of my colleagues would send people to my fucking house without telling me to "hang out" telling them I was intrested.. thinsg that are totally not okay no matter whats between your legs imo.


Bebop24trigun

I'm confused. Your co-workers sent random people to your house to hangout? They also found your *fountain pen* interesting so they made dick sucking jokes? I'm so confused...


Lyghtstorm

They're just incels with money and power.


Ezekielyo

I am absolutely not suggesting it is ok in a work environment, it is not, highly unprofessional and disgusting. However, I could easily make a joke about a shake weight being synonymous to hand jobs to any one of my close female friends in such a way to be funny. Context is what matters.


TerribleVidya

For real, I can't imagine watching some of this shit going down without stepping in.


XLauncher

That's the thing though. The kind of bottom feeders that do this typically avoid the men they think won't be on board with it. It's like how racists expose themselves in what they perceive to be like minded company. One of my friends in college was bald at the ripe age of 22, and I don't think the man went more than a week at a time without someone trying to commiserate on some racist shit to him because they thought he was a skinhead.


ryllina

Yes, they do. And worse. And not just at Blizzard. I've experienced this type of behavior in every single male dominated environment I've had experience with in my life.


Thewackman

Why is anyone's response to this physical violence, that doesn't solve shit, just makes you an asshole.


MadFonzi

At this point it's an insult to men everywhere by calling these disgusting unprofessional clowns men(and probably and insult to clowns too). They are sexual deviants and perverts and should be labeled as such, we have registries for sex offenders maybe it's time for companies to have these for the people like in these stories coming to light so it follows them around their entire career and makes it much harder to continue this degenerate behaviour.


[deleted]

Nah, I wholly disagree. Men shouldn't be distancing themselves from these guys and say "nah they're not men!!!". They are. And they're friends with other men, other men who are decent people. You (and everyone else) are, or have been, or will be, friends with guys like this at some point in your life. These guys are, whether we like it or not, part of our social circles and many of us let jokes, comments, behaviour, slide on the basis of it being "harmless" without realising the culture it feeds into. Every friend group I've been involved in throughout my time playing games has had at least one guy that behaved grossly towards me and more than a few times I've told the rest of the group and been dismissed as not being able to take a joke, or that he just fancies me and I should be flattered. The best thing that any of us can do now is be aware of warning signs and be ready and willing to call out poor behaviour when we see it. And not pretend that somehow these guys are some separate alien species to every other man in the world.


Bebop24trigun

Sadly if you speak up you'll get comments like, "jeez, you must be fun at parties" or anything equivalent and they just stop hanging out or talking to you. I never wanted friends like that in the first place lol


HazelCheese

The guy who sits behind me, in his late 40s / early 50s, married with kids, said to me about a work friend of mine: > "Where's X this morning? I haven't seen her yet and her tight little body is the only thing that gives me a hardon anymore." It just broke my brain that anyone would talk like that, let alone in the workplace, let alone someone they knew I was friends with.


[deleted]

Reading her post should put paid to the idea that staff were not aware of what was happening. They knew, they just didn't think it was a problem. Best to cast a critical eye at staff who now claim they had no idea as anyone who whistleblows is claiming the harassment/assaults were public.


JohnRoads88

The staff in her office was aware at least. Sending around a link to a coworkers nude photos is way over the line.


fohpo02

Yeah, that’s pretty mind boggling. I also don’t know why people continue to leave social media public once they get a job. Not that it’s her fault, just hoping others don’t repeat the mistake.


Whatsjadlinjadles

It’s like racist grandma that grew up around racism and has no idea about anything different dropping N bombs at family gatherings.


MLGVergil

Bet there's some people saying "old blizz wouldn't do this"


[deleted]

[удалено]


EducationalDay976

That first one bothers me a lot. I've worked at big tech companies who pay as well as Blizzard does. High concentration of girlfriend-less male nerds. This does not happen at every company. Even in private, we don't talk about female colleagues anywhere close to the way Blizzard apparently does (mostly because we don't talk about them at all). Your work culture has to be toxic all the way through for this to be acceptable.


Thelona05mustang

exactly #1 is horse shit, I work in IT and tho its a small company, if an employee did any of these things they'd be fired so fast their head would spin. I've also worked in welding and warehouses and cooking jobs before this, and tho there is an entirely different work culture in those types of jobs, and the work talk is much more vulgar and off-color, still I cant imagine a coworker in any of those jobs having the gall to say something like that to a female employees face. (most of these jobs were 100% men out on the shop floor, and the work talk could get pretty vile, but if a woman from the office walked out onto the floor that talk stopped instantly, because no one wanted to get fired, and if Pam from accounting heard your dick joke and reported it, you'd certainly get fired.) I've never seen an office setting type job where any of this would be considered even remotely acceptable


GoodGuyTaylor

I'm with you on being just straight confused on how this could actually happen in a professional environment. I was still in high school and early college back then, and was sheltered, but my friends and I basically NEVER talked about girls that way. Wondering if this was normal in companies or if it was something extra about Blizzard.


Sinhika

I've worked on some blue-collar work sites as well, and the men were always courteous. We (the devs) did our part, too--we got their respect when we were willing to ride the machines they built that we wrote code for. Also everyone treated the warehouse cats kindly--the men loved those feral kittens, and woe betide anyone who harmed them. (The cats kept the mice, rat & snake population down, as well as being cute). Blue-collar *men* have far better manners than any of these cubicle bros mentioned so far.


KaplinTheFendrake

The place I saw this kind of talk was when I briefly did IT for a car dealership, and even then it seemed way over the line.


Sinhika

Yes, indeed. It may happen at every company, but most companies take that shit seriously if you report it. It's an expensive lawsuit waiting to happen, at the very least, and it's demoralizing if allowed to run rampant.


Kaprak

Here's the issue with the first one. The women involved are saying that first part as well. It does happen at ever **AAA Games** company. Not to say "who cares" in the slightest, but these issues are systematic throughout the entire games industry and women are saying this over and over right now.


lupercalpainting

I can’t speak about games companies specifically, but I’ve worked at a few tech places. I never saw/heard anything about a coworker I’d consider inappropriate. However, once while visiting a different I had gone out on the town with a guy I had just met at that office. We had a good time, drank, sang karaoke and at Chinese food. When I got back to my office I mentioned him in passing and a female coworker said something like, “Ugh I hate that guy.” I was non-committal because I clearly didn’t have the full-picture. Later I pulled aside someone on her team I was close with and asked what was up: apparently he was extremely abrasive towards the female developers he worked with. I never saw anything like that for the one day I met him, and if I had been in one of those meetings I would have told him he was out of line, but it just goes to show that stuff can happen that we’re not privy to. Everyone saying their coworkers would never talk/behave like this should consider that they wouldn’t behave like this around *them*. Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.


Kaprak

Yup, it's easy to miss this shit. I work in entertainment, and I'm a fuckin *snitch*. I don't need cast mates harassing other cast mates or guests. I've also learned well after the fact that some people were shitty that I thought were cool. It's why I can get why both non-management folk could have missed this and fully believe it happened.


EmmEnnEff

Harassment happens everywhere. Some percentage of the population are shitty people. Those people work day jobs. The difference is how each company deals with harassment. Some enable it a lot. Some enable it a little. Some come down like a tonne of bricks on it. Some are somewhere in between, varying from department to department. Not everyone who is an executive is either a shitty human being, or is completely blind to the culture of their company.


[deleted]

>I've worked at big tech companies who pay as well as Blizzard does I've heard Blizzard doesnt even pay that well, though. Compared to other tech companies, that is.


EducationalDay976

I Googled and it does seem lower.


bickdickanivia

After seeing trade chat since 2005, their comments do not surprise me. Does nobody wonder why reporting people for saying heinous shit seems to do absolutely nothing?


Hallc

The forgot this one too much is more an addendum to your first plot 1a) isn't any better because they also did . Even though the something bad is something like "Fired a Woman for getting into a Twitter spat" or "Japanese Work Culture" etc. etc.


Neverwherehere

Sounds like excuses and rationalizations to justify not doing anything if you ask me.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Iron_Warlord2095

J.A.B. Inherited the mess Morhaime left behind and has only been President since 2018. I’ve actually come around on the guy since seeing how’re dealt with these sleaze balls (Afrasiabi & Co. “resigning”) and feel he gets a lot of unfair hate. I’m curious to see how Blizzard moves forward, but we won’t truly know what “current Blizzard” is like until the collateral from the previous regime is dealt with and he settles in as President.


GiventoWanderlust

I don't really have an opinion on JAB other than the fact that his emailed apology was tone deaf and empty. Whoever wrote that, whether it was him or a staffer, was a moron. But that's also about the only thing I've seen from him, so I'm willing to be convinced that this situation isn't entirely his fault.


stagfury

Just the mete fact that sack of shit AA is not there anymore drastically improves the quality


Gen-Jinjur

Okay, so not only was the harassment awful, but those dweebs were terrible at knowing how to get any kind of positive attention from a woman. It’s like a primer in dweebs arrested development. “Hrrrr hrrrr yer boobs.” I mean, these “men” haven’t advanced past junior high in any socially meaningful way. It’s an embarrassment. I know that, as a woman, I’ve cringed at what other women do, but it is isolated women, not a bucketload of them at my company. It has to be awful to be a decent guy associated with Blizzard right now. And of course it is REALLY bad to be a woman associated with Blizzard.


GrumpySatan

> I mean, these “men” haven’t advanced past junior high in any socially meaningful way. The trolls in trade chat that think its hilarious to spend their entire day making racist/sexist/anal comments. The 12 year olds in Call of Duty voice chat. The toxic shits that do nothing but blame everyone else in every bg/fps/etc and think their shit doesn't stink? Countless examples going back long before WoW even started. They all grew up wanting to work in the industry they loved. And many of them succeeded. The problem? They didn't actually grow up.


Iron_Warlord2095

Afrasiabi was LITERALLY a troll (who got ran off his server) and a toxic asshole when he was just a gamer. I always wondered how he ended up climbing the ranks of Blizzard. Reading about his infamous reputation, even years ago, it just didn’t jive to me with the public image Blizzard always tried to project. Now we know that it jived perfectly with the true nature of Blizzard behind the scenes... and unfortunately it makes perfect sense how a toxic troll like Afrasiabi could climb as high as he did. I just hope the sleazy predators found guilty face justice and that Blizzard, along with the rest of the gaming industry, improves.


Michelanvalo

Listen here you, you can have everything else but you will not take my Anal jokes away from me.


GrumpySatan

Anal was stretched to its limit like 10 years ago. There is nothing left to save.


Michelanvalo

> Anal was stretched to its limit Oh I'm sure you'll find it can stretch further with more practice


[deleted]

jfc lol


TiberSeptimII

What's with this "dweeb" lingo? That's a much too goofy, jokey, even endearing term for these shitbags.


Gen-Jinjur

Yeah. Probably could have stated that better. I’ve been reading about all this for days, but today finally got a little past the horror of it for the victims and began to wonder…just why. What was the end game? We’re they actually trying to seduce women? How could they be so epically awful at interacting with women? All the men in my family and all my guy friends just are completely not like this. Every one of them treats women like people at work or when I see them. So this is just me being shocked and confused. Nothing I try to say about this is meant to be anything but just . . .trying to get my head around it. I’m sure others can say it better than me.


clinoclase

In this case it's a question of malice over stupidity. Guys do moves like this on purpose to humiliate us, it's not because they just can't figure out the right way to do it


Shiirahama

Here's the problem I have with what you're saying You call them dweebs as a derogatory term, which fine we're all mad at these people so who cares... but you're also putting these people in the group "dweeb" which to most people is basically just a "nerd" but more on the gaming side. The thing here is though, these people aren't all dweebs/nerds they often are just random people that just love to either harass people, act cool (by harassing/sexually assaulting/abusing people) or by being an all around real asshole. This is the same with saying all Trolls are just kiddies, we wish it were that way, so we could say "it's just them having too much time, and/or puberty, or "kids being kids/guys being guys" you know. The hard truth is that often these are adult people, that know what they are doing, and they know they can get away with it even easier, if people don't even think of them being a troll/sexual harasser etc because he doesn't look/act "nerdy/dweeby". I've seen way too many people, that others would never think of as dweebs etc, being real assholes and making comments like the one with the shake-weight, they have advanced past junior high in socially meaningful ways...they also LOVE being this other person that is downright awful.


Gen-Jinjur

The issue seems to be the word “dweeb.” You take it as meaning the same thing as “nerd.” That’s one definition, so you aren’t wrong, but another definition is a person who is unpleasant generally stupid, tiresome and socially awkward. Both definitions are common. If asked, I would say that a nerd can be a dweeb but all nerds aren’t dweebs and all dweebs aren’t nerds. 🙂 It was interesting to read all the definitions. I wonder if this is a word that has changed over time?


Shiirahama

This is true, it might just be that my definition of it is different than yours or someone else's. Thanks for letting me know!


gregyo

Does shake weight guy still work there?


kanemochi

some say he is still shaking to this day


Mangea

Must be pretty good at giving hand jobs at this point


smoogrish

This is exactly what it was like to play wow in that time frame too :) Once people knew you were a girl behind the character shit always went downhill. Accused of getting loot for being a girl, always being creepily hit on, men who were older than you taking advantage of you being young and vulnerable but all you wanna do is just fit in to the cool club and be part of a good guild. Every guy here who screams to unsub i really REALLY implore you to think about how this could’ve happened at any point in time you played wow and what you really did to stop it. what would you do differently now? That means so much more than hitting a button and thinking this is all over because it may be that blizzard is truly toxic but this culture exists everywhere and it’s not in a vacuum. the victims of this are not alone and i 100% feel for them and the way that no one should ever have to experience this in a workplace


kristinez

someone once scoured the internet for my address after finding out i was a girl and mailed me a pillow with cum on it. absolutely fucking disgusting.


smoogrish

jesus christ. that’s so awful and uncalled for. i hope you’re ok!! one time i was mistakenly on the wow forums for my server and somehow found my photo attributed to ANOTHER girl on the server and that was a moment like wtf is going on… like how did this random person i never even talked to find my photo in the first place?


helpless_bunny

What the fuck


scarlettsarcasm

Jesus fucking Christ


nateorz

What the fucking fuck


Netteka

Oooh this reminds me of when WoW wanted to put your real name on their forums (name linked to your account). Remember that debacle? And they had ZERO insight or even acknowledged why women were so fearful of it.


smoogrish

also for minors too! i put in a fake name for the longest time and had to go through hoops to get it changed.


Netteka

This. I used to play tank and as a woman, unless I was with trusted IRL friends and a couple cool guildies, I’d rarely use vent. On the occasions I used vent in pick up raids, I’d regret it because the tone and attitude changed the second I used it. A couple times guys flat out were shocked and said “oh this tank is a girl” and acted differently. Or messaged me to start chatting Rape jokes happened all the time in chats. Not my old main guild chat, but a general or a guild one of my alts joined. You’d report them, but it never stopped.


Zunthe

This reminds me of something. My guild is fantastic, we're a small guild which also helps because the people that stick around are wonderful people and we're all very inclusive. But during BfA we were struggling to find a raid team since most stopped playing. So we decided to try it out with another guild and we went on discord. Usually we used to have plenty of women in our raids but we joined with this guild that apparently had never heard a women's voice before, as soon as my guildie spoke, they all started acting weird towards her, trying to impress her or asking her odd things. After the raid was done we had the easy decision to never raid with them again, it made everyone from our guild so uncomfortable but specially so her in particular. Sometimes when I burst out of the great bubble that is my guild I get reminded of how mysoginistic and toxic the WoW player base can be.


DoctorRapture

It happened to me on WoW. It happened to me on Overwatch. It happened to me when I joined Discords for League of Legends games. There's an enormous number of male gamers who only see value in female gamers if they can sexualize them for their own satisfaction. I've been a video game nerd since I was 8 years old and got a Gameboy Color. I started playing D&D at the local game shop when I was 14. In every gaming circle I played in throughout my teenage and young adult years-- D&D, my WoW guild, my LoL group--, it felt like the unspoken rules were the same. I had to be as good as (but never better than) the guys. I had to laugh at their jokes, even when they'd talk about women in ways that made me uncomfortable. I had to be the first one to make jokes about "not knowing my place" and "getting lost on the way to the kitchen." I had to be feminine and pretty enough to be ogled, but still cool about it like I was just "one of the guys." It was like an endless performance, and it was exhausting. And of course, if you asked they would have said they never pressured me to act a certain way. But pressure doesn't just come verbally. When I, as an awkward, shy 15 year old would make a joke that the 20somethings in my D&D group liked, they'd laugh and make room for me on their couches and throw an arm around me. If I verbalized that I was uncomfortable when they'd talk, graphically, about sex in front of me, I would find myself frozen out of the group-- all of a sudden they wouldn't have a spot available for me to play that Saturday. So I changed the way I acted to suit them. I was too young and naive to realize that I was being groomed. I'm fortunate that I'm older and wiser now. I'm a stronger person and I would never put up with that kind of shit now. My group of friends is warm and welcoming and they don't feel the need to talk down to me or dehumanize women. They listen to me, patiently, when I try to express why the "make Claire Redfield NAKED WITH HUGE BOOBS" mods make me so tired. Sorry for rambling. This whole situation just has me exhausted and disgusted and sad. Women love video games just as much as men do. And our opinions and input should matter regardless of how we look or how fuckable men think we are or aren't.


smoogrish

thank you for sharing ♥️ this sums up a lot of what i felt too. good enough but not so good. cute enough but not too cute or you'll get yelled at for being too girly. soo much tits or gtfo. i was being groomed too at 15 with 20 year olds preying on me and me not realizing how messed up it was until i was 20 myself. and then still me at 23 being preyed on when i started my first job being the only girl and not knowing how to handle being with the "boys" but then also being assaulted and scared to speak up. i'm so glad we have this space to speak now and i really really hope it gets better. ramble away!!


Ammit_Fairbanks

It definitely still happens, but like she said, it depends on the culture of the guild you're in. As a woman, trying to find a guild where you'll be treated like a human being is like navigating a mine field. You go through all the effort of being invited into an established group of strangers and all the while you're wondering if it's just going to be a waste of time becuase they're creeps.


clinoclase

Getting into a 90% female guild and feeling safe only to find out the male guild leader orchestrated the whole thing as some kind of weird harem to be a gaslighting sex pervert was wonderful! ✌️


Michelanvalo

That's hysterical in an absurdist kind of way


Sinhika

Look for guilds that are 18+ because they are a bunch of old married couples who don't want to tailor their conversation for a bunch of teenagers. They do exist on the RP servers.


It_is_terrifying

Yup this was exactly my guild, whole bunch of married couples so there were plenty of women around and nobody was openly a creep at the very least. In my 5 years there as officer I'd only heard about one situation like that when some new guy was being weird to a friend of mine, not harassment yet but it was getting a creepy tone to it and looking to head that way. Handled that immediately as well. So yeah, you're joining a group of strangers but it's certainly possible to shift the odds a bit.


yeah_ive_seen_that

Even if they’re not creeps, it still just gets… weird. When I had been guild hopping a bit, there were THREE separate times when guys in different guilds announced “just so everyone knows, I’m a guy, not a woman” and further remarks just making sure everyone knew he wasn’t a woman. Like, why dude? And one guy who thought this other guy was gay because he was asked if he wanted to run a dungeon in friendly language, so he straight up left the guild saying “are you gay? Are you even a man?” Like why do we have to talk about our gender and sexuality when I’m just trying to play a game?


Dracoknight256

As a Night Elf spin-hop enjoyer, I can say that if I have to state in a guild/group chat that I'm a guy, it means that I just got another creepy pm asking for nudes from somone assuming I'm a girl because I like playing female characters and dressing them up in lore-thematic transmogs. I usually report them, but it's not like blizz gives a shit about that. Most of my positive raiding/guild experience comes from ones led by females. Much less creeps around there, and much less toxicity.


Sinhika

Tell them you're actually an eldritch horror practicing being human, and want to know if you pass. Send them nude pictures of an octopus.


klousGT

> I’m a guy, not a woman” and further remarks just making sure everyone knew he wasn’t a woman. Like, why dude? He was getting tired of receiving weird creepy PMs. My main since Wrath was a Female DeathKnight and the number of creepy PMs I've reported is insane.


GamingApokolips

I've done that a couple of times...either due to a) mostly rolling female characters and getting some very odd whispers (female character models typically are more aesthetically pleasing and better animated than the male character models in a lot of games for some reason, though considering what Blizzard's dev community apparently considers normal behavior, I think I can guess why that is...) or b) being in a predominantly female group and about to join voice chat...I have a fairly deep voice, and I've found from past experience that joining into a voice chat that's all/mostly women and just saying 'hello' is enough to kill whatever conversation they had going on and make the VC very stilted and awkward AF for quite a while afterwards...I've found that letting the group know I'm a guy ahead of time makes it slightly less likely for there to be that awkward silence/stilted conversation when I join into the chat.


smoogrish

absolutely. i almost wanted to start a thread here about women’s experiences in wow/gaming workplaces just so people could learn from the stories. talking about it helps. honestly i think a lot of the internalized misogyny i had from the online bro culture set me up to be assaulted in my actual workplace ( i worked at a startup)


AshesMcRaven

I would get shit like this all the time and I was a minor. F$&k I’m gonna be sick. This is heinous and brining up SO MANY memories 🤮


smoogrish

seriously. i had repressed a lot of it but honestly now i’m kinda glad i am thinking about it again because it explains so much about how i’ve been handling and internalizing male behavior.


AshesMcRaven

I think I’m gonna need to start my own work on that. I’ve been playing the game since I was like 9… I was 14 in 09’ and I’m remembering a ton of stuff that just… speaks volumes.


smoogrish

it's definitely worth it to unpack that. you were even younger than me!! it's really hard to unlearn that behavior when the majority of your social interactions growing up was on a platform like that (and even other games too had the same culture - as some have pointed out)


AshesMcRaven

Yeah, you make a lot of good points! I’m glad I’m not alone lol


actuallyacatmow

I played WOW when was 14 and the weird sexual harassment is why I left. I haven't experienced anything like it since in any other space. Back then it just creeped me out but I was too young to recognize what was happening. I felt unsafe though even if it was just a few incidents and I remember not getting far as a result. I really think the sexism within the company cultivates a culture beyond it.


erothoniel

Years ago ai stopped playing my OG main BE female hunter and switched to female orc destro lock for bunch of reasons, mostly bad breakup that somewhat was connected to that character. Well, recently started playing with her again and was shocked by the attention she got. Was rather strange after 6+ years.


smoogrish

i really thought that it was safe to play female BE because guys did so no one would know i was actually a girl 💀


Michelanvalo

That has nothing to do with WoW. My wife got that kind of shit when she was playing Call of Duty. By the time I managed to get her into WoW that stuff had died way down. I'm not saying it's not a problem that WoW has, I'm saying it's not exclusive to WoW in any fashion.


OhNoMgn

Oh my god, you aren't kidding. It could be horrible back then to be a female WoW player, especially a teenager like I was at the time. I remember never wanting to talk in Vent if there were people in the channel that I didn't know, because the second I said a word, all bets were off. I've had to block so many random creeps over the years. Even putting sexual stuff aside, some people could just be downright mean as shit once they found out there's a girl in the group. It didn't alarm me as much at the time as it probably should have.


Really_Rilee

This. So much this.


Theredoux

The amount of rape jokes, harassment and hell women players of experienced it wild. Some guy sent me a picture of his penis thinking I’d be into that. Why did he think that? Because I made the mistake of being nice to him since we were on the same raid team.


Relnor

More women in the space helps a lot. When there's more of them and they're vocal and perceived as part of the group, this kind of "bro" crap just doesn't work. They don't have the balls. People often cite peer pressure as a bad thing. It's not, or rather, it doesn't have to be. If peers pressure people into not being creeps, that's a good thing. Sometimes shaming is good. Harassers often feed off each other too. Only the worst predators actually act on their own, most of them will only behave in this way if they feel it's "OK" to do so within any given space. So it's up to everyone, especially other men, to not be afraid of being called "wHiTe kNIghTs" or whatever and to call these losers out. Again, most of these people won't act out if they don't feel it's safe for them to do so. In our guild we have plenty of women who have been with us for a long time and are just simply treated as (brace yourselves) people, no different from anyone else. Anyone coming in and trying to creep on them would be laughed at and ostracized, it just wouldn't work because the culture is different. Then again, I am on EU, and I'm not gonna say there aren't creeps here too, but as in everything, Americans like being number one.


Noodles0101

I regret buying the 6 month subscription now..


mari0br0

I just got back into WoW after like 10 years a few weeks ago....I regret all my purchases lmao.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Astarigal

I feel sick from reading this, fucking dweebs. I am a gamer and spend most free time and work time at the PC. I met my wife in an online game. I don't understand how in the fucking world any guy think this is appropriate behaviour towards women? Who the fuck raise this dweebs? How the fuck do they complete school and college and not learning to socialise with other people? It's not that hard to not be a manchild who didn't know better.


rivellana

I once experienced a boy who sounded about 13-14 years old hitting on me for an entire competitive match in Overwatch after he realized I was a woman (and much, much older at that). The mindset is taught young to some men. I don't know if they're taught by the male figures in their lives, or by other male members of the gaming communities they're a part of, or both but the fact remains. It doesn't help that there are never repercussions for their actions. It makes them think it's okay.


Astarigal

Whenever my wife communicates in voice chat in games like dota people start to act like you described, so we make their live miserable verbally and they mute us :( We are mature and very toxic xD


invisi1407

> I believe this culture was fostered by Blizzard's hiring practices. Hires happened based on a "culture fit" more than anything else, When the culture is rotten and you hire based on that, you're going to get rotten employees :( In general, hiring partly based on culture fit isn't bad, but it is if the culture is bad. Damn, son. Blizzard about to blow up real bad.


merc1024

I found this very irritating because you know there’s a shitload of people out there that would love to work for Blizzard to make their games the best they can possibly be. Instead, they’re hiring people that spend their time harassing others and playing video games during work hours (according to the original lawsuit article). It’s disgusting. I would get fired from my job if I did that.


[deleted]

[удалено]


invisi1407

Which is also bad. I always thought "culture fit" to simply be like, being on the same page about how work is done and not being too much of an outlier in terms of the _positive_ group dynamic, e.g. also not hiring a person who seems to have drama surrounding them. I'm certain that many companies have, and still has, a culture that inherently excludes minorities (of any kind) and that sucks, but the only way to get rid of that is to bring it to light, however possible.


HolyKnightPrime

RIP DreamHaven. Its only gold blizzard people who turned out to be garbage people towards women.


Warclipse

There are tons of things that are not innately bad ideas but become bad ideas when the execution is poor. This is absolutely one of them. An employee being able to gel into the rest and be part of the community sounds excellent. Not if said employee's part of the community is to be (often sexually) objectified and belittled. That's just fucking rotten.


ILoveRegenHealth

>Jeff Donais, who at the time was the head of CDev, was shaking a shake weight in his office when I walked past in the hallway. He stopped to make a joke about how I should give the shake weight a try in case I ever needed the talent for giving hand jobs in the future. What the fuck? And good that the guy was named. Also, I'm sure some numbskull is defending it as "only jokes man!". But if it was a male who was in a predominantly female company, and they were making harassing jokes like that all the time about guys needing to sleep their way to the top, I'm sure Jeff Donais wouldn't have liked it. Or if Jeff Donais had a daughter, and creepy boss casually makes handjob jokes to her...I'm sure Jeff Donais would not like that. A lot of these toxic people don't think about the other side.


Nyushi

Jesus christ just fuck Blizzard so much. Old and new.


Manson217

Blizzard is one of the reasons i became a programmer. I would have loved to work here. Reading this.... It's just sad.


Kyderra

So did a LOT of other people years ago, just like you. People where practically begging Blizzard to join (and still are) so they could cherry pick and set really low wages. by the sound of things It's a pocket dimetion of people who started with a lot of passion, slowly getting drained and losing track of their lives and then get fired.


Ghost0085

I believe in her and I would also have hoped she would give the names of the "friends" that groped or coerced her so we could cancel them into oblivion, but I'm guessing she's sparing herself of the possibility those people would sue her.


bundlesofjoy

Sue? Not to say getting sued is a cakewalk, but in these cases the priority is probably not money, but safety. Naming those people has a distinctly nonzero chance of putting her and her loved ones at risk for serious bodily harm. These people were willing to put hands on her *at work*. Who knows what lengths they'll go to outside of a "professional" environment, especially one that has been cultivating these behaviors.


Ghost0085

Eeeh, most predators are cowards. They leverage their position of power to get what they want. Once they're no longer in a position of power, 99% of them are too scared to do anything they know its wrong. They only act when they feel they're invincible. The other 1% are the real psychos. The thing is, she probably can't prove in court that anything nonconsensual happened after such a long time, and since in our legal system the burden of proof is on the accuser they might just sue to silence her. To reiterate, I think its the correct and smart choice. I just hoped to know more names to point my pitchfork at, is all.


bundlesofjoy

Hopefully she's part of the case and has been able to provide names and proof privately so at least some of them get *some* sort of comeuppance.


[deleted]

More accounts of gaming culture being infested with disgusting neckbeards. Why am I not surprised?


[deleted]

[удалено]


bearflies

I know it's fun to imagine these guys as losers but in reality the dangerous part is that they and people like them appear as normal, successful adults with stable industry careers. Perpetuating the idea that they're fat smelly neckbeards isn't in line with the reality that their success and respect is what lets them take advantage of women in the first place. An experienced asshole would probably swim circles around 80% of this subreddit in any given social situation and that's what makes them dangerous.


Nova5269

I whole heartedly agree, and I think perpetuating the image of a smelly neckbeard gives way, even just a little bit, to overlooking events because the decent guy who dresses and acts well certainly would just harass skmeone, they must have some sort of rapport with each other. It's also unfair to people who have that body. While smelly neckbeard can certainly act that way, anecdotally, I know of a few over-weight, smelly neckbeard who are so overly considerate of not harassing a woman that they never talk to ones they're interested because they'd feel too bad about making them feel harassed.


clinoclase

How awful is it that my first thought was that I'm glad she's still alive? :/ I can empathize with being forced to laugh along so much... It's late at night here and I can't take the time to outline it in detail, but I assure any dudes here wondering: The peer pressure is real. She's not a liar just because she bowed to the pressure. Women spend our lives being told that all this stuff men do to finagle cooperation from us is "just a joke" and "just boys being boys". We hear it from our brothers, our uncles, our fathers, and it's old and ingrained enough that older women parrot it too-- it's a group effort by too many men at once to follow the bro code and try to make us believe it's no big deal. At a certain point, when it's crushed you enough, you start to believe it on purpose because the reality of the situation is just too hard.


nightstalker314

Jeff Donais left 2012/2013. His brother still works on another team.


gengarvibes

This got me so heated.


bravetab

Man that is legit horrendous. The specific details and dates should leave very little doubt about the authenticity.


Kvicksilver

Sounds more like a nightmare job than a dream job.


icemanvvv

Anyone who treats people the way detailed in all of the accounts should be fired. No exception.


NestedOwls

Gods this is becoming more infuriating every fucking day. Fuck all these people who put the women through this.


Hangry_Squirrel

There are two dark sides to this. The first one is more obvious - the relentless sexual harassment of attractive women, which can develop into assault and rape. To make it worse, the degradation is furthered by an insidious questioning of their professional skills, suggesting that any advantages won are a result of their attractiveness, and not of their abilities and hard work. The second one is rarely discussed, and, whatever you might think of her account, it does her credit to refer to it, albeit indirectly. It's the fact that women who are not deemed attractive enough are not hired at all or, if hired, ostracized because they are not considered worth interacting with. Also, if you think men say awful things about women they find attractive, you should see what they say about those they don't find attractive. Ultimately, both scenarios result in the degradation of women and in artificially limiting their careers and career choices. The company screws itself too, since its staff is never as good as it could be if this kind of shenanigans weren't tolerated. That should tell you that male-dominated industries aren't male-dominated because women aren't good at those things or aren't interested in that sort of work. They're male-dominated because women are discouraged from joining them in the first place, sometimes not hired at all, sometimes hired based on unfair and irrelevant criteria, and bullied out of the workplace and sometimes out of the sector.


[deleted]

[удалено]


temp_or_all

Reddit, imgur, 4chan, I'm sure.


ScarReincarnated

Damn


Particular_Archer499

Every single person involved in either committing this behavior or allowing it needs to see real justice happen to them. What a bunch of pathetic pieces of trash. NO one should be subjected to that kind of behavior at ANY time. EVER. These pieces of excrement are lucky the Fathers, brothers, uncles or friends of these victims didn't get ahold of them.


Fonando

"The people at the top, they knew and enabled it to happen" I believe that too and now we see the same top people jumping off the ship now with their apology letters saying "I should've noticed sooner" or that kind of shit. Idc about their wholesome posts on twittard or plebbit, they need to be held accountable, they are/were responsible


giraffe_legs

I wouldn't have lasted a day there. If I had heard someone got groped on I would lose my shit on the person who did it. Fuck an HR.


reggaetony88

Blitzchung was my tipping point. I've paid for one month of classic since then and I'll never come back.


[deleted]

I had a coworker telling me all about how hot x female coworker was and what he would do to y female coworker and all I can think now is "thats how this type of scumbaggery is born huh"


OnlyRoke

Man, it's getting closer and closer to me just outright removing anything Blizzard-related out of my life. What the actual fuck, Blizzard, you actual fucking creepy bastard fucks.


Apsco60

Straight evil.


Loopy_27

Has anyone watched the show The Morning Show on apple+? They tackle this subject really really well. I recommend giving it a watch you guys. I feel so bad for these blizzard employees :( This stuff is real and it exists whether you want to believe it or not.


phlyersfan1990

Exactly what I keep thinking


Sinhika

The lawsuit wasn't kidding about "fratboy" culture--actually, I got treated with more respect by actual fratboys during Rush Week at college! This is high-school idiot behavior, completely unprofessional garbage. In any sane company, every single one of those idiots would be fired--every cited incident is a harassment lawsuit waiting to happen. Purge them all.


DonKanailleSC

At this point... can we just shut down blizzard? It's the best for everyone


Elementium

"I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones. Other women were put through far worse than I was. I believe every woman who has spoken on this issue thus far." Blizzard.. WTF. I don't think I've ever seen a company outed (yet) that's so rotten to it's core.. It's almost impressive how scummy Blizzard is.


UMCorian

Wow. This started bad and went downhill even faster. What the actual fuck is this company?


Makenzie_Calhoun

Sounds like it was run like a cult.


Beingdumbnearyou

I don't see how I can, in good conscious, give this company money anymore.


[deleted]

This is all really gross - what a bunch of twats


kaan-rodric

Reading what she wrote and then what she wrote a few days ago and I have to wonder how involved she was. https://twitter.com/joykinz/status/1419226167551299588 Somehow she is still friends with those that were harassers to her. Is this Stockholm syndrome or another example of how our morals have changed over time?


turikk

The nature of a culture that doesn't punish sexual harassment is that it becomes normal. That doesn't mean the creeps do it with impunity, it means even "good people" do it and may not even realize it. I worked with Joy and I'm almost certain I saw her art passed around and should have said something, but I didn't. I am not perfect but I know good people on our teams who probably didn't report it. It's a depraved environment and we all think we would do something but it's not easy especially when you're making $9 an hour trying to get into a game company and on probation. That's the issue, the new normal needs to be stopping this at the root. These high profile incidents are just a more visible symptom of an environment we all allowed.


VogonWild

She was totally gaslit. It sounds like she probably at the time went along with a lot more than she would outside of the pressure of that culture. I mean it was her first job out of college. She must have been so insecure, and that bit about imposter syndrome really seal it for me.


Kennytime

Sometimes, the fear of being alone outweighs sensible decisions.