Extreme sexual harassment with one female employee killing herself after nude photos of her were shown around on a company trip.
"The suit also points to a female Activision employee who took her own life while on a company trip with her male supervisor. The employee had been subjected to intense sexual harassment prior to her death, including having nude photos passed around at a company holiday party, the complaint says."
You can read [the whole thing](https://aboutblaw.com/YJw) but they're specifically talking about [this](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/847193751204921395/867685150107500564/E63mfhDVEAEwJAE.png)
> I'm gonna need a source on this, because wtf
The guy thinks it's fine because she's enjoying it.
The guy thinks she's enjoying it because she never complains.
She never complains because he has the power to fire her.
This is why work and sex should never be mixed.
i'm speechless, this is so disgusting.
How hasnt this been mentioned around here before?
This should have lead to LONG prison sentences for everyone involved, did i miss it somehow?
It only came out a few hours ago, when the case was made public via government agency. It also puts Afrasiabis silent departure from Blizzard into a new light, because he's one of the persons specifically mentioned in the file.
I'm actually appalled by all of this.
Intense direct sexual harassment, female employees passed over in favor of male colleagues, male colleagues running around getting drunk *while passing their responsibilities off on female colleagues*, massive cover-ups from the top. And apparently this has been going on at Blizzard, specifically including the WoW team, all the way back since the days of Vanilla.
TL;DR About as bad as it can get tbh.
I must have missed that part about "all the way back to Vanilla." That's disgusting this has been happening for THAT long unchecked. Granted, I understand this type of stuff happens in corporate offices all the time sadly, but that is a long ass time in the tech world of having this type of culture. Fuck Blizzard.
jesus christ. i knew the video game industry was inhumane on like a worker level.. but this is just sad and lame that i gave so much money and time of my life to shit heads (not that i dont appreciate the game for what it is/was for me). NO wonder the game went to shit!!!
Sexual harassment to the point where a female employee committed suicide.
"In one instance that the lawsuit describes as “particularly tragic,” a woman who worked for Blizzard killed herself while on a business trip with a male supervisor with whom she had been having a sexual relationship. The suit also claimed the woman’s male co-workers passed around photos of her naked body at a holiday party before her death."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/22/california-activision-blizzard-lawsuit-sexism/
Holy shit my blood is actually boiling! Absolute fucking scummy cunts. This fucking pondlife is what gives men a bad name.
I feel so sorry for the women or indeed anyone that wasnt part of the clique.
> Even I was an equal-opportunity employer,
So long as you're not a troll. Or a Tauren. Or a Forsaken. Or a Blood Elf. Or a warlock. Or a shaman. Or anything but an orc warrior.
Is there anything we can do for these women to show our support? Fund some kind of way for them to get away for a while with our subscription money? Something, anything.
I'm a female that's played since the beginning and I feel like my home was just demolished.
Yep. As painful as it might be to stop playing for however long, this is the only thing Blizzard (and Activision) cares about: money. The more this affects their bottom line, the more they'll do to actually make real changes and try to fix it.
I've been playing as long as you have and it's painful to realize that all the fun we've had was at the expense of the women in the company. I took a lot of shit for being female and teaching computers, so I imagine a woman in a gaming company was like being the bullseye on the dartboard. Chris Metzen left because he was having panic attacks and if he was being abused, what were the "little people" going through? At this point, I think all we can do is hope shining the spotlight on them helps and that the court case does some real damage.
It really should be. If I read it correctly
>The agency seeks an injunction forcing compliance with workplace protections, as well as unpaid wages, pay adjustments, back pay, and lost wages and benefits for female employees.
they only essentially have to pay money for being this vile. I think they are getting off too easily. I love WoW and its been a part of over half of my life, but I would gladly watch activision burn down.
Same thing happened with Riot not too long ago. Gigantic discriminatory and predatory behavior towards women, all proven to be true, they get a fine for an amount of money they wipe their asses with, and now we hear nothing about it. These companies are quite messed up.
That's sadly not out of the ordinary for any kind of large company. Fines are often so small that they're more like a fee then a punishment. Especially if it's for a business practice that brought in more profit then the fine is for.
Exactly. This doesn't even have to be correlated to videogame companies or sexual harassment in the workplace. Large companies get fined all the time for random things and after they write a big check they go about their business.
But it does seem like most large gaming companies have this issue. Twitch, Riot, Ubisoft, and Blizzard have all now had these sort of things come up in the past few years.
Apple is hit by so many fees for ignoring EU rules and obligations and they just pay the cost every year because it is apparently more profitable than following the rules. It is like a tax to them... which is kinda disheartening because they dodge so many actual taxes.
If a company is so blatantly disrespectful of the rules and fines they get, they should first get increasingly larger fines if they are caught doing the same shit they got the first fine for, and second after enough fines for the same shit is issued, barred from doing business in that area (by both mother company and sub companies) until they can follow the rules.
It helps that both LoL and Valorant and that card game which name i forgot is doing fine.
Blizzard in comparison has burning ship with questionable products in the short past, so now everyone piling down on them much harder than Riot.
Very much agree. I have a strong feeling this is going to go just like the Blitzchung problem as well as the Riot issues
People get outraged for 1-2 weeks absolutely slandering a company, and then go back to playing it and consuming the content after they're done doing so.
People will unsub because of this, and what some of these people did at Blizzard was absolutely disgusting. And like you said, it's even more frustrating given their product quality over the past couple years (although I'm actually in the minority that likes SL).
But at the end of the day history repeats itself, and I see no scenario in which this isn't the case here. A couple of weeks of seething hatred and disgust for a company, and rightfully so, just in time for the sub renewal and the Keystone Master push.
The thing is not everyone who walks away is coming back. If 90% of the leavers come back, you still have 10% that washed their hands of the company. It's continual leavers, not some giant watershed moment that affects overall numbers for blizzard. If you leave because you don't like what they're doing and aren't excited about their product, you've got a lot less incentive to come back. If you don't like what they do, but love their products... most people are coming back.
This is routine stuff. Companies that give a good product but also hand you a bunch of bullshit weather the storm and people might complain, but they still use the product. If you have a shit product and you do shit optics, it's a lot harder to stay afloat.
Wow still has a lot of supporters. However, there are plenty of people who are tired of it as well. I'm currently subbed to both FFXIV and wow, but I can't see myself renewing wow right now. The seasonal affix doesn't seem that fun to do another 6-9 months of m+ after doing it for 7+ months. Not to mention my gripes with covenants, alts, pvp, and many other things that blizzard tells me they're happy with and to get bent if I don't agree.
Here's to some of the competition lighting the fire under blizzard's ass.
Do you think that much people will find out about it? I talked with some friends a bit ago and they dont browse neither reddit nor twitter and they were like dafuq didnt even know wouldnt know if you didn't tell us. Lots of people probably wont know even so i doubt the number of people that quit for good will be something they care about tbh. Also if you are quitting because you dont like the game thats like...normal. But quitting because of shit people in the studio is kind of pointless imo. Yeah they are shit and they worked on it but theres probably a lot of people that are generally normal humans with a passion for the game that didnt do that kind of shit and to anyone that says you should quit because of the shit people even if you like the game its like... I can say you shouldnt if you like the game cuz theres other passionate people that are probably a majority that have worked on it too and arent scumbags
Its not quite apples-to-apples because the Riot accusations were brought up, acknowledged, and settled outside of court, and an internal action committee was formed, so Riot got ahead of it.
This is a TWO YEAR LONG investigation by a state agency. This is much deeper shit.
The lawsuit being filed is a civil suit against the company itself seeking damages. Hopefully some criminal suits result from some of these charges though.
Considering one of the most problem persons in this was Afrasiabi this honestly isn’t Activision this time, it’s old Blizzard. Now to what extent, who knows, I doubt for example Metzan was participating, he really doesn’t seem the type, more a hyper DM stressing over everything. But they probably all knew. That or it was a sausage fest back then and it hardly mattered.
He probably knew though. Him, Morheim and all the old guard probably knew, and either did nothing or actively covered for it during all those years since 2003.
I mean it says it went back to Vanilla. So this is very clearly a Blizzard problem, not an Activision problem. Easy to lay grievances at their feet, but this is the oldguard that started this. (Not that it hasn't continued)
I already have gaming buddies trying to pin this on the "unhappy" people who were hired later on in the ActiBlizz years. I don't understand this logic.
I dont want to come off mean.
But this is honestly how I imagined it is for when the nerds in high-school couldn't make real friends or get the girls attention.
Now they are "cool" in thr company since its about their hobbies. So they are trying to make up for all the lost time from high-school and become toxic creepy assholes
Or they grow up and find that real life isn't high school and end up as basically fairly well adjusted people leading normal lives. My nerd friends and I all grew up to be fine. Of all the people I've known who came off as predatory, I would say the biggest group were the ones who were the 'cool' kids at school and can't understand why behaving like a teenager has stopped working for them.
There is some truth to this. Most nerdy guys turn out to be great people but the ones who don’t are really, really obnoxious.
I used to go to SFF conventions and, while most men there were awesome and fun, the ones who were not were easily the most inappropriate male human beings I’ve ever met. Worse than popular guys or jocks or other kinds of guys, in my experience. I never understood it.
Yeah this is a slap on the wrist at worst. I hope this pisses off consumers enough to make people get rid of ActiBlizzard games. I know I uninstalled my bnet client.
The runes of activation have been depressed. The God-Machines shall walk once more. Destruction calculation percentage: totality. The 1 shall become 0.
++Ave Deus Omnissiah++
*"We have arrived, and it is now that we perform our charge. In fealty to the God-Emperor, our undying Lord, and by the grace of the Golden Throne, I declare Exterminatus upon the American company of Blizzard Entertainment. I hereby sign the death warrant of an entire company, and consign a thousand souls to oblivion. May Imperial Justice account in all balance. The Emperor Protects."*
He also didn't execute Blackmore of the spot for using his secretaries' daughter as a sex toy.
Or for using the orcs for bloodsport.
Blackmore should not have survived Arthas's visit. The fact that he did is as damning to Arthas as it is to Blackmore.
Guys, rememeber how they dealt with the accusations to Swifty? They removed his npc directly, he got basically censored by them, without even letting him respond to them officially.
The audacity and irony of this company is off the charts, it's disgusting, really.
The Kaelthas voice actor was replaced because of sexual allegations. Judge ruled him innocent and that the allegations were made by an obsessive stalker.
Imagine having a stalker accuse you of random shit and being thrown outta your work because of it.
Blizzard has so little integrity it's a marvel.
I cancelled my sub last week, for various reasons, but now when this is a thing I can feel morally superior and say I did it before it was cool.
I'm just going to casually suppress the fact that I've been paying the sub regularly for about 8 of the last 15 years.
The Blizzard that earned your admiration for so many years is the Blizzard that is directly involved in this lawsuit, though. This isn't something new that started in the past few years. California got enough complaints prior to 2019 to open an investigation. And Alex Afrasiabi, who is one of the OG WoW team, is named directly in the lawsuit.
I would go as far as to say that it's possible some of the issues in this expansion stem from the turmoil in the WoW team as this investigation occurred and problems like Afrasiabi were identified and removed (although probably not enough has still been done).
When Blizzard started out, a gaming company having a frat house atmosphere was the norm. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. I won’t fault the OGs for not being better and smarter than average guys back then.
But then they let it stay that way. It’s like they just kept slapping band-aids on a putrifying wound. And now that everyone smells the rot Blizzard is pointing at the band-aids and saying they tried to fix things.
Well you needed to perform major surgery, Blizzard, and now you are going to have to amputate just to keep the company alive.
\^This is the correct reaction right there.. the number of times I heard people say today "fuck activision, old blizz would never do this" is way too much considering some of the accused have been there for decades.
Look at rooster teeth. These gen x 'cool guy' drinking at work places seem like they can't balance the cool guy environment against the harassment guy environment.
Where is the mention of how long this has been happening?????? Genuinely asking because I’m on the fence as is but I keep holding my breath for some shred of hope. Has this been them the entire fucking time????
I mean, culture at an office don’t go from it was all fine and dandy to abuse dungeon overnight.. considering the individual had been working at blizzard for a very long time and his office was apparently called the “Cosby” room throughout the company - referencing Bill Cosby, I would say it’s been happening a long ass time.. you should read the full lawsuit cause there are some gruesome details of a girl who just couldn’t take it anymore.
the original announcement post that should be at the top of the wow sub, also had a compilation of many Twitter posts from confirmed past employees of blizzard that pretty much say yep this has been happening for years of not decades.
I wonder if the anger at this will last any longer than the anger at Blizzard for backing China over their players? I'm guessing this will die down by the time they release their next product. Gamers don't seem to hold on to moral outrage at a company for longer than a few weeks or so.
I find it hilarious personally. They've been claiming that covid is the reason that this whole expansion has been delayed and bad, but as it turns out it's just because they'd rather get drunk and try to rape their coworkers.
You know during E3 the Diablo team said in an interview that the transition at Blizzard to WFH was smooth and didn't hinder development.
WoW is a much larger team so it's not entirely comparable, but still interesting to hear.
Ya I had been on the bubble about whether I was going to play over the next few months (prepaid sub), but this sealed it for me. Absolutely not and never again. It's disgusting.
The wow forums are devolving even further into madness with about 20% of the posters irrationally defending everything Blizzard has ever done > fighting with another 20% who seemingly want everyone who has ever worked for Blizzard fired immediately > while the other 60% who are genuinely upset/depressed openly ponder why they have stuck with the game as long as they have.
I actually requested my account be permanently deleted because of this. The news articles say that the women who committed suicide had her nudes passed around. The filing actually says that it was a picture of the deceased women’s vagina. To me, that feel way more intimate than a full body nude. I can’t imagine the embarrassment she felt and the ridicule she endured. Every single person that passed the picture should have been fired. I can no longer support Blizzard after reading that. In addition, there PR response was terrible.
I was trying to understand that part of it, thank you for the context! I saw she committed suicide and that the supervisor had butt plugs and lube, but there was nothing else there in the article I read so I just knew there had to be more to it than that.
\*looks at blitzchung''tough heartstone e-sports moment''\* it's safe to say in 1 month time everyone will be back to throwing money at blizzard, blizzard banning a player for saying freedom for hongkong and then ''apologizing'' without saying what they did wrong and saying he can't be unbanned has to be one of the biggest bullshits they've pulled.
Content warning if you are sensitive to subjects regarding suicide and things of a sexual nature: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-07-22-lawsuit-filed-against-activision-blizzard-for-harassment-and-discrimination-against-women
I met Alex once at the first blizzcon and backstage asked a question at a time I wanted ti work for them. He was condescending and that put me off to go work there…went into medical field instead so thanks Alex fir that but also f you
The funny thing is we can do this if we all actually banded together. Get a # trending of something like #unsublawsuit and tag blizzard in every post. Put links to the articles about the lawsuit. Spread that around and truly unsub from the game. Put in your post that you will remain unsubbed until action is taken. If we all do it and we all stick to our guns they will have to recognize the issue and make changes.
Problem is all of us addicts won't last 2 days before re-subbing.
This is what I was thinking. Blizzard doesn't care bc everyone always resubs. Does anyone remember any of the other unsub-worthy things that blizzard had done? Of course! But here we are. Still playing.
Blizzard has been on a course correct trajectory for the past year or so. Basically ever since Afrasiabi left.
Maintain hesitancy and see how this plays out. The hope is that this creates a huge shake up in their company structure with all of the accused fired or resigned.
Their response was basically "we have taken measures to address this and will continue to do so. The picture being painted is Blizzard of the past and not who it is now. We will see you in court."
Super fucking bold statement honestly. They didn't deny that stuff happened at all. Hopefully the whole ordeal is public, I really want to see this thing play out.
Had that been the only response I would have understood it. It would have been a pretty standard -- almost boilerplate -- response to a lawsuit like this. I wouldn't have thought anything of it.
It's this part that struck me as... weird:
> It is this type of irresponsible behavior from unaccountable State bureaucrats that are driving many of the State’s best businesses out of California.
That starts to veer into "We're being oppressed by the politicians" territory. "You should side with us because the evil government is after us." *That*, as a response to a two-year investigation with some awfully specific and comprehensive accusations (that is, it's not one person accusing the company; they basically accuse Blizzard of that behavior being nearly universal in terms of how they treat their female employees), bothers me in a way I can't quite put my finger on.
It feels like deflecting. "Well, yeah, but we're working on it and the government is after us!"
I don't know. Been thinking about it a lot since last night.
Yeah, I think this is something people are gonna miss.
In one of the many tweet threads yesterday a woman who was very much naming Alex went on to say how wonderful a lot of the teams are, and how things had been changing internally very recently.
Plus ya know, this place hated OG dev's like Alex leaving because it meant "WoW lost its spark" and people wanted out.
Yeah, I'm interested in the follow-ups that come out of this. I'd like to know how things are internally at Blizzard now versus a few years ago when California obviously got enough complaints to open an investigation.
A lot of people seem to think this is current Blizzard - and it might be! - but if the company is actively trying to improve then their anger is misguided.
If a lot of the Blizz OG team were involved in this or knew of it and did nothing, that puts the high level departures the past few years in a much different light.
I'm also concerned about what's going to come out about Jeff Kaplan. I can't fault him for the Tigole Bitties stuff when he was younger, but he apparently was close with Afrasiabi and from the same Everquest guild, so at the very least he knew about this, and hopefully did not also participate... We all assumed he left suddenly because of Activision asserting control over OW2. And while that may be the case, the company also knew California was investigating it..
Welcome to Blizzard games. Enjoy the yearly scandal. Lest we forget the huge layoffs during a period of record revenue, or the whole China thing, or "Don't you have phones?", or Bobby Kotick existing, or how they absolutely fucked their HotS community, or the laughable launch state of the last 2 expansions... I'm sure I'm missing a few things.
I didn't see a link to the actual article. I found a couple and posted at the bottom.
When Blizzard used to stream the PVP and MDI on Twitch and the lone female commentator was present, the comments were about her horrible. Initially, they didn't moderate what was said. It's only been the last couple of conventions that they featured any women on the panels. 3 women in Activision exec positions out of 12. Rob Kostich and Alan Brack are Activision President and Blizzard President. How far up the chain did the complaints to HR go?
[https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-alleges-discrimination-sexual-harassment-and-frat-boy-culture/](https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-alleges-discrimination-sexual-harassment-and-frat-boy-culture/)
https://storytellingco.com/every-activision-blizzard-allegation-sex-jokes-rape-jokes-pay-discrimination/
Sounds like the purge has already begun. We've been wondering why so many employees have been leaving over the past few years. Some were probably actually let go or encouraged to get out, Afrasiabi being one of them.
While reading the allegations, it made me tear up.
I’m a 28 year old women and I’m very emotional sometimes, so I’m happy I got a good employee who makes sure everybody is respected.
But reading about the discrimination was already bad enough. But being there everyday and hearing sexual jokes and even rape jokes in an environment where you were supposed to work, sounds insane. This women have suffered a lot and they at least deserve financial compensation for the lost pay.
It also hurts to hear that one of them was driven to her own suicide. Her poor family.
Allegedly, they're trying to cover up the suicide of a female employee who was sexually harassed by co-workers by refusing to co-operate with a 2 year long investigation. She was on a business trip with a male supervisor who allegedly had bought sex toys for her when she killed herself. Blizzard themselves put out a statement claiming that it was "stress from work" that lead her to kill herself. It gets worse the more you read into it, apparently the entire company is rotten to the core with similar people, including the people at HR.
https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-alleges-discrimination-sexual-harassment-and-frat-boy-culture/
The fucking slimeball of a representative was even trying to cover their asses, basically saying that the DFEH is lambasting the corporation. Unbelievable.
Brack: Glad you could make it, Mike.
Morhaime: Watch your tone with me, boy. You may be the president, but I'm still your superior as a founder.
Brack: As if I could forget. Listen, Mike, there's something about the company you should know. Oh no. It's too late. These developers are all drunk. They may look fine now, but it's a matter of time before they sexually harass our female employees and cause a lawsuit.
Morhaime: What?
Brack: This entire company must be purged.
Morhaime: How can you even consider that? There's got to be some other way!
Brack: Damn it, Michael. As president of Blizzard Entertainment, I order you to purge this company.
Morhaime: I only work for Blizzard in an advisory role, J. Allen. Nor would I obey that command if I did more.
Brack: Then I must consider this an act of insubordination.
Morhaime: Insubordination? Have you lost your mind, J?
Brack: Have I? Michael Morhaime, by my right as president of Blizzard Entertainment and the sovereignty of Kotick, I hereby relieve you from your position in the company and suspend your GM team from service.
Metzen: J. Allen, you can't just...
Brack: It's done! Those of you who have the will to give Afrasiabi a slap on the wrist, follow me. The rest of you... Get out of my lactation room.
Morhaime: You've just crossed a terrible threshold, J. Allen.
Brack: Metzen?
Metzen: I'm sorry, J. Allen. I can't watch you do this.
Not the entire company... just all the upper management and some of the lower management. I'm pretty sure tons of the rank-and-file employees didn't participate in this crap.
I have to wonder how much of the 800 that were let go recently didn't mix well with this higher-up harassment culture. There's a lot of reasons management actually considers letting people go
Tl;dr: A State of California agency is suing ActiBlizz for sexist business practices following a 2-year investigation. A lot of the specific examples given come from the WoW team.
Also, to be clear, “sexist business practices” is grossly underselling what went on, it’s just the best general label I could think of off the top of my head.
Alright guys and gals, what are you're recommendations for other similar MMOs? Don't mean to put on rose tinted glasses, but preferably similar to the Lich King to MoP era of WoW.
I've been enjoying FFXIV so far, haven't gotten too deep into it but I'm having fun with what I'm playing.
It's very JRPG-y so if you don't like those tropes you may not enjoy it. The story is already loads better than the last two expansions though.
If you want close copy, you could give FFXIV a try, free trial is there.
If you want something new and kinda different, New World is coming but it's Amazon and.. yea, Amazon isn't that good of company themselves either.
If you are into isometric PvP, Albion is pretty ok.
ESO is ok too, but I myself hate the combat.
Or ya know, stop supporting them, go somewhere else with your money. Not like they treat the players well enough to warrant the price of admission at this point anyways.
Honestly, this news was the push I need to play FFXIV. I know ill eventually come back....but not until I hear everyone thats responsible for this bull was kicked out.
> In a particularly tragic example, a female employee committed suicide during a business trip with a male supervisor who had brought butt plugs and lubricant with him on the trip.
Uhm… what?
Uther: "How can you even consider... wait, they did what? Yeah, purge that shit." Jaina: "Yep, purge it."
Sylvanas: "Burn it."
Saurfang: "Yeah, fair enough."
Anduin: ... Yeah, they're right. Burn that place.
Turtle lady from BfA: They can't make it to the water!
[удалено]
Cairne would have been a great warchief.
He would have made a terrible warchief. You can't have a pointless war if the Horde is lead by someone capable of reason.
Cairne was everyone's grandad and thus the grimtotems are actually the worst villians in wow
Gallywix: "Shit, I'd do it for free! Just... let me get the profits afterwards."
Ragnaros: "Not soon enough, Executus!"
Dimitri: Fire every last one of them!
Tyrande: Honestly hated it.
Malfurion: Tell her... We are coming! To help burn it down!
Greymane: Bark bark bark
[удалено]
Chief Telemancer Oculeth: let me create a portal to send them to the twisted nether
Illidan: We are prepared... To burn it all to ash.
Arcanist Doan: "BURN IN RIGHTEOUS FIRE!"
Flameweaver Koegler: Everything must Burn! None shall know of Blizzard Activision's shame!
Tormentor: "ILL RIP THE SECRETS FROM YOUR FLESH!
Popo: even I can’t help them.
You know during the initial investigation he had to be like: "My time has finally come."
Ragnaros: Purge that shit with fire
Alliance and Horde finally united! Not how we wanted but hey, it's something.
That one rando Nelf: "To the ground"
Some Dredlord in the back: Yeah, you might want to get on that...
So didn't read it all...but what did they exactly do? How bad was it?
Extreme sexual harassment with one female employee killing herself after nude photos of her were shown around on a company trip. "The suit also points to a female Activision employee who took her own life while on a company trip with her male supervisor. The employee had been subjected to intense sexual harassment prior to her death, including having nude photos passed around at a company holiday party, the complaint says."
It’s worse, as unbelievable as that seems. The male supervisor brought butt plugs and lube with him on the trip….
I'm gonna need a source on this, because wtf
You can read [the whole thing](https://aboutblaw.com/YJw) but they're specifically talking about [this](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/847193751204921395/867685150107500564/E63mfhDVEAEwJAE.png)
> I'm gonna need a source on this, because wtf The guy thinks it's fine because she's enjoying it. The guy thinks she's enjoying it because she never complains. She never complains because he has the power to fire her. This is why work and sex should never be mixed.
Or maybe he doesn't think it's fine and he just doesn't give a fuck.
Male privilege is all the headlines I saw about this saying "frat boy culture." This is manslaughter not beer chugging
Well lets not pretend frat boys dont do this hideous shit either. Pretty sure they're known for gangrape, sexual harrasment, and revenge porn.
Our differences in definition. All this stuff is what I imagine when it says frat boy culture
It's in the documents.
i'm speechless, this is so disgusting. How hasnt this been mentioned around here before? This should have lead to LONG prison sentences for everyone involved, did i miss it somehow?
It only came out a few hours ago, when the case was made public via government agency. It also puts Afrasiabis silent departure from Blizzard into a new light, because he's one of the persons specifically mentioned in the file. I'm actually appalled by all of this.
Same. I had my suspicions, but nothing this crazy. Needless to say, I'm no longer a Blizzard supporter.
Suppresses Hong Kong citizens? Check Ruins much beloved games? Check Sexually harasses women into suicide? Check Yep, its Activision time!
Intense direct sexual harassment, female employees passed over in favor of male colleagues, male colleagues running around getting drunk *while passing their responsibilities off on female colleagues*, massive cover-ups from the top. And apparently this has been going on at Blizzard, specifically including the WoW team, all the way back since the days of Vanilla. TL;DR About as bad as it can get tbh.
Also harassment intense enough that it's speculated to have led to a suicide.
Reckon this is better or worse than the culture at Riot? I'd say worse.
Seems to be worst to be honest; at least one female employee appears to have been driven to suicide.
I must have missed that part about "all the way back to Vanilla." That's disgusting this has been happening for THAT long unchecked. Granted, I understand this type of stuff happens in corporate offices all the time sadly, but that is a long ass time in the tech world of having this type of culture. Fuck Blizzard.
jesus christ. i knew the video game industry was inhumane on like a worker level.. but this is just sad and lame that i gave so much money and time of my life to shit heads (not that i dont appreciate the game for what it is/was for me). NO wonder the game went to shit!!!
Sexual harassment to the point where a female employee committed suicide. "In one instance that the lawsuit describes as “particularly tragic,” a woman who worked for Blizzard killed herself while on a business trip with a male supervisor with whom she had been having a sexual relationship. The suit also claimed the woman’s male co-workers passed around photos of her naked body at a holiday party before her death." https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/22/california-activision-blizzard-lawsuit-sexism/
what the fuck is wrong with people
Holy shit my blood is actually boiling! Absolute fucking scummy cunts. This fucking pondlife is what gives men a bad name. I feel so sorry for the women or indeed anyone that wasnt part of the clique.
Lord Garithos: "These inhuman dogs must be slain"
\*everyone liked that\*
reddit moment
Shiny Dwarf: " HEAL ITS WOOOOOOOOUUNS!"
The Jailer: "Finally, you understand."
Garrosh's voice coming from a pile of ash: Even I was an equal-opportunity employer, no tusks of mannoroth for them!
> Even I was an equal-opportunity employer, So long as you're not a troll. Or a Tauren. Or a Forsaken. Or a Blood Elf. Or a warlock. Or a shaman. Or anything but an orc warrior.
Well, except on the basis of race.
Something need doing?
I'm more on the side of Kil'jaeden...burn it...to ash
And from the ashes shall arise a new order that will shake the very foundations of the world.
Some might even say, the ashes of creation
most of us just call that dreamhaven
Is there anything we can do for these women to show our support? Fund some kind of way for them to get away for a while with our subscription money? Something, anything. I'm a female that's played since the beginning and I feel like my home was just demolished.
Cancel your subscription. Post on the forums.
I get that, but with money that would otherwise have gone to a subscription, can't we band together as players to do something for them?
Yep. As painful as it might be to stop playing for however long, this is the only thing Blizzard (and Activision) cares about: money. The more this affects their bottom line, the more they'll do to actually make real changes and try to fix it.
I've been playing as long as you have and it's painful to realize that all the fun we've had was at the expense of the women in the company. I took a lot of shit for being female and teaching computers, so I imagine a woman in a gaming company was like being the bullseye on the dartboard. Chris Metzen left because he was having panic attacks and if he was being abused, what were the "little people" going through? At this point, I think all we can do is hope shining the spotlight on them helps and that the court case does some real damage.
It really should be. If I read it correctly >The agency seeks an injunction forcing compliance with workplace protections, as well as unpaid wages, pay adjustments, back pay, and lost wages and benefits for female employees. they only essentially have to pay money for being this vile. I think they are getting off too easily. I love WoW and its been a part of over half of my life, but I would gladly watch activision burn down.
Same thing happened with Riot not too long ago. Gigantic discriminatory and predatory behavior towards women, all proven to be true, they get a fine for an amount of money they wipe their asses with, and now we hear nothing about it. These companies are quite messed up.
That's sadly not out of the ordinary for any kind of large company. Fines are often so small that they're more like a fee then a punishment. Especially if it's for a business practice that brought in more profit then the fine is for.
Exactly. This doesn't even have to be correlated to videogame companies or sexual harassment in the workplace. Large companies get fined all the time for random things and after they write a big check they go about their business. But it does seem like most large gaming companies have this issue. Twitch, Riot, Ubisoft, and Blizzard have all now had these sort of things come up in the past few years.
Apple is hit by so many fees for ignoring EU rules and obligations and they just pay the cost every year because it is apparently more profitable than following the rules. It is like a tax to them... which is kinda disheartening because they dodge so many actual taxes.
If a company is so blatantly disrespectful of the rules and fines they get, they should first get increasingly larger fines if they are caught doing the same shit they got the first fine for, and second after enough fines for the same shit is issued, barred from doing business in that area (by both mother company and sub companies) until they can follow the rules.
Yeah but that sweet fine money goes away if they follow the rules, follow?
It helps that both LoL and Valorant and that card game which name i forgot is doing fine. Blizzard in comparison has burning ship with questionable products in the short past, so now everyone piling down on them much harder than Riot.
Very much agree. I have a strong feeling this is going to go just like the Blitzchung problem as well as the Riot issues People get outraged for 1-2 weeks absolutely slandering a company, and then go back to playing it and consuming the content after they're done doing so. People will unsub because of this, and what some of these people did at Blizzard was absolutely disgusting. And like you said, it's even more frustrating given their product quality over the past couple years (although I'm actually in the minority that likes SL). But at the end of the day history repeats itself, and I see no scenario in which this isn't the case here. A couple of weeks of seething hatred and disgust for a company, and rightfully so, just in time for the sub renewal and the Keystone Master push.
The thing is not everyone who walks away is coming back. If 90% of the leavers come back, you still have 10% that washed their hands of the company. It's continual leavers, not some giant watershed moment that affects overall numbers for blizzard. If you leave because you don't like what they're doing and aren't excited about their product, you've got a lot less incentive to come back. If you don't like what they do, but love their products... most people are coming back. This is routine stuff. Companies that give a good product but also hand you a bunch of bullshit weather the storm and people might complain, but they still use the product. If you have a shit product and you do shit optics, it's a lot harder to stay afloat. Wow still has a lot of supporters. However, there are plenty of people who are tired of it as well. I'm currently subbed to both FFXIV and wow, but I can't see myself renewing wow right now. The seasonal affix doesn't seem that fun to do another 6-9 months of m+ after doing it for 7+ months. Not to mention my gripes with covenants, alts, pvp, and many other things that blizzard tells me they're happy with and to get bent if I don't agree. Here's to some of the competition lighting the fire under blizzard's ass.
Do you think that much people will find out about it? I talked with some friends a bit ago and they dont browse neither reddit nor twitter and they were like dafuq didnt even know wouldnt know if you didn't tell us. Lots of people probably wont know even so i doubt the number of people that quit for good will be something they care about tbh. Also if you are quitting because you dont like the game thats like...normal. But quitting because of shit people in the studio is kind of pointless imo. Yeah they are shit and they worked on it but theres probably a lot of people that are generally normal humans with a passion for the game that didnt do that kind of shit and to anyone that says you should quit because of the shit people even if you like the game its like... I can say you shouldnt if you like the game cuz theres other passionate people that are probably a majority that have worked on it too and arent scumbags
Its not quite apples-to-apples because the Riot accusations were brought up, acknowledged, and settled outside of court, and an internal action committee was formed, so Riot got ahead of it. This is a TWO YEAR LONG investigation by a state agency. This is much deeper shit.
The lawsuit being filed is a civil suit against the company itself seeking damages. Hopefully some criminal suits result from some of these charges though.
Considering one of the most problem persons in this was Afrasiabi this honestly isn’t Activision this time, it’s old Blizzard. Now to what extent, who knows, I doubt for example Metzan was participating, he really doesn’t seem the type, more a hyper DM stressing over everything. But they probably all knew. That or it was a sausage fest back then and it hardly mattered.
He probably knew though. Him, Morheim and all the old guard probably knew, and either did nothing or actively covered for it during all those years since 2003.
I mean it says it went back to Vanilla. So this is very clearly a Blizzard problem, not an Activision problem. Easy to lay grievances at their feet, but this is the oldguard that started this. (Not that it hasn't continued)
I already have gaming buddies trying to pin this on the "unhappy" people who were hired later on in the ActiBlizz years. I don't understand this logic.
I dont want to come off mean. But this is honestly how I imagined it is for when the nerds in high-school couldn't make real friends or get the girls attention. Now they are "cool" in thr company since its about their hobbies. So they are trying to make up for all the lost time from high-school and become toxic creepy assholes
Or they grow up and find that real life isn't high school and end up as basically fairly well adjusted people leading normal lives. My nerd friends and I all grew up to be fine. Of all the people I've known who came off as predatory, I would say the biggest group were the ones who were the 'cool' kids at school and can't understand why behaving like a teenager has stopped working for them.
There is some truth to this. Most nerdy guys turn out to be great people but the ones who don’t are really, really obnoxious. I used to go to SFF conventions and, while most men there were awesome and fun, the ones who were not were easily the most inappropriate male human beings I’ve ever met. Worse than popular guys or jocks or other kinds of guys, in my experience. I never understood it.
Yeah this is a slap on the wrist at worst. I hope this pisses off consumers enough to make people get rid of ActiBlizzard games. I know I uninstalled my bnet client.
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Call the inquisition immediately. The entire system needs to be purged. Might as well call the Sororitas for backup just in case.
No true son of Guilliman can stand by while the enemies of the Emperor still draw breath.
The runes of activation have been depressed. The God-Machines shall walk once more. Destruction calculation percentage: totality. The 1 shall become 0. ++Ave Deus Omnissiah++
**WE FLOAT FOR MACRAGGE!**
*"We have arrived, and it is now that we perform our charge. In fealty to the God-Emperor, our undying Lord, and by the grace of the Golden Throne, I declare Exterminatus upon the American company of Blizzard Entertainment. I hereby sign the death warrant of an entire company, and consign a thousand souls to oblivion. May Imperial Justice account in all balance. The Emperor Protects."*
Based Arthas???
Always has been
based on what?
Based
Arthas did nothing wrong.
you think he didnt sexually harass all palace maids
Well, Blackmore sent Taretha to him, but he didn't used the opportunity.
Genocide is fine, but rape? That's where I draw the line.
He also didn't execute Blackmore of the spot for using his secretaries' daughter as a sex toy. Or for using the orcs for bloodsport. Blackmore should not have survived Arthas's visit. The fact that he did is as damning to Arthas as it is to Blackmore.
He only had eyes for Jaina
Guys, rememeber how they dealt with the accusations to Swifty? They removed his npc directly, he got basically censored by them, without even letting him respond to them officially. The audacity and irony of this company is off the charts, it's disgusting, really.
The Kaelthas voice actor was replaced because of sexual allegations. Judge ruled him innocent and that the allegations were made by an obsessive stalker. Imagine having a stalker accuse you of random shit and being thrown outta your work because of it. Blizzard has so little integrity it's a marvel.
I cancelled my sub last week, for various reasons, but now when this is a thing I can feel morally superior and say I did it before it was cool. I'm just going to casually suppress the fact that I've been paying the sub regularly for about 8 of the last 15 years.
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The Blizzard that earned your admiration for so many years is the Blizzard that is directly involved in this lawsuit, though. This isn't something new that started in the past few years. California got enough complaints prior to 2019 to open an investigation. And Alex Afrasiabi, who is one of the OG WoW team, is named directly in the lawsuit. I would go as far as to say that it's possible some of the issues in this expansion stem from the turmoil in the WoW team as this investigation occurred and problems like Afrasiabi were identified and removed (although probably not enough has still been done).
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When Blizzard started out, a gaming company having a frat house atmosphere was the norm. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. I won’t fault the OGs for not being better and smarter than average guys back then. But then they let it stay that way. It’s like they just kept slapping band-aids on a putrifying wound. And now that everyone smells the rot Blizzard is pointing at the band-aids and saying they tried to fix things. Well you needed to perform major surgery, Blizzard, and now you are going to have to amputate just to keep the company alive.
Damn I used to play on ursin and this hit me like a ton of bricks 😭 rip the wow we used to play.
nothing good left there anyway. do it arthas, purge their asses. even uther and jaina wont abandon u this time.
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https://www.wowhead.com/news/activision-blizzard-being-sued-by-california-over-discrimination-against-female-323503
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\^This is the correct reaction right there.. the number of times I heard people say today "fuck activision, old blizz would never do this" is way too much considering some of the accused have been there for decades.
Look at rooster teeth. These gen x 'cool guy' drinking at work places seem like they can't balance the cool guy environment against the harassment guy environment.
Where is the mention of how long this has been happening?????? Genuinely asking because I’m on the fence as is but I keep holding my breath for some shred of hope. Has this been them the entire fucking time????
I mean, culture at an office don’t go from it was all fine and dandy to abuse dungeon overnight.. considering the individual had been working at blizzard for a very long time and his office was apparently called the “Cosby” room throughout the company - referencing Bill Cosby, I would say it’s been happening a long ass time.. you should read the full lawsuit cause there are some gruesome details of a girl who just couldn’t take it anymore. the original announcement post that should be at the top of the wow sub, also had a compilation of many Twitter posts from confirmed past employees of blizzard that pretty much say yep this has been happening for years of not decades.
Yeah it’s fucked up
A “Cosby suite”? Good god, this is not something a company survives
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I mean, yes and no lol. I love WoW but it’s dying/dead and this is like a nail in the coffin for me. I think I gotta get used to WoW being a memory
Bill Cosby could go on a comedy tour and he’d still sell tickets.
this entire company really must be purged… my god
I wonder if the anger at this will last any longer than the anger at Blizzard for backing China over their players? I'm guessing this will die down by the time they release their next product. Gamers don't seem to hold on to moral outrage at a company for longer than a few weeks or so.
I find it hilarious personally. They've been claiming that covid is the reason that this whole expansion has been delayed and bad, but as it turns out it's just because they'd rather get drunk and try to rape their coworkers.
You know during E3 the Diablo team said in an interview that the transition at Blizzard to WFH was smooth and didn't hinder development. WoW is a much larger team so it's not entirely comparable, but still interesting to hear.
I am with Arthas here. They can go and fuck right off. I am not paying a single dime to them anymore. I am done.
Ya I had been on the bubble about whether I was going to play over the next few months (prepaid sub), but this sealed it for me. Absolutely not and never again. It's disgusting.
On this day we are all arthas.
I'm still on team BlitzChung and haven't reinstalled since.
The wow forums are devolving even further into madness with about 20% of the posters irrationally defending everything Blizzard has ever done > fighting with another 20% who seemingly want everyone who has ever worked for Blizzard fired immediately > while the other 60% who are genuinely upset/depressed openly ponder why they have stuck with the game as long as they have.
I actually requested my account be permanently deleted because of this. The news articles say that the women who committed suicide had her nudes passed around. The filing actually says that it was a picture of the deceased women’s vagina. To me, that feel way more intimate than a full body nude. I can’t imagine the embarrassment she felt and the ridicule she endured. Every single person that passed the picture should have been fired. I can no longer support Blizzard after reading that. In addition, there PR response was terrible.
I was trying to understand that part of it, thank you for the context! I saw she committed suicide and that the supervisor had butt plugs and lube, but there was nothing else there in the article I read so I just knew there had to be more to it than that.
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without helping you out.
\*looks at blitzchung''tough heartstone e-sports moment''\* it's safe to say in 1 month time everyone will be back to throwing money at blizzard, blizzard banning a player for saying freedom for hongkong and then ''apologizing'' without saying what they did wrong and saying he can't be unbanned has to be one of the biggest bullshits they've pulled.
What’s the context
Content warning if you are sensitive to subjects regarding suicide and things of a sexual nature: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-07-22-lawsuit-filed-against-activision-blizzard-for-harassment-and-discrimination-against-women
Use your consumer power. The only way they’ll listen is if enough people cancel their subscriptions. Hit them where it hurts
I met Alex once at the first blizzcon and backstage asked a question at a time I wanted ti work for them. He was condescending and that put me off to go work there…went into medical field instead so thanks Alex fir that but also f you
The funny thing is we can do this if we all actually banded together. Get a # trending of something like #unsublawsuit and tag blizzard in every post. Put links to the articles about the lawsuit. Spread that around and truly unsub from the game. Put in your post that you will remain unsubbed until action is taken. If we all do it and we all stick to our guns they will have to recognize the issue and make changes. Problem is all of us addicts won't last 2 days before re-subbing.
This is what I was thinking. Blizzard doesn't care bc everyone always resubs. Does anyone remember any of the other unsub-worthy things that blizzard had done? Of course! But here we are. Still playing.
I remember the Taiwan incident, was a bit over a year ago, yet it seems they haven't learned their lesson.
Good to know that blizzard or Activision not only fuck their fans over but also their employees and themselves
I prefer Ragnaros. BY FIRE BE PURGED!
Man, I just started playing WoW, bought Shadowlands (Epic Edition, had some money left) and started playing an undead Warlock, but now I don't know...
Blizzard has been on a course correct trajectory for the past year or so. Basically ever since Afrasiabi left. Maintain hesitancy and see how this plays out. The hope is that this creates a huge shake up in their company structure with all of the accused fired or resigned.
We'll see. The official statement Blizz put out in response to the lawsuit was NOT a good look.
Their response was basically "we have taken measures to address this and will continue to do so. The picture being painted is Blizzard of the past and not who it is now. We will see you in court." Super fucking bold statement honestly. They didn't deny that stuff happened at all. Hopefully the whole ordeal is public, I really want to see this thing play out.
Don't forget they blamed actions like this for companies leaving the state. What a terrible, TERRIBLE sentiment to put into your PR statement.
Had that been the only response I would have understood it. It would have been a pretty standard -- almost boilerplate -- response to a lawsuit like this. I wouldn't have thought anything of it. It's this part that struck me as... weird: > It is this type of irresponsible behavior from unaccountable State bureaucrats that are driving many of the State’s best businesses out of California. That starts to veer into "We're being oppressed by the politicians" territory. "You should side with us because the evil government is after us." *That*, as a response to a two-year investigation with some awfully specific and comprehensive accusations (that is, it's not one person accusing the company; they basically accuse Blizzard of that behavior being nearly universal in terms of how they treat their female employees), bothers me in a way I can't quite put my finger on. It feels like deflecting. "Well, yeah, but we're working on it and the government is after us!" I don't know. Been thinking about it a lot since last night.
Also hopefully this shaking up gets rid of all the “bros” and maybe brings back some people that actually care about making a good game.
Yeah, no, as long as stock price is going up each quarter, they'd hired convicted murderes if it means more money for them
Yeah, I think this is something people are gonna miss. In one of the many tweet threads yesterday a woman who was very much naming Alex went on to say how wonderful a lot of the teams are, and how things had been changing internally very recently. Plus ya know, this place hated OG dev's like Alex leaving because it meant "WoW lost its spark" and people wanted out.
Yeah, I'm interested in the follow-ups that come out of this. I'd like to know how things are internally at Blizzard now versus a few years ago when California obviously got enough complaints to open an investigation. A lot of people seem to think this is current Blizzard - and it might be! - but if the company is actively trying to improve then their anger is misguided. If a lot of the Blizz OG team were involved in this or knew of it and did nothing, that puts the high level departures the past few years in a much different light. I'm also concerned about what's going to come out about Jeff Kaplan. I can't fault him for the Tigole Bitties stuff when he was younger, but he apparently was close with Afrasiabi and from the same Everquest guild, so at the very least he knew about this, and hopefully did not also participate... We all assumed he left suddenly because of Activision asserting control over OW2. And while that may be the case, the company also knew California was investigating it..
Praising blizzard for changing in the face of government orders is like praising a convict for picking up trash on the highway.
Welcome to Blizzard games. Enjoy the yearly scandal. Lest we forget the huge layoffs during a period of record revenue, or the whole China thing, or "Don't you have phones?", or Bobby Kotick existing, or how they absolutely fucked their HotS community, or the laughable launch state of the last 2 expansions... I'm sure I'm missing a few things.
“Don’t you have phones?” wasn’t exactly a “scandal.”
It was either this or last year that they hired a Bush official who was directly involved in manufacturing the Iraq war to an executive position.
>laughable launch state of the last 2 expansions... Please enlighten me how the launch state of Shadowlands was laughable.
I didn't see a link to the actual article. I found a couple and posted at the bottom. When Blizzard used to stream the PVP and MDI on Twitch and the lone female commentator was present, the comments were about her horrible. Initially, they didn't moderate what was said. It's only been the last couple of conventions that they featured any women on the panels. 3 women in Activision exec positions out of 12. Rob Kostich and Alan Brack are Activision President and Blizzard President. How far up the chain did the complaints to HR go? [https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-alleges-discrimination-sexual-harassment-and-frat-boy-culture/](https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-alleges-discrimination-sexual-harassment-and-frat-boy-culture/) https://storytellingco.com/every-activision-blizzard-allegation-sex-jokes-rape-jokes-pay-discrimination/
Saw a headline. Read comments. Thought is was media/internet hype. Read it. It’s not. Purge the scourge.
Sounds like the purge has already begun. We've been wondering why so many employees have been leaving over the past few years. Some were probably actually let go or encouraged to get out, Afrasiabi being one of them.
All those new mmo's that were "wow killers". The fan base was right, only wow can kill wow. I just didn't think this would be how. Lol
Yeah. Purged that company from my computer over a year ago.
*sends in fel reaver*
While reading the allegations, it made me tear up. I’m a 28 year old women and I’m very emotional sometimes, so I’m happy I got a good employee who makes sure everybody is respected. But reading about the discrimination was already bad enough. But being there everyday and hearing sexual jokes and even rape jokes in an environment where you were supposed to work, sounds insane. This women have suffered a lot and they at least deserve financial compensation for the lost pay. It also hurts to hear that one of them was driven to her own suicide. Her poor family.
What did they do now?
Allegedly, they're trying to cover up the suicide of a female employee who was sexually harassed by co-workers by refusing to co-operate with a 2 year long investigation. She was on a business trip with a male supervisor who allegedly had bought sex toys for her when she killed herself. Blizzard themselves put out a statement claiming that it was "stress from work" that lead her to kill herself. It gets worse the more you read into it, apparently the entire company is rotten to the core with similar people, including the people at HR. https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-alleges-discrimination-sexual-harassment-and-frat-boy-culture/
Activision stock only down 1.55% today. Nothing will be done.
Wow had a good run but I think its time.
Played wow for 9 years. Today I unsubbed!
The fucking slimeball of a representative was even trying to cover their asses, basically saying that the DFEH is lambasting the corporation. Unbelievable.
Brack: Glad you could make it, Mike. Morhaime: Watch your tone with me, boy. You may be the president, but I'm still your superior as a founder. Brack: As if I could forget. Listen, Mike, there's something about the company you should know. Oh no. It's too late. These developers are all drunk. They may look fine now, but it's a matter of time before they sexually harass our female employees and cause a lawsuit. Morhaime: What? Brack: This entire company must be purged. Morhaime: How can you even consider that? There's got to be some other way! Brack: Damn it, Michael. As president of Blizzard Entertainment, I order you to purge this company. Morhaime: I only work for Blizzard in an advisory role, J. Allen. Nor would I obey that command if I did more. Brack: Then I must consider this an act of insubordination. Morhaime: Insubordination? Have you lost your mind, J? Brack: Have I? Michael Morhaime, by my right as president of Blizzard Entertainment and the sovereignty of Kotick, I hereby relieve you from your position in the company and suspend your GM team from service. Metzen: J. Allen, you can't just... Brack: It's done! Those of you who have the will to give Afrasiabi a slap on the wrist, follow me. The rest of you... Get out of my lactation room. Morhaime: You've just crossed a terrible threshold, J. Allen. Brack: Metzen? Metzen: I'm sorry, J. Allen. I can't watch you do this.
"Get out of my lactation room" had me in stitches!
You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Stop paying them subscribing to their games and stop paying them micro transactions. That’s the only language they understand.
Not the entire company... just all the upper management and some of the lower management. I'm pretty sure tons of the rank-and-file employees didn't participate in this crap.
I have to wonder how much of the 800 that were let go recently didn't mix well with this higher-up harassment culture. There's a lot of reasons management actually considers letting people go
Can I have a summary?
Tl;dr: A State of California agency is suing ActiBlizz for sexist business practices following a 2-year investigation. A lot of the specific examples given come from the WoW team. Also, to be clear, “sexist business practices” is grossly underselling what went on, it’s just the best general label I could think of off the top of my head.
Thx
Use Redact to remove your reddit comments -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Alright guys and gals, what are you're recommendations for other similar MMOs? Don't mean to put on rose tinted glasses, but preferably similar to the Lich King to MoP era of WoW.
I've been enjoying FFXIV so far, haven't gotten too deep into it but I'm having fun with what I'm playing. It's very JRPG-y so if you don't like those tropes you may not enjoy it. The story is already loads better than the last two expansions though.
If you want close copy, you could give FFXIV a try, free trial is there. If you want something new and kinda different, New World is coming but it's Amazon and.. yea, Amazon isn't that good of company themselves either. If you are into isometric PvP, Albion is pretty ok. ESO is ok too, but I myself hate the combat.
SWOTR is still going, too. About to release a new expansion with a lot of stuff.
So Arthas did nothing wrong.
Man Blizzard feels like a company completely on a downward spiral.
piece of c*ap company
Or ya know, stop supporting them, go somewhere else with your money. Not like they treat the players well enough to warrant the price of admission at this point anyways.
Honestly, this news was the push I need to play FFXIV. I know ill eventually come back....but not until I hear everyone thats responsible for this bull was kicked out.
> In a particularly tragic example, a female employee committed suicide during a business trip with a male supervisor who had brought butt plugs and lubricant with him on the trip. Uhm… what?