If you haven't read the state of California's claims here you should. It's the result of a two year investigation and the claims are.. shocking.<p>I want to make a point about "culture fit". "Culture fit" in a company typically comes down to "we like you" and the reason why people like other people is that they are like them. Similar age, background, whatever. It's why Stanford grads probably like other Stanford grads.<p>This "we like you" can and does lead to discrimination.<p>But here's the even darker side of this. Toxic cultures of sexual harassment as alleged in the complaint against Activision-Blizzard always come down to a few key individuals who then "spread" by hiring or promoting other people who are like then. I doubt this is ever explicit. It's more that you can sense a fellow predator (make no mistake: they are preying on vulnerable staff).<p>So without intervention this toxicity will tend to spread. Those who oppose it will leave. Those who tow the lines get promoted.<p>And it's leadership's responsibility to root this out and eliminate it. Heads should roll here. Maybe even J Allen Brack's and/or Bobby Kotick's. If you want to take credit for the successes you also have to take responsibility for the giant failures here.<p>Oh and whoever wrote and sent out that statement about how the state was pursuing this was why so many businesses are leaving California needs to be fired. It was so utterly tone deaf and irrelevant.
This seems to largely match a lot of the same things that happened with Riot Games over the last couple of years. I am hoping that these actions can help spread awareness of any issues that may be present at Blizzard and past, current, and future employees won't face the same issues. It is a long road to be traveled to get there.<p>I hope that the current WFH situation doesn't detract from the walkout. A lot of the visibility raised when Riot went through this was outside of the Riot gates where employees were congregated.<p>Without speculating on the claims, I do find it interesting that the DFEH has lawsuits against both Riot Games and Blizzard for similar issues. I recall reading that Riot's response was that the DFEH was not working in good faith: are both of these companies aligning their responses, is the DFEH out of line, or is the industry just that broken?
Appeal to public opinion is generally a great idea but there is a risk. Activision gets no sympathy from me, but I also don't think the answer will come from the masses.
I'm not sure that most gamers really care about sexism in the gaming industry. Video games are synthetic, we don't really see the people behind them. At least in movies we see the actors. If push comes to shove, I think most gamers will still be lining up for the latest AAA title no matter what they hear about the company that created it. Imho change therefore has to come from something other than public opinion. This lawsuit is exactly that: the government enforcing a code of behavior because the market clearly cannot do it on its own. The system is working.
Two years ago, during the Blitzchung / Hong Kong incident, I deleted the Battle.net account I had held since Warcraft III. I would encourage everyone else to do so too. It's definitely easier now that Blizzard no longer makes the best (or even good) games in any genre.<p>Activision Blizzard's Chief Compliance Officer released an absolutely disgusting statement in response to the lawsuit: <a href="https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1418619091515068421" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1418619091515068421</a><p>It's surreal knowing that she is also complicit in the war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Townsend#Career" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Townsend#Career</a>).
> Why it matters: Walkouts are a drastic measure for developers in a largely non-unionized field, a testament to just how angry employees currently are.<p>It sends a message, but I wouldn't say it's _that_ drastic considering the demand for developers and difficulty hiring in the Orange County area.
This is interesting, given that Activision itself was founded by disgruntled Atari developers who'd walked out...whereupon the then-CEO of Atari, a former textile company executive who'd referred to the developers as "towel designers", discovered that he couldn't just call up a temp agency and have them send over a bunch of people who could cram a fun, playable game into 4K of memory.
Does anyone have any more specific information aside from "widespread sexism"? It would be good to know exactly what is prompting this walkout, and exactly what changes they're hoping to achieve with it.
I suppose this is one feature of actually going to the office worth noting.<p>Staging a virtual walk out where everyone just doesn't sign into Slack, Github, and/or read email for a day wouldn't have the same impact.
"Staff are asking Activision Blizzard to adopt new recruiting, hiring and promotion policies to improve representation across all employee levels."<p>What exactly does this means? What is "representation across all employee levels" and why not competency?<p>In the US-based company I work for, we have a "diversity and inclusion" program that had resulted in promoting cafeteria managers to director level and hiring any (all) applicants of certain races in certain countries (varies by country) because targets had to be met. I have a friend in US that was told by all his mentors : "come on, you are a white male, you have no chance to be promoted". Is this what these people want?
Interesting. I've been thinking that based on how high up the chain of command the allegations suggest Activision's cultural problems are, it seemed a lot like the only way for Activision to "right the ship" would be to replace senior leadership (including possibly up to the CEO level).<p>I found that outcome unlikely, but if the employees put pressure on ownership in this way, it may perhaps create enough incentive for the ownership to oust the top-level leadership. Not sure.
Link didn't work for me.<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210727183853/https://www.axios.com/activision-blizzard-walkout-harassment-lawsuit-fefa807b-107e-41e2-a6e2-78a086119e04.html" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20210727183853/https://www.axios...</a>
Previous related thread:<p><i>California sues Activision Blizzard over unequal pay, sexual harassment</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27922841" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27922841</a> - July 2021 (461 comments)
Last I heard, Blizzard was hemorrhaging WoW users as well. Not a great run for them over the past couple years, with the terrible Warcraft III remaster as well.
Blizzard is done for. Everyone important left. There's no one to work on StarCraft 3 / WarCraft 4 and their reputation is deservably not what what it used to be only a few years ago. Like almost until the "you all have phones, right" moment.<p>Activision ruined the company. Sure, the market changed but Blizzard was doing much better under Vivendi.
One of the demands<p>“believe that our values as employees are not being accurately reflected in the words and actions of our leadership,”<p>Sorry they pay you to do a job, not reflect your values. And anyway whos values? I'm pretty certain values are a personal thing, how can the leadership possibly reflect all their employees values?
Blizzard hasn't produced a decent game in two decades, all the original talent have long departed, and now it's just a sexist cesspool. How about they quit instead of simply walking out?
People are walking out? Based on the former Blizzard employees, mostly white males, who have commented in previous threads, it didn't seem like a big deal.<p>Wonder why they're walking out on a nothingburger.
Did the women go to HR? If so, just fire all of HR and get a new HR. Did they not go to HR? That's on them and no one should feel bad for them then. No one should be persecuted for not solving <i>your</i> problems for <i>you</i>.<p>I know law offices like very much to get public opinion on their side with strategic leaks so that they can push for a settlement ASAP. If things go to trial, it's likely to come out that their clients are gold-digging scumbags who didn't follow the process through HR like they were trained to do.
> The suit was followed by an outpouring of current and former employees saying they’d been harassed or mistreated at the company.<p>I never understand why in the world we currently live in there are so many people willing to be silent for so long. Weinstein did his crap for years, the US gymnastics assaults went on for years.<p>This probably isn't a popular opinion...but when victims choose to remain silent they are complacent in allowing other people to be victimized in the future. A sexist culture is one thing, but straight up sexual assault is a completely different issue.