"Frat boy culture" cited as serious factor for pay disparity, sexual harassment.
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CA State agency sues Activision Blizzard, alleges discrimination against women
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https://www.activisionblizzard.com/lead ... llen-brack
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His name is J. Allen Brack:
https://www.activisionblizzard.com/lead ... llen-brack
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Sadly no Alex Afrasiabi has been implicated in this as well and he has been there since at least the start of wow. My first blizzard game was Warcraft Orcs and Humans tho
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When Activision escapes California, given that they believe the unaccountable state bureaucrats are harassing them, are there any states where pervasive sexual harassment is not grounds for investigating companies?
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Which also says that folks like Morhaime and other Blizzard oldguard were aware of all of this.
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I work with a person that was fired from a Texas Blizzard call center for repeated sexual harassment & stalking complaints. The fact that it took so many complaint to get action taken (for a replaceable cog/grunt) speaks to the culture. Of course, my work has also tolerated the same crap, so it isn't limited to the gaming industry. I have spoken out and been ignored. In the mean time, some female employees walk down three flights of stairs (other two floors are not accessible to our group) to the bathroom in the lobby rather than have to go by this individual.
I get why some people can't complain. There is an older, uneducated lady that works for us that has had to deal with much of this person's crap for years now. She has seen that they don't treat the complaints seriously and protect the person. She can't afford to lose her job and thus suffers in silence. I've spoken up more since I am in a better position and even if they just canned me it would be less impactful to me than it would be if she had the same thing happen. However, since I'm not the one impacted my reports do not result in any action either.
Our entire society is built and continues on the hard work of people who get little credit or reward for that work. Instead, small cliques of people within the organizations get the credit and the rewards. They become unaccountable in most cases just like the royalty of old. Sure they will sacrifice one of their own eventually, but the system does not change. That system punishes those who try to stop it.
Can some/many just find different jobs? Sure. That is how most deal with it. I would make the point that wanting to work in an environment without illegal crap going on or without being subjected to bullying or harassment should be a baseline expectation though and "if you don't like it leave" is not an appropriate response in those instances. To get there would require respect for those below you and not just as cogs in a machine. The "elite" will never allow their control, power, or wealth to be threatened by something like baseline respect and livability.
I get why some people can't complain. There is an older, uneducated lady that works for us that has had to deal with much of this person's crap for years now. She has seen that they don't treat the complaints seriously and protect the person. She can't afford to lose her job and thus suffers in silence. I've spoken up more since I am in a better position and even if they just canned me it would be less impactful to me than it would be if she had the same thing happen. However, since I'm not the one impacted my reports do not result in any action either.
Our entire society is built and continues on the hard work of people who get little credit or reward for that work. Instead, small cliques of people within the organizations get the credit and the rewards. They become unaccountable in most cases just like the royalty of old. Sure they will sacrifice one of their own eventually, but the system does not change. That system punishes those who try to stop it.
Can some/many just find different jobs? Sure. That is how most deal with it. I would make the point that wanting to work in an environment without illegal crap going on or without being subjected to bullying or harassment should be a baseline expectation though and "if you don't like it leave" is not an appropriate response in those instances. To get there would require respect for those below you and not just as cogs in a machine. The "elite" will never allow their control, power, or wealth to be threatened by something like baseline respect and livability.
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Yep this behaviour goes deep. I really hope Metzen and Kaplan aren’t caught up in it, but knowing it’s happening and doing nothing is piss poor.
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I think that makes you better at PR than Blizzard's PR department.
"We are unable to comment due to the ongoing litigation" would have been a bad response to this, but it would have been light years better than what Blizzard sent out. Even if everything Blizzard says is true (which I doubt) — that any problems are long behind them, that they've been cooperating completely with DFEH, that the suicide was completely unrelated to these complaints and the family would not have wanted it made public — reacting with such obvious outrage just makes them look entitled.
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J Allard was an *extremely* high profile and influential executive at Microsoft. As an example, he famously sent out a memo about how the internet was going to take over computing, so Microsoft needed to embrace it. He's probably the single reason MS put together their own IP stack.
He's still doing stuff, but not at Microsoft anymore.
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With the alleged amounts of alcohol usage both before work and at work, sounds like the local LEOs need to setup sobriety checkpoints at the entrances and exits of the Activision parking lots.
I hope this goes to a trial and verdict rather then the too common pretrial sealed settlement where the outside world never learns what, if anything, was going on. Too many of these things wind up with some money being tossed at the accusers, the stock performance takes a hit that quarter and things quickly go back to how they were before the lawsuit/charges.
I hope this goes to a trial and verdict rather then the too common pretrial sealed settlement where the outside world never learns what, if anything, was going on. Too many of these things wind up with some money being tossed at the accusers, the stock performance takes a hit that quarter and things quickly go back to how they were before the lawsuit/charges.
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You should probably read into the allegations and testimony more. A whole lot of it dates back far before Activision.
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At least is not what Microsoft did to Rare, they are not even allowed to die.
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I am reminded of the saying among lawyers. "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table." I think that table Activision Blizzard just stood near has a big dent in it now.
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It's hard for me to imagine an actual corporate attorney OK'ing a statement like this for public release. If true, Activision has already lost their case.
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Don't take what I said out of context. I said there were other options to do something and I said you can find another career if your current career requires that you allow women to get assaulted and raped and do nothing.
Or you could teach your kids that if women got assaulted and raped and you turn the other way to make money, then that's ok. Is that really how you want to raise your kids? Again, that was in the hypothetical scenario where the only way to do anything would result in "career suicide". At that point, your career is supported by and supports the sexual abuse of women.
But again, realistically, there are pretty much always other options in these scenarios.
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I wish I was more surprised by the people who think it's fine to do nothing when they find out that their job is full of women getting sexually assaulted instead of trying to find even one little thing to do to work against it.
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Time for a clean sweep at the top. Do they have Travis Kalanik's number on speed-dial?
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This quote makes no sense.
Activision took over blizzard.
Hence activision blizzard
EA is not involved here.
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Ah, okay -- thanks for that background! All these decades I've never come across his name, weird.
J. Allard is definitely not the president of Blizzard. =)
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Yeah it was dumb and I go over the line all the time. I don't have good instincts for it, never have, or sometimes I have great instincts for months it years but then I second guess where the line is and throw it out into the world. The reality is I'm often dependent on getting negative feedback to readjust. Even for really controversial takes, I will second guess myself.
I was trying to make an argument for individual responsibility, the fact that people should resign from toxic places in protest and our legal system has a very high standard for accusing people of being responsible for someone's death.
What I wrote was dog turd and maybe every polished variation of it would end up a dog turd.
But it's out there now. New lines drawn, new lines will evitably be over stepped.
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Alex Afrasiabi started at Blizzard in 2004 and is the former Senior Creative Director for WoW. He left very quietly in June 2020. Activision only acquired Blizzard in 2008.
He's directly named in the lawsuit, paragraph 47.
This shit is deeply embedded in the company.
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WTF? Gamer culture, like, by definition, applies to gamers. Who else do you think it applies to?
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If you are not loudly pushing back and publicly calling out the bad actors, you are most explicitly contributing to, and part of the problem. (not a gamer since the original Quake; just not something I get into at all)
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EA bought Metalhead the makers of, IMO, the best baseball game out there Super Mega Baseball in May. They are going to destroy that game. The Metalhead team always was so excited about bringing the best game possible, but in the end I guess we all would have done the same thing. EA is a cancer.
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Since you apparently know nothing about reality or the law; sexual assault and sexual harassment are crimes.
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Blaming women for having to endure sexual harassment... yeah I think I'd call that a "controversial take."
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Some maybe, but projecting personal moral cowardice onto the population at large is unwarranted. If that were true, we would all be living within a global 3rd Reich, or still a colony of a dying empire. Many people, though truthfully not all, are willing to risk their 'lives, fortunes, and sacred honor' to defend what they believe is proper and moral.
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The founder effect goes further than this. Who the founders / execs hire reflects their values and personality styles, so if the middle levels are full of a-holes, it's the fault of the top levels. And the low-level a-holes are the fault of both higher levels. And so on.
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Completely agree that culture is shaped by the top "leaders" at an organization. If the CEO is a grade A douchenozzle, you can expect the culture to be toxic.
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I’ve worked in places/departments like this, and the minute they sense that you’re not one of “their boys” and that you aren’t amused is the minute that they see you as a potential threat and start working to destroy you.
And if they’re management, hoo boy.
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You understand that businesses are subject to laws as well, right?
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