i’m shocked
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1418017955841982465?s=20 Might be referring to this one sent to Schreier?
It’s telling that they call it “rushed” (two year investigation is rushed?) and say the vast majority of claims are false before talking up how they changed their processes in recent years to combat this sorta stuff.
Guess it’s not that false, eh?
Bet you 5 gold people discussing this in Blizzard forums will get randomly banned and/or the threads closed.
“Hey did you look into those two dozen HR reports about harassment?”
“Yeah man don’t worry about it we’ll have an inclusivity panel at Blizzcon”
“Rad, hey wanna go cubecrawling?”
Couple months later
“Oh no, it looks like we gotta pay lawsuit”
“Bro it’s okey, we will release some pet into itemshop and copy paste some im sowwy tweet from riot”
“Right, wanna eat lunch in hooters?”
The situation just goes from bad to worse, huh? When it rains it pours, I suppose.
I had already decided to never buy a Blizzard game again.
We can’t expect better from a company that leaves Goldshire untouched, I suppose.
What a massive dissapointment
Their games and story telling are a big cringe recently, and now this. And to think Blizzard used to be my absolute favorite game company. Guess I’ll love Bioware instead
All hopes that they continue the investigation and all the people kicked by Blizzard throughout the year will move to speak up.
I would still be wary and wait for the results of the trial; especially with regards to climate change there have been high profile lawsuits recently initiated both by movements and government agencies that were thrown out due to lack of evidence (NY state vs ExxonMobil corporation on climate change, for example).
I fear it will be very hard to find substantial evidence of harassment and abuse, but the pay gap charges are well-set and I do feel the accusing agency put a great deal of effort in providing factual data there. If they are granted access to private information of massed employee wages the evidence will be jarring.
Honestly didn’t expect to find out in 2021 that Shadowlands and 9.1 weren’t the worst things Blizzard had done, by far, far.
Makes you wonder if all the people leaving Blizzard haven’t been given the boot for their behaviour given their own reply on the matter.
Makes me wonder whether the old guard & the OG Blizzard creators left the company due to “creative differences”, “retirement”, “spending more time with the family” or in reality it was that they got completely demolished by a genuinely enthusiastic game company turning corpo and utter disgusting.
Reminder that bill cosby is out of prison on a technicality.
Courts (which are not infallible, and sometimes corrupt) don’t exist to enact justice, they exist to enact the law. I’ve got little doubt from people’s accounts and the document naming Afrasiabi directly that he’s guilty of what’s written, and by extension it looks like Brack was aware and did very little until Afrasiabi’s quiet exit from the company.
Taken from PC Gamer:
An Activision Blizzard spokesperson responded to the accusations in a statement sent to PC Gamer, which claims the filing includes “distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past.” It goes on to say that the DFEH was “required by law to adequately investigate and to have good faith discussions with us to better understand and to resolve any claims or concerns before going to litigation, but they failed to do so. Instead, they rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we will demonstrate in court.”
The Activision statement also responds specifically to the complaint’s suggestion that an employee’s death by suicide was related to harassment, saying, “We are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family.”
Absolute state, when a multimillionaire company simply denies accusations, assuming it is the best variant of damage control or even something people would accept
The full text response is really bizarre. It reads more like an angry rant than it does an official PR blurb.
Jeez, man. I was just getting back into the swing of WoW but I don’t think I can support Blizzard now, in good conscience.
I’m starting to wonder just how prevalent this is in game dev companies - it feels like more and more are reaching the surface. It’s easy to feel one doesn’t have a place in gaming communities sometimes, with how some act, but knowing it goes on behind the scenes too…?
Truly horrid.
Even to a complete layperson with very little understanding of US law, it reads as very suspect. Accusing the state of what basically amounts to lying about the company is extremely dumb.
for anyone interested in the legal stuff, this poster made a good analysis of the situation and in particular the response from blizzard
Don’t you guys have public relations?
Jesus christ hahahaha