I did apologize like three posts below that.
Just pointing that out.
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Sure was something to find out that oh, by the way, all of the cool fun haha Blizzard ‘classics’ are complicit in creating a company culture of sexual harassment and funnily sharing intimate pictures of a coworker for laughs at a work event until she commits suicide, jesus christ
make them all pay (and don’t pay them a single dime anymore), and that includes metzen & co tbh, here’s hoping the legal system fecks 'em
Yeah, makes you wonder how much of it has spread into the ex-Blizz offshoots and how prevalent this frat-culture mentality are there.
I mean, most of gaming companies are like this, so I guess it’s pretty easy to guess the answer, though maybe smaller groups are better… maybe . . .
I think the Civilization team has been pretty fine throughout 2020 with their updates and look pretty tightly knit??
Sorry, this thread went a little bit nuts while I was at work 
Old boys covering for one another’s filthy, disgusting business never change.
At the very least, it seems that the likes of Metzen are complicit in what happened, if not directly involved. I hope they’re ashamed of what they helped to normalise.
Wonder what Metzen was about to tweet when he just tweeted out (and then quickly deleted) ‘Chris metzen’.
ed balls
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Why did this discussion spend so long tepidly describing it as “workplace culture”?
Is it because playing Devil’s Advocate and downplaying “sustained sexual harassment, both physically and verbally, promotional discrimination and an actual suicide alleged to be connected to distributing someone’s nudes, brought to light as result of a two-year state investigation and likely well-substantiated” is too hard?
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Blizzard stinks. Leave a like if you agree.
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So can anyone paint a clear picture of what Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is at this point?
Bear in mind these are the things we know about thanks to legal proceedings and journalists doing their jobs and not all the shady murky things they are up to in the background:
- They lay off 800 employees from non-development teams to cut costs
- Their employees are so underpaid they can’t even afford to buy food at their own cafeteria and can barely make ends meet while living in California
- They have crunch periods and massive teams working on their projects
- They have an untold number of LGMBTQ+ and female-only workshops and councils that they boast proudly of in interviews and on Twitter as they virtue signal about their inclusiveness
- The old guard all but left to do their own thing with their own companies
- Said old guard as well as current female and LBTQ+ employees are ferociously defending their design choices, storywriting, narrative and representation in their video games, decrying those criticizing them based on race and gender
- They at the same time can’t scrounge together enough talent and direction to churn out expansions and content for the games that made them unfathomably rich
- Despite the wage gap and crunch there’s a frat boy culture that promotes doing anything but actual work in the office spaces and focus on cubecrawling, harrassment, playing games and just being a workplace menace
- The old guard and current management enable and promote this working environment
- The actual work and effort is done by the women enduring this culture, while the white men are busy trashing their cubicles and groping women, and yet we still get unmitigated fecal matter in terms of WoW content for the past few years
- ActiBlizzard still publish record profits for their financial quarters amidst all of this
What is going on in there J. Allen Brack? Did you guys live like rockstars and the next generation of employees thought that’s a legacy they should continue while having 0 talent? Did Bobby Kotick just let your company turn into a giant money laundering scheme as the interns are developing Shadowlands? Did Ion get his position so he can lawyerspeak away all this trash?
This is comical lmao
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Just a quick add to this: From Schreier’s article today about WC3 Reforged, this layoff did impact gamedev stuff too. Indirectly, perhaps, but regardless it was still affected.
The team, which had a reputation of taking on outcasts from other Blizzard departments, was restricted in hiring due to a limited budget. Some people had to do multiple jobs at once, working many nights and weekends to try to finish the game. Technological obstacles and conflicts among the team only exacerbated the problems. A mass layoff of nearly 800 people in February 2019 hollowed out Blizzard’s support departments, which also hurt the team. “We were missing and/or had the wrong people in certain lead roles," the postmortem said. “The team structure didn’t set up the project for success.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-22/inside-activision-blizzard-s-botched-warcraft-iii-reforged-game
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What a wonderful day on God’s green earth, time to read this wonderful thread where nobody attempts to defend systemic racist misogyny
Oh hey boush
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You called?
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Okay you made me laugh you get one point
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gently steers you towards the Ignore list function and it’s resultant bliss
He was one of the first on the list but periodically I am reminded of his existence and rampant bigotry and it makes my day a little worse so I make jokes at his expense
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Don’t mind me, just reinstalling ESO to give that another try…
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Same, I am yet to try Blackwood
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Enjoy the download downtime 