Two new in-depth reports by The Washington Post and Bloomberg provided new details about Blizzard Entertainment’s environment that led to California lawsuits against the company. Most of the reports from The Washington Post and Bloomberg are consistent with what has been accused – Blizzard Entertainment has created an environment where women are often discriminated against, sexually harassed or attacked – but they do something about certain aspects of the company’s culture. More detailed description.
According to the latest reports, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) has filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, accusing the publishers of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft of discrimination and sexual harassment based on gender. Activision Blizzard’s official response to the lawsuit accused DFEH of distorting (…) and false descriptions and insisted that the picture depicted was not the Blizzard workplace today.
An open letter opposing the official response was signed by thousands of current and former Activision Blizzard employees, and a strike was held last week. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick (Bobby Kotick) finally apologized for the company’s initial reaction, calling it insensitive. Blizzard Entertainment president J. Allen Brack has left his post as president.
Both reports explored one thing in depth, that is, it is said that in Activision Blizzard’s drinking culture, many teams can obtain alcohol at work. In addition to the cube crawls described in the DFEH lawsuit, where employees play between cubicles after being drunk, and act inappropriately (sometimes harassing) female employees, Bloomberg also detailed that employees are drunk during working hours Post-vomiting, heavy drinking and bullying after getting off work. According to the Wall Street Journal, this atmosphere was allowed to continue until 2019, when the company made some efforts, including imposing a two-glass limit at the event.
According to the Wall Street Journal, between 2018 and 2020, three senior leaders were fired for harassment or other toxic behavior. These people include former World of Warcraft creative director Alex Afrasibi (he was specifically named in the lawsuit), eSports team executive Taylor-Rosen and CTO Ben Kilgore, He was trained to take over the company from co-founder Mike Moheim before being fired.
Perhaps the most noteworthy thing revealed by these latest reports is the impact of Blizzard Entertainment’s growing influence on the studio’s culture. As per the report, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and his deputy have been putting more pressure on Blizzard Entertainment in recent years, especially since J. Allen-Bluck took over. According to Bloomberg News, this only exacerbated the toxic culture of the studio. Blizzard’s developers were forced to do more with less money, and because of fear of being laid off, employees were unwilling to put their teams at a disadvantage by reporting misconduct.
