I can't even imagine the gall necessary to tell your secretary you were "going to have her killed", then state that there's no culture problem.
Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems
71–80 of 161 posts
Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems
#72Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems
#73Remarkable, isn't it? Blizzard's knack for consistently managing to misalign their PR strategy with big launch events like Diablo IV is almost as intricate as their game design. There's an unexpected plot twist even George R.R. Martin would be envious of. It's almost as if they've transposed their in-game narratives into their corporate affairs, with similar plot tension and dramatic arcs. One might argue that the co…
> It's almost as if they've transposed their in-game narratives into their corporate affairs, with similar plot tension and dramatic arcs. Funny you say that, a writer at Blizzard just got fired for writing a satirical "greedy CEO" character, after a high-level executive played that part of the game: https://twitter.com/covingtown/status/1663998815458951168
All this stuff makes me feel pretty good about boycotting Blizzard games since the starcraft II cheating scandal. WCIII TFT is still my favorite game/game experience of all time because of normal AND custom games, and blizzard will never ever come close to that level of quality again.
Actions to save face describe Blizzard pretty well nowadays. The Vivendi sale announcement on their classic battle.net page really was the beginning of the end. Even me in middle school felt bad reading that garbage.
Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems
#74It's a topic where a company can't win but if you look at the numbers from the report it's somewhat interesting to see that, among other, women are paid more and promoted earlier than men while they hire more minorities than expected. 98% of the employee agree with "My manager treats me with respect". They had 36 substantiated cases on 17 000 employees.
Naturally, this is their version but at the same time I think it's important to discuss the topic beyond anecdotes. Similar to how I think working from home often gets a black and white veil. Would love to see some more in-depth articles.
Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's almost as if they've transposed their in-game narratives into their corporate affairs, with similar plot tension and dramatic arcs. Funny you say that, a writer at Blizzard just got fired for writing a satirical "greedy CEO" character, after a high-level executive played that part of the game: https://twitter.com/covingtown/status/1663998815458951168
That seems hard to believe at face value. Maybe there's another side to this story?
Didn't a high-ranking guy sexually harass a woman to the point of suicide at this company? I can believe the company in which a person in leadership sexually harassed another employee to suicide can also have petty executives that demand firing when they feel thin-skinned about their wealth.
Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems
#76Thank you for reminding me, Bobby, why I will never buy ActiBliz games again. Making addictive games rife with microtransactions is no reason to overlook the rest of ActiBliz' history.
Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems
#77The title should be changed, it's Activision Blizzard not Blizzard CEO.
This is not just a pedantic argument, Blizzard CEO on its own will lead to a significant number of people assuming a different person, Mike Ybarra, Blizzard's President.
Agreed, I thought it was Ybarra who had made these statements based on the headline “Blizzard CEO”, not Kotick.
Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
For good or ill. Morhaime was also head of the company when a lot of the harassment went down.
When this happened and it happened late in the history of the company, they were hoarded by Activision's people already. Morhaime kept the company from the usual bosos for as long as he could, but he had sold shares in the early days so it was only a matter of time before his dream haven would fall to evil.
I think this line of thinking, assuming the rock stars can do no wrong, is what lead Blizzard down the way it did. Morhaime has acknowledged that he was leader when much of this stuff went down and that he bore responsibility. Alex Afrasiabi was hired in 2004 so we can't just blame this on Activision's people, he was part of the old Blizzard guard.
Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems
#79I was a huge Overwatch fan. Seeing them stop development on it and announcing Overwatch 2 as a whole new game was what made me leave the game. The promise of Overwatch 2 was a story mode, a skills system, more maps and more heroes. Now after years of development and selling the game with future promises to millions of fans, all they have is cancelling PvE and skills system, and one or two heroes and maps. This is not…
> Harvard MBA Types Steve Jobs: "It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running…
Story of our time. Contrary to popular belief, market capitalism isn’t inherently good. It needs competition for the magic to work, ideally a lot of it. Otherwise you get Comcast.
Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's almost as if they've transposed their in-game narratives into their corporate affairs, with similar plot tension and dramatic arcs. Funny you say that, a writer at Blizzard just got fired for writing a satirical "greedy CEO" character, after a high-level executive played that part of the game: https://twitter.com/covingtown/status/1663998815458951168
That seems hard to believe at face value. Maybe there's another side to this story?
The part where they used it in ads makes it certain there is more to the story.