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Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

theguardian.com

21–30 of 199 posts

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#21

eSports teams and streamers didn’t post on social media for the duration of the walk out. Am I missing something? Was this supposed to do literally anything to support it? I’m genuinely puzzled. That’s like saying I stopped writing in my journal for the duration of women’s suffrage “in solidarity”. Aren’t you supposed to do something people will notice?

does being written up in the Guardian not count as being noticed?

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#22

Is there a VC out there that can just throw a few tens of millions of dollars at these employees and literally just teleport them from Blizzard to NewBlizzard in the same roles in a new company with a culture they prefer? I'm actually surprised this isn't "a thing". If a large percentage of a well known, profitable company doesn't agree with a direction it's taking... why doesn't a VC or private equity just help fina…

That VC would need a lot of confidence in the team to be willing to fully fund them with no revenue, clients, or IP.

These people are just inherently creative, just look at hearthstone which was a prototype "quickly made" by Brode and friends while inside Blizz

They could easily create large IPs and games if they so desired/needed, after all that's what they were hired to do in the first place

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#23
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an odd, blanket statement considering 1. The quality/longevity of their games 2. The variance in genres they produce games in. Comparing Starcraft to Candy Crush may help elucidate how off you are with the vape/fb comparison.

GP, while phrased a bit stridently, isn't totally off base here. Arguably, Blizzard led the charge in proliferating RPG systems into virtually all other genres and they proved the popular power of "grind" based systems. The original RTS games (Warcraft 1-3, Starcraft 1) did not really contain these systems. But virtually everything else Blizzard has produced (including Starcraft 2) has grinding & collecting in it. As…

> To be fair, you can't blame Blizzard entirely for spreading these design choices.

Many would blame Activision. And not a few would say that Blizzard sold out. To me they seem to be mostly milking the cash cow, and they’re hardly alone in doing it.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That VC would need a lot of confidence in the team to be willing to fully fund them with no revenue, clients, or IP.

Sure, but to whatever extent the human resources are the engine that drives creation of revenue, clients, and IP, it would seem that taking a large chunk of an existing working machine would have better odds than some other startup, right?

That's the point, they aren't. You need developers to execute but with today's triple A franchise titles and marketing-heavy launches it's not sufficient.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#25
post #6

Did the walkouts at Google change anything? Not only did Sundar enable the disgusting, predatory behavior of Vic Gundotra and Andy Rubin, but as far as I can tell, he’s still a darling of the press. Even on HN Sundar and Google get the kid gloves despite the abhorrence of the culture they created. Walkouts are pointless. True Employee organization and collective bargaining is the only answer to holding execs accounta…

A major global publication has written an article about it. Spotlight is shone on Activision Blizzard's culture.

We have seen that the only way to get any sort of customer support out of big tech companies is making noise on social media. And it works when enough noise is made. This is the next level of that: making noise in publications with global reach. The management will be wise not to ignore it.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#26
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a whole line of discussion to be had around the realities of outsourcing to be had, but I’d like to focus on discussing employee rights. Are we OK with employees being treated like this? Are we willing to make concessions on our relationships with our employer under threat of losing our jobs (outsourcing is just one of the many ways a job can be taken away). I’m of the thinking that companies should not be ab…

Unions do this, they negotiate agreements that are fair and equitable for the members. I grew up with unions and have seen them go out of favour, and the practices that caused the unions in the first place are rising again. The part I find surprising/despicable is how much money is put towards denigrating unions so that the workers think they're bad - the recent amazon vote comes to mind.

Well I grew up on the other side of unions where my parents couldn't get jobs because a strong union protected those lucky enough to get in early, with no concern for their skills or performance. The same behaviors that people here are so shocked by are just as common in the old school unions you're proposing as the solution.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#27
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a whole line of discussion to be had around the realities of outsourcing to be had, but I’d like to focus on discussing employee rights. Are we OK with employees being treated like this? Are we willing to make concessions on our relationships with our employer under threat of losing our jobs (outsourcing is just one of the many ways a job can be taken away). I’m of the thinking that companies should not be ab…

Unions do this, they negotiate agreements that are fair and equitable for the members. I grew up with unions and have seen them go out of favour, and the practices that caused the unions in the first place are rising again. The part I find surprising/despicable is how much money is put towards denigrating unions so that the workers think they're bad - the recent amazon vote comes to mind.

Well I grew up on the other side of unions where my parents couldn't get jobs because a strong union protected those lucky enough to get in early, with no concern for their skills or performance. The same behaviors that people here are so shocked by are busy as common in the old school unions you're proposing as the solution.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#28

Is there a VC out there that can just throw a few tens of millions of dollars at these employees and literally just teleport them from Blizzard to NewBlizzard in the same roles in a new company with a culture they prefer? I'm actually surprised this isn't "a thing". If a large percentage of a well known, profitable company doesn't agree with a direction it's taking... why doesn't a VC or private equity just help fina…

Why would you ever take this VC’s money if this was their thing?

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#29
post #6

Did the walkouts at Google change anything? Not only did Sundar enable the disgusting, predatory behavior of Vic Gundotra and Andy Rubin, but as far as I can tell, he’s still a darling of the press. Even on HN Sundar and Google get the kid gloves despite the abhorrence of the culture they created. Walkouts are pointless. True Employee organization and collective bargaining is the only answer to holding execs accounta…

A major global publication has written an article about it. Spotlight is shone on Activision Blizzard's culture. We have seen that the only way to get any sort of customer support out of big tech companies is making noise on social media. And it works when enough noise is made. This is the next level of that: making noise in publications with global reach. The management will be wise not to ignore it.

[deleted]

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions do this, they negotiate agreements that are fair and equitable for the members. I grew up with unions and have seen them go out of favour, and the practices that caused the unions in the first place are rising again. The part I find surprising/despicable is how much money is put towards denigrating unions so that the workers think they're bad - the recent amazon vote comes to mind.

Well I grew up on the other side of unions where my parents couldn't get jobs because a strong union protected those lucky enough to get in early, with no concern for their skills or performance. The same behaviors that people here are so shocked by are busy as common in the old school unions you're proposing as the solution.

This specific criticism goes both ways and isn't unique to unions, though. Even in a non-union workplace, the bosses' friends are likely to be protected from termination despite bad performance. Maybe one of your parents ends up sick or injured so their performance at work is suffering and you really want them to be protected while they get through that temporary hurdle instead of being laid off and replaced with cheap new labor. Eliminating unions doesn't eliminate the issues you're talking about.

As far as not being able to get a job goes, it sounds like your real complaint is that there aren't enough jobs. That will be true whether or not a workplace is unionized in most cases since the employer has a certain amount of work they need done by a certain number of people.

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