> In a letter to employees made public in October, Ms. Townsend said Activision had “exited” 20 employees and another 20 had faced disciplinary action. “We know there’s a desire to know about the outcome when misconduct is reported,” Ms. Townsend wrote. “Sometimes, there are privacy reasons we can’t share. But where we can, we will be sharing more information with you. We will also be providing you regular, aggregate data about investigative outcomes.”
They fired 20 people, not the CEO, and haven’t disclosed who it what reason these people were fired for.
Oh no, he's trying to save face and trying to make it look like he fixed the issues - even though he was a participant and he allowed this culture to develop.
My bet is on security engineers and QA. If I could bet on this - I would have my money on those people being fired. Always annoying at meetings, constantly being downers /s
This has the feel of the CEO rounding up as many patsies as he can find to scapegoat in order to placate the investors.
No doubt the culture there is rotten to the core, the rumors of the horrible work environment and harassment are widely known, however, I predict you won't see too many of the exec team having to leave. It'll be all low level expendable IC's that the CEO won't have to encounter at the country club after the sacking.
Surely the timing of this is coincidence, what with Microsoft announcing their purchase of Blizzard?
Nope, probably not. Kinda sad to see that’s what it took to motivate them to take action. I’m not a gamer and have no horse in this race, but what initially seemed like a change of pace turns out to be the entirely laughable status quo of management giving lip service to these issues.
Given the timing, there should be no question that this was done in direct response to the acquisition, and only expendable tokens have been remove from play. Meanwhile, the management that led this shit show will avoid any consequences and laugh themselves all the way to the bank.
Kotick has taken a dishonorable path. He should be first person out the door.
Situation in the industry feels kind of bleak to me now. One of these days I am going to be able to trick my investors into letting me start a game studio. I really don't understand why there isn't more intense competition at the AAA tier. I know for a fact I can do it cheaper and faster. Not sure about better, but I'm willing to fail a few times...
> I really don't understand why there isn't more intense competition at the AAA tier.
it's enormously difficult to make a game and not a repeatable business model.
> I know for a fact I can do it cheaper and faster.
To create the products they're making the big dogs are leveraging years and years and years of tech R&D development and tooling and enormous amounts of manpower.
To be able to create a hit AAA without any of this is relying on capturing lightning in a bottle.
If one stumbles upon some novel gameplay that propels your game to notoriety, the design will be copied by the big AAA devs next release cycle.
That's basically what AA games are, and are sometimes somewhat successful...but usually not as successful as AAA games. Then you have the indie and solo developers flooding Steam with mostly low-quality games with a few gems...making it extremely difficult to get noticed. So not only do you need a game idea that is attractive to gamers (AAA games are established franchise with decades of releases and marketing), it also has to be implemented well (see the failures of this years CoD and Battlefield) AND you need a huge marketing budget to get your game in front of eyes (maybe you could get lucky going "viral") to stand out from everyone else.
"They expect one of us in the wreckage brother" as one Reddit comment put it.
Bobby has to go, no matter if this is "his fault" or not. Shareholders lost a lot of money, Blizzard lost a lot of reputation. It happened on his watch and new blood is needed. To be honest I think the studio is lost, we can only hope that some of the spin off studios will turn out to be great.
A lot of the original Blizzard people have said the company's just dead - it's Activision now. Everything and everyone that made Blizzard good has gone. And it shows - they're botching games in ways completely uncharacteristic of the old company. Not even a vague sense of culture made it through to the new company.
And mark my words, this won't be the last instance of severe employee mistreatment and harassment.
My fear is that individual perpetrators have been fired but not the leaders who buried complaints or their own inaction dissuaded victims from complaining.
Activision Blizzard is dead to me forever. No amount of token firing will change that.
However, if all of their IP were to be given to a completely different company and Kotick were to be made penniless for the rest of his natural life, I could see myself playing a formerly-Blizzard game again.
I’ve worked in the gaming industry and I was surprised how some fairly standard questions about creativity, playing games, character development, etc. lead to detailed insights into the candidate’s personality.
We’ve had candidates answer “You have to organise a fun evening for the 80 employees of this office. Your budget is $10. What do you do?” (a question meant to leverage their understanding that 70 of those 80 are insanely creative people who barely need a pen and paper to have fun) by suggesting going to a strip-club.
“What’s your favourite game?” is a staple (no answer is disqualifying in most cases); “Which character do you play?” the obvious follow-up when it’s an option. Candidates have suggested with blunt words that their pick characters in certain video games because they are female, well-endowed and barely dressed. The word “jiggle” was used, with a nervous laughter that I had to describe in my feedback as ‘cringey’.
If one of those people understand that they did wrong, I’m hoping they’ll give considerate answers to what are standard, common questions. I’ve never heard a full contrition during an interview (not on that matter) but that could be an interesting conversation.
If they think that they did nothing wrong sexualising their colleagues, I would expect hiring manager to notice a nervous laughter, connect that to the previous employer and date of departure, and possibly prod discretely; “What do you think is missing in the game industry nowadays?” is a good follow-up. If they walked passed a female employee, I might ask her if she noticed any sideway look.
1) Anyone in the industry presumably knows about this news. If someone’s end date at Activision Blizzard is January 2022, they’re going to have a strong suspicion.
2) Backchannel reference checks (very warranted in this case) will likely confirm it. Activision Blizzard wouldn’t confirm anything other than start and end dates and any candidate-provided references are going to say good things, so it’s important to network and ask somebody who worked there at the time.
What's the need of stigmatizing these people? If they did wrong, they have been fired for it. They don't need to be permanently punished for a mistake. That won't help anyone.
I'm sure they could figure it out based on when their employment with Activision-Blizzard ended. Do they want to risk being wrong with the guess and passing up a good employee because of it? Possibly not.
Today I only play Heroes of the Storm from Blizzard... It's a nice alternative to other MOBAs, simple and fast when compared to. But I don't waste a penny on their store nor give any helpful feedback. I just play with my friends, and when we're done, that's it, logout and forget.
It is a cultural problem but the game industry is not SV based. Blizzard Activision is SoCal, Ubisoft is French (with studios in many locations). I worked at a studio owned by Activision (in SoCal) in the early 2000s and the culture was certainly toxic.
I just find it funny how often commenters here assume all broism originates in SV.
Anecdotically, to this date and after 4 workplaces (FAANG included), I am yet to see what a bro culture is.
To my eyes and experience over 10 years interacting with people, I have seen nothing of the sort, for which I believe this kind of culture must be very conditioned to the right (or wrong?) mix of individuals that by far do not make justice to the average SV engineer.
Leadership starts and ends at the top. Sometimes it never starts.
I do wonder if the games industry is close to wide-scale reckoning on working conditions. It really does just sound brutal and even more exploitative than Hollywood. I've personally suffered mild enterprise ERP burnout, but the kind of stuff I read about in the game industry is just next level.
Blizzard was never a privately held company or not in the sense that founders had real autonomy. I believe Michael Morhaime had a lot to do with why Blizzard could do what it did. I remember reading in interviews that he defended the soon(tm) mindset and steered the owners away from chasing quarterly reports. I also believe that Chris Metzen was a key figure in upholding a geeky and fun culture. I was genuinely impressed by Blizzard in my youth and dreamed of working there one day.
But something happened after the success of WoW the company grew quickly and with that came some bad people and after the merger, Bobby Kotick could exert his influence.
Blizzard stopped being a geeky place for geeks and culture eroded slowly.
I also believe that the original core Blizzard people were struggling with leaving the company in the hands of the next generation. They wanted to believe that the people they had in the company would carry the torch and embody the same ideals. It didn't happen.
The saddest day was when Metzen announced his departure. It was felt by many as a shock. He was a beacon of hope and light but I also think the was struggling with some personal family matters. He now felt the work was no longer in his best interest and left. A lot of Blizzard veterans followed suit. I don't think a single one of the original people still work there, with the exception of Samwise Didier. Blizzard still has a very strong art department.
I believe Michael Morhaime did what he could but ultimately realized that he didn't have the autonomy to fix it. The problem had grown to big. Maybe they were naive? I mean, these people struck gold and built one of worlds most renown gaming brands and the worlds most successful MMO to date.
On the flip side. All the key people have moved on to found new gaming ventures and I believe this time they've had the capital to fund it themselves. Hoping they stay independent and build great experiences for us to enjoy.
Lots of people want to work in the video game industry, so they'll put up with low pay, long hours, and apparently sexual harassment for a really long time.
[+] [-] kyrra|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pm90|4 years ago|reply
They fired 20 people, not the CEO, and haven’t disclosed who it what reason these people were fired for.
Smells to me like major scrapegoating.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|4 years ago|reply
Oh no, he's trying to save face and trying to make it look like he fixed the issues - even though he was a participant and he allowed this culture to develop.
[+] [-] toyg|4 years ago|reply
Is this a typo of "scapegoating", or a conscious neologism to indicate "scraping (the bottom of the barrel) to look for a scapegoat"...?
[+] [-] daoismyname|4 years ago|reply
cough cough massive severance package cough cough
[+] [-] LegitShady|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willcipriano|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ransom1538|4 years ago|reply
My bet is on security engineers and QA. If I could bet on this - I would have my money on those people being fired. Always annoying at meetings, constantly being downers /s
[+] [-] alisonkisk|4 years ago|reply
Not disclosing a reason is the opposite of scapegoating. It's downplaying to avoid a fresh news cycle with lurid details.
[+] [-] Simon_O_Rourke|4 years ago|reply
No doubt the culture there is rotten to the core, the rumors of the horrible work environment and harassment are widely known, however, I predict you won't see too many of the exec team having to leave. It'll be all low level expendable IC's that the CEO won't have to encounter at the country club after the sacking.
[+] [-] voakbasda|4 years ago|reply
Nope, probably not. Kinda sad to see that’s what it took to motivate them to take action. I’m not a gamer and have no horse in this race, but what initially seemed like a change of pace turns out to be the entirely laughable status quo of management giving lip service to these issues.
Given the timing, there should be no question that this was done in direct response to the acquisition, and only expendable tokens have been remove from play. Meanwhile, the management that led this shit show will avoid any consequences and laugh themselves all the way to the bank.
[+] [-] bob1029|4 years ago|reply
Situation in the industry feels kind of bleak to me now. One of these days I am going to be able to trick my investors into letting me start a game studio. I really don't understand why there isn't more intense competition at the AAA tier. I know for a fact I can do it cheaper and faster. Not sure about better, but I'm willing to fail a few times...
[+] [-] nchi3|4 years ago|reply
I think you might be underestimating how many man hours it takes to create the content for an AAA game.
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|4 years ago|reply
it's enormously difficult to make a game and not a repeatable business model.
> I know for a fact I can do it cheaper and faster.
To create the products they're making the big dogs are leveraging years and years and years of tech R&D development and tooling and enormous amounts of manpower.
To be able to create a hit AAA without any of this is relying on capturing lightning in a bottle.
If one stumbles upon some novel gameplay that propels your game to notoriety, the design will be copied by the big AAA devs next release cycle.
[+] [-] vinyl7|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Terretta|4 years ago|reply
This isn’t a fish.
And as a kid living on the water, saw plenty of dead fish — usually the head is the last identifiable part to go (middle goes first).
[+] [-] usbqk|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Tangokat|4 years ago|reply
Bobby has to go, no matter if this is "his fault" or not. Shareholders lost a lot of money, Blizzard lost a lot of reputation. It happened on his watch and new blood is needed. To be honest I think the studio is lost, we can only hope that some of the spin off studios will turn out to be great.
[+] [-] meatsauce|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SerLava|4 years ago|reply
And mark my words, this won't be the last instance of severe employee mistreatment and harassment.
[+] [-] cletus|4 years ago|reply
My fear is that individual perpetrators have been fired but not the leaders who buried complaints or their own inaction dissuaded victims from complaining.
A fish rots from the head.
[+] [-] RNCTX|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robaato|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bovermyer|4 years ago|reply
However, if all of their IP were to be given to a completely different company and Kotick were to be made penniless for the rest of his natural life, I could see myself playing a formerly-Blizzard game again.
[+] [-] JohnJamesRambo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bertil|4 years ago|reply
We’ve had candidates answer “You have to organise a fun evening for the 80 employees of this office. Your budget is $10. What do you do?” (a question meant to leverage their understanding that 70 of those 80 are insanely creative people who barely need a pen and paper to have fun) by suggesting going to a strip-club.
“What’s your favourite game?” is a staple (no answer is disqualifying in most cases); “Which character do you play?” the obvious follow-up when it’s an option. Candidates have suggested with blunt words that their pick characters in certain video games because they are female, well-endowed and barely dressed. The word “jiggle” was used, with a nervous laughter that I had to describe in my feedback as ‘cringey’.
If one of those people understand that they did wrong, I’m hoping they’ll give considerate answers to what are standard, common questions. I’ve never heard a full contrition during an interview (not on that matter) but that could be an interesting conversation. If they think that they did nothing wrong sexualising their colleagues, I would expect hiring manager to notice a nervous laughter, connect that to the previous employer and date of departure, and possibly prod discretely; “What do you think is missing in the game industry nowadays?” is a good follow-up. If they walked passed a female employee, I might ask her if she noticed any sideway look.
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|4 years ago|reply
1) Anyone in the industry presumably knows about this news. If someone’s end date at Activision Blizzard is January 2022, they’re going to have a strong suspicion.
2) Backchannel reference checks (very warranted in this case) will likely confirm it. Activision Blizzard wouldn’t confirm anything other than start and end dates and any candidate-provided references are going to say good things, so it’s important to network and ask somebody who worked there at the time.
[+] [-] aspaviento|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ziml77|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dijonman2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VWWHFSfQ|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] john_moscow|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] boringg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rickstanley|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joe-collins|4 years ago|reply
This is just a summary of the last half year. If you've been keeping an eye on ABK, this isn't news.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MangoCoffee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seattle_spring|4 years ago|reply
My guess would be "no" for the following reasons:
1. Neither Blizzard nor Activision nor Ubisoft are headquartered in Silicon Valley.
2. "Silicon Valley bro culture" itself seems to be a largely manufactured story.
[+] [-] vsef|4 years ago|reply
I just find it funny how often commenters here assume all broism originates in SV.
[+] [-] hemloc_io|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gotbeans|4 years ago|reply
To my eyes and experience over 10 years interacting with people, I have seen nothing of the sort, for which I believe this kind of culture must be very conditioned to the right (or wrong?) mix of individuals that by far do not make justice to the average SV engineer.
[+] [-] mysterydip|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] claaams|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gonzo41|4 years ago|reply
I do wonder if the games industry is close to wide-scale reckoning on working conditions. It really does just sound brutal and even more exploitative than Hollywood. I've personally suffered mild enterprise ERP burnout, but the kind of stuff I read about in the game industry is just next level.
[+] [-] framecowbird|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] john567|4 years ago|reply
But something happened after the success of WoW the company grew quickly and with that came some bad people and after the merger, Bobby Kotick could exert his influence.
Blizzard stopped being a geeky place for geeks and culture eroded slowly.
I also believe that the original core Blizzard people were struggling with leaving the company in the hands of the next generation. They wanted to believe that the people they had in the company would carry the torch and embody the same ideals. It didn't happen.
The saddest day was when Metzen announced his departure. It was felt by many as a shock. He was a beacon of hope and light but I also think the was struggling with some personal family matters. He now felt the work was no longer in his best interest and left. A lot of Blizzard veterans followed suit. I don't think a single one of the original people still work there, with the exception of Samwise Didier. Blizzard still has a very strong art department.
I believe Michael Morhaime did what he could but ultimately realized that he didn't have the autonomy to fix it. The problem had grown to big. Maybe they were naive? I mean, these people struck gold and built one of worlds most renown gaming brands and the worlds most successful MMO to date.
On the flip side. All the key people have moved on to found new gaming ventures and I believe this time they've had the capital to fund it themselves. Hoping they stay independent and build great experiences for us to enjoy.
[+] [-] dehrmann|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] LocalH|4 years ago|reply