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Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems
- outside1234 3y agoLooks like Satya is going to be making a replacement soon. Or not, because DEI was never actually more important than money. Will be interesting to see
- alex_lav 3y agoBlizzard as a company sucks though. As in, even if you’re a brutal capitalist and don’t care at all about people stealing and drinking their coworkers breast milk, they just keep failing spectacularly at actually shipping games and getting people to play them. If you’re Microsoft, I’m not sure why you’d keep most of their exec team _even if you don’t care about the culture_
- braymundo 3y agoDiablo IV is shaping up to be very successful, though.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoIt'll probably be successful but not still-played-in-25-years successful.
- Thaxll 3y agoWell all of their game are being played 15+ years later on, there is no reason why it won't be the case with d4.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoOnline-only requirement. Such a shame and wasted long-term potential for D2R, D3 and likely especially D4. Compare with Diablo 2 legacy where mods like Median XL are still going strong ! (I guess that they are stuck in a bad place with their games being so popular that they attract a lot of unwelcome attention, but IMHO still not worth it for a game that is much more cooperative than competitive.)
- Thaxll 3y agoAll Blizzard game have online features, they never shutdown an online game, never, Diablo 1 is still running since 1996. I don't see issues with online only tbh.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoNo, the Lost Vikings for instance don't. And last I checked they seem to have given up on supporting Diablo 1, and let GoG deal with it instead ? (Its online MP has security flaws.) And Blizzard cannot run a game if Blizzard doesn't exist. But even before that happens, you can already see the wasted potential : D3 (and D4) has no modding whatsoever, compare with D2R (though mods there are still heavily restricted and they have also removed normal MP from it) and especially D2LoD legacy ! https://median-xl.com/ https://median-xl.com/
- Thaxll 3y agolost vikings is not a blizzard game, and they still run diablo 1 matchmaking it's not gog.
- scruple 3y agoBroodwar, SC:R, and D2R seems to be telling a different story. Hell, WoW is close to 20 years old at this point.
- alex_lav 3y agoSo their old games. What of OW(2), D3/D4, whatever mobile abomination they made for Diablo, Hearthstone or HoTS will be played for that long? Any? I would wager D2 is played more than D3 by a mile. OW1 was already killed. OW2 is dying. I'm not even sure the OW franchise will be around in four years, letalone 15.
- scruple 3y agoHuh? This thread is about their old games that are still being played.
- alex_lav 3y agoYes, and someone pointed out that their new games aren’t of the same caliber as their old games, as in, their new games won’t be played in 15 years. My comment is that you didn’t list any new game as having the same staying power.
- scruple 3y agoWell, we'll find out any day now where D4 sits, right? I know where I'd put my money if I were a betting man.
- bee_rider 3y agoSince it is a partially offline game, there doesn’t seem to be any way to calculate the Diablo 2 population. But I’d be shocked if there were more D2 players than D3.
- alex_lav 3y agoIt took them 11 years and 2-3 tries at making the game before they could ship it, though.
- surgical_fire 3y agoI wonder why. I don't really care about the scandals, but man, Blizzard games have been shit for a long, long time. Gone are the days of Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3.
- yifanl 3y agoI mean, their track record is fine. Starcraft 2: The age of Blizzard RTS is over now, but it was the best RTS ever made and the devs left a final patch with a massively expanded community tooling. Overwatch: Was absurdly successful and then decided to shoot themselves in the foot canning development, but the weakness there was hardly the game itself. Hearthstone: I do not respect the design choices the game makes, but I admit it's practically defined Digital Card Games as a genre ever since it's come out. World of Warcraft: Questionable storytelling aside, I've only heard good things about this from my MMO playing friends. I have never had the time to play an MMO myself, but I'll defer to them on this.
- darth_avocado 3y agoI 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 a game dev problem. This is a company that has excellent game dev talent but is run by Harvard MBA types who aren’t gamers problem.
- justrealist 3y ago> but is run by Harvard MBA types who aren’t gamers This is going to piss people off, but that's because people who sink huge portions of their spare time and energy into video games do not become CEOs. "Getting high on your own supply" doesn't set you up for professional exceptionalism.
- nrb 3y agoI’ll be charitable and grant that you’re likely talking about a very specific type of CEO who ends up at a very specific type of game studio; usually one that stopped caring about the quality of the games that it produces and instead envisions the studio as a financial engineering play. Elsewhere, there are plenty of game studios that have product-focused CEOs who are gamers and care deeply about creating memorable experiences, with the playtime to prove it.
- legosexmagic 3y agothats a very complicated way to say "i dont like young people"
- justrealist 3y agoI like young people a lot! Which is why I think we should massively restrict the amount of digital poison corporations are allowed to pump into their veins.
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- djbusby 3y agoFrustrating when a CEO blames a nebulous "bogeyman" for their problems. What a low-effort deflection. Do you even root-cause analysis bro? gitgud
- karmakaze 3y agoAfter reading the title a couple times, I was able to parse it to mean that the blame is placed such, because the company problem is seen as the exposure of, rather than actual happenings. If so, they are the problem.
- davidkuennen 3y agoLooking forward to Microsoft acquiring this mess. Can only get better.
- monopolyofpain 3y agoCEOs should realize that firing and paying a settlement to bad apples is cheaper than letting them pollute the atmosphere
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoBad attitudes are way more contagious than a lot of people realize. Just having one person with a bad attitude and resentment to their employer can spread to 5-10 people if they're influential enough.
- sitkack 3y agoWhen a company breeds those baditudes faster than they cycle out, they are doomed. From my discussions with people at large tech companies, most of the big players are sitting on a huge toxic morass that they won't be able to escape. MBAs have taken over at all the large tech companies.
- mehlmao 3y agoMaybe people wouldn't resent their employer if their employer did something about the people stealing breast milk, or if they actually took action against the managers sexually assaulting women in the "Cosby Suite".
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoTaking about normal companies not whatever insanity is going on at blizzard.
- JohnFen 3y agoBut if there's no actual basis for the person to have a bad attitude, the coworkers are more likely to resent, shun, and/or ridicule them than to adopt a similar attitude.
- devjab 3y agoThey know. A pretty basic part of any sort of management course I’ve ever encountered is getting to know everyone is expendable. It’s simply down to a matter of cost. What you do with that information, however, is very individual. That being said, and this is me talking about something I don’t know too much about, but hasn’t part of the many Blizzard controversies been that their CEO himself is sort of what you describe as a bad apple?
- fpesce 3y agoRemarkable, 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 corporate maneuvering is proving to be as engrossing as the impending battle against the Prime Evils. This debacle could serve as a case study on how not to handle crisis communication during a major product launch. It’s like a redux of the 'Error 37' saga, but this time, the error is not just on the servers, it’s in the boardroom. The irony is almost poetic. As a community, we should be preparing to discuss the game's groundbreaking mechanics or innovative design, but instead we're going to watch a real-time corporate soap opera unfold. It's a classic example of how mismanagement can detract from a company's core product and innovation. At the end of the day, let's remember to uphold our values and maintain a focus on fairness, diversity, and respect in our industry, as this scenario provides yet another potent reminder of how far we still have to go.
- meibo 3y ago> 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 https://twitter.com/covingtown/status/1663998815458951168
- stickfigure 3y agoThat seems hard to believe at face value. Maybe there's another side to this story?
- EatingWithForks 3y agoDidn'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.
- rqtwteye 3y agoSeems he is setting himself up for a 100 million dollar severance package to spend more time with family
- politician 3y agoHe's been at the helm for years, but yes, I agree. When the Microsoft-Activision deal was on the skids with the EU, Blizzard was quiet about this problem. However, both when the deal was announced and now that the EU has agreed to allow the sale, the harassment topic is back in the news. I think it's deliberate.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoI really appreciate how right before Blizzard releases something that might pull you back in they completely shit the bed once again.
- Thaxll 3y agoThe title should be changed, it's Activision Blizzard not Blizzard CEO.
- mikestew 3y agoMake it fit within 80 chars, and I'll see if I can still edit the title. But your suggestion won't fit, and I'm too lazy to have another go.
- Macha 3y agoThis 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nozzlegear 3y agoAgreed, I thought it was Ybarra who had made these statements based on the headline “Blizzard CEO”, not Kotick.
- falcolas 3y agoMaking a distinction between "Activision" and "Blizzard" is a distraction. It's "Activision Blizzard". Has been legally for 15 years, and in practice for at least 5 years now. It doesn't matter if it's Ybarra or Kotik speaking now - they're playing by the same book on the same field.
- Macha 3y ago> It's "Activision Blizzard". Has been legally for 15 years, and in practice for at least 5 years now. So call it Activision Blizzard? The difference between Ybarra and Kotick speaking is both one of recency and personal culpability (Ybarra was hired as the cleanup lead, so a reversal on the stance that it happened would be notable in its own right), and of abuses that have gone in other non-Blizzard Activision studios (I seem to recall some controversies about Raven software also?).
- quadcore 3y agoIt's to note that Michael Morhaime, one of the founder of the company who was CEO for decades isnt involved with the company anymore. He was one of the geniuses that made blizzard what blizzard was.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoFor good or ill. Morhaime was also head of the company when a lot of the harassment went down.
- quadcore 3y agoWhen 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.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoI 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.
- vkou 3y agoMost of the problem people that have since been fired were not 'late in the history of the company'. They've been doing this crap since the early '0s, which was completely under his watch. He turned a blind eye to it. It's not like Bobby Kotick was getting on a little red telephone, to let Mike know that Afrasiabi is a major rainmaker and creative genius that shouldn't be messed with. It's one thing if the problem happened a few months before Mike's retirement, it's quite another thing when he sat around and did nothing about it for a decade. Which is what he did.
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- trollied 3y agoOnly yesterday did a WoW dev speak out about getting fired because an exec was triggered by some NPC text: https://twitter.com/covingtown/status/1663998815458951168 https://twitter.com/covingtown/status/1663998815458951168 Can't be blaming unions for that one...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- victorvosk 3y agoBobby at it again
- 29athrowaway 3y agoKotick was listed in Epstein's flight logs.
- bee_rider 3y agoThis has basically become an empty statement at this point, unfortunately. Epstein made a habit of flying around public figures. Presumably this was intentional.
- FredPret 3y agoNot sure if a less surprising statement can be expected from a CEO. Wake me up when "CEO loves unions, claims to harass employees for fun and profit" BTW, I'm not commenting about this specific CEO or Blizzard, merely pointing out that the headline is semantically empty.
- pphysch 3y ago%s/Blizzard CEO/Jeffery Epstein associate Bobby Kotick/g [1] Hard to believe these two facts aren't related. [1] - https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1508273-jeffrey-epsteins-little-black-book-redacted#document/p31 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1508273-jeffrey-epst...
- 015a 3y agoI 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.
- suddenclarity 3y agoIt'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.
- falcolas 3y agoThank 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.
- JohnMakin 3y agoYou're telling me that the company that created WoW, that hosts one of the most racist and misogynistic player bases that I have ever seen, has a corporate culture of harassment, misogyny, and racism? Wow, wonder why? If they refuse to take responsibility for their own corporate culture, why would they police their players? An example of what I'm talking about - you can spam the n word in public chat, either 1) nothing at all happens or 2) you receive a 1-3 day ban, if that. IF you're even suspected of botting, which they get wrong all the time, you'll catch a 2+ week ban. Funny enough, bots still run rampant.
- JohnFen 3y agoIn other words, the Blizzard CEO provides another confirmation of what pretty much everyone knows: Blizzard is an irredeemably awful company.
- bitcharmer 3y agoFor those of you who don't want so support a terrible company like Blizzard but still want to play a fantastic ARPG - go check out Path of Exile. There's no way D4 will ever have 1/10 of the content PoE already has.
- notacoward 3y agoOh, Bobby. I actually worked for this guy once, long ago. (The company was International Consumer Technologies and the product was DeluxeWrite. Not mentioned in the Wikipedia page, but AFAICT it would have been between Arktronics and Leisure Concepts.) Even then, by the standards of that time, he - and even more so his partner-in-crime Howard - had notably little regard for work/life balance or other aspects of employee well-being. I happened to be near that building in Ann Arbor recently. Even though it was an important stepping stone in my career, without which I wouldn't be where I am now, I was still tempted to raise one finger in salute. BK seems to have a knack for impressing money types and mistreating just about everyone else, which IMO says a lot about both him and the money types.
- Krisjohn 3y agoI really should sell my Blizzard account.