The Video Game Industry

Throughout that week, IGN has spoken to seven past and present Activision Blizzard employees, building a clearer picture not just of its deeply troubled working culture, but the immediate aftermath of that culture becoming public – and how those at the company have organised to try and effect positive change amid worldwide outrage.

Activision Blizzard’s week of reckoning began with allegations coming to light through a lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment & Housing [DFEH]. It revealed a two-year investigation into reports of pay discrimination, sexual harassment, and a general “frat culture” at the company known for Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and other massive games. The report touched off a firestorm on social media that has burned ever since, made all the more fierce by official responses that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has since acknowledged as “tone deaf.”

On Tuesday, Activision Blizzard employees announced they would be staging a walkout in response to company leadership’s statements, which a widely-signed open letter had termed “abhorrent”. Over the course of four hours, they carried signs and posed for pictures, with designated representatives available to speak to journalists. It was broadly supported by the games industry at large, with more than 1,000 employees at Ubisoft among those to sign a statement in solidarity.

“We had the illusion that every voice matters. We had the illusion of the values. They were good values. But they were very much used by some people.”

Portable toilets were delivered to the site without the group asking. A local restaurant frequented by Blizzard employees donated food. Developers from other studios arrived to assist with setup and teardown, as did Blizzard’s janitors. One employee brought their dog for their compatriots to hold when they needed a break.

“It was amazing to see how much people came together in this moment,” said a Blizzard employee who asked to remain anonymous.

Still, there’s a sense among organizers that this is very much the beginning, not the end. The past week has laid bare the deep systemic problems baked into Activision Blizzard’s culture — a culture that has long encouraged the worship of game developers as untouchable rockstars, and has enabled a system of imbalanced power dynamics and abuse. All of IGN’s sources confirmed the allegations in the DFEH’s complaint, and some added disturbing stories of their own.

Blizzard has always pointed to its core values over the years, to the point where it had them laid in stone outside its campus. After the last week, some at the company see them as far less immovable:

“We had the illusion that every voice matters. We had the illusion of the values. They were good values,” one woman, a former Blizzard employee, told IGN. “But they were very much used by some people.” The Lawsuit and the Firestorm that Followed

Many Activision Blizzard employees were unsurprised when the DFEH lawsuit appeared. The investigation had been conducted over the course of two years, and some employees had been interviewed for hours as the department had built its case. But it was still a shock to see it all there in black and white, and then to see Activision Blizzard’s leadership almost immediately dismiss the allegations as “distorted” and “false” descriptions of Blizzard’s past.

“It hurt to see it all written out,” one woman within Blizzard told IGN. “A lot of us have known about a lot of these instances, whether because we experienced them or we knew people who had. A lot of times the women within the company would start to band together at certain moments to protect each other.”

Feelings like these are common among women at Activision Blizzard right now. For some, it is dredging up past pain; others are finding themselves reexamining old interactions in a new light. Few seem particularly surprised, especially those in the service departments — QA, marketing, customer service. As IGN has previously reported, Blizzard has tended to treat developers as special while the various support services have suffered the brunt of cutbacks and layoffs. This has put additional pressure on everyone, but especially marginalized groups.

A Blizzard source points to the World of Warcraft team as an example of this dynamic at work. “Wo W makes money, so the people at the top of Wo W are untouchable, which means they get away with lots of shit. Also if you were there a long time, which most of the Wo W team leadership was, you were ‘in the family’ and pretty much untouchable, which is the breeding ground for behavior like this.”

“Wo W makes money, so the people at the top of Wo W are untouchable, which means they get away with lots of shit."

Former Senior Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi was among those said to exemplify this culture. Before finally being fired in the middle of 2020, Afrasiabi was known for engaging in “blatant sexual harassment with little to no repurcussions,” with a source telling IGN that he was leading an incubation development team as late as May 2020. Asked why Afrasiabi was still in a leadership role at that stage, despite apparent investigations into his conduct, an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said, "We investigated and took what we believed to be the appropriate disciplinary action. Alex Afrasiabi is no longer with the company and has not been for more than a year."

A recent report by Kotaku described in detail Afrasiabi’s so-called “Cosby Suite” — a hotel room described as a “hot spot for networking” during Blizz Con, where one former designer said they were gathering “hot chixx for the Coz.” (A veteran Blizzard source I spoke with described the photo as “f*cking chilling”).

Such stories abound at Activision Blizzard, compounded by a drinking culture that until recently was “insane,” a source said. One woman told me she “doggedly avoided” drinking events on campus because of their reputation. Another talked about how it was “much more sexual” in Blizzard’s main office in Irvine circa 2015, with women being subjected to inappropriate touching in the chest area and elsewhere, “sometimes at the holiday party, sometimes not.”

An Activision Blizzard spokesperson said that sexual misconduct at holiday parties, "is abhorrent and will not be tolerated. We appreciate the courage of any current or former employee in coming forward and will fully investigate any such claims brought to our attention."

A source who has since departed Blizzard talked about how the room designated for breastfeeding didn’t have locks. “Men would walk into the breastfeeding room. There was no way to lock the door. They would just stare and I would have to scream at them to leave.” IGN understands that breastfeeding rooms have since been updated, with locks added to doors.

By contrast, many men seem caught off-guard by the allegations within the DFEH lawsuit. Chris Metzen, an early Blizzard employee who worked on many of its most important games, wrote in a statement, “I'm left feeling the same shock, disgust, and anger that many of you are — and having trouble reconciling the place I knew, loved, and worked in for so long with the hard reality that has been presented over the past few days. It's like staring at two totally different worlds. But it's not. It's just the one world, and the yawning disconnect between my perception from the top and the crushing reality many of you experienced fills me with profound shame."

“Men would walk into the breastfeeding room. There was no way to lock the door. They would just stare and I would have to scream at them to leave.”

Before this week, many seemed to feel that while Blizzard has its share of problems, the type of abuse detailed in the DFEH complaint would never happen on their teams. One woman talked about having to patiently sit and educate men about the issues at Activision Blizzard.

“Let me tell you, it's a conversation we're always having, I feel like because a lot of men are very protected. I don’t mean they’re protected by the company, but they just don't see it. It's very sad, but it was something I expected. [...] This is all a surprise to them because they just don't know,” a source within Blizzard said.

Even outside of direct harassment or abuse, multiple women at all levels of Activision Blizzard described to me the ways in which they were evaluated differently from men — descriptions corroborated by the DFEH report. They described working overtime and fixing problems left behind after their male peers went home, or being dinged in their employee evaluations for “not getting along” with verbally abusive bosses. Women would be evaluated on their social and cultural skills while men would be reviewed based on their technical ability, even if they were in the same discipline.

"There was a different way to evaluate women versus men,” a source within Activision said. In meetings intended to set the standards for employee reviews, there were reportedly discussions concerning whether women might go on maternity leave, but men going on paternity leave would never come up. An Activision Blizzard spokesperson told IGN that this behavior is "not acceptable," and that, "Reports of this nature will be investigated and appropriate action taken."

A woman formerly in one of Blizzard’s hourly service roles talked about the agonizing process of trying to get time off approved by her manager in order to go to the doctor. When an ultrasound raised the possibility of serious medical complications for her unborn child, she was told she had to return in two weeks to check again, only to be told by her manager that she couldn’t. As a last ditch effort, she convinced her doctor to let her schedule all of her appointments in advance to make it easier for management to find fill-ins, only to be told she couldn't schedule out her hours that far in advance. She said she remembers "crying in the waiting room" trying to explain that Blizzard wouldn't let her go to the appointments even though she had paid time off available.

“I was forced to get on [the Family Medical Leave Act] in order to go to my appointments," she told me. "Blizzard made that as difficult as possible, and the doctor's office couldn't figure out how to approve it when these were appointments every pregnant person would have. My contact at my insurance company finally got fed up and pushed everything through. If I hadn't had a benevolent insurance contact, I likely would have been dropped.”

Speaking to IGN about the above situation, an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said that Blizzard does not deny time off for pregnant women to see a doctor. "This has never been a Blizzard policy," the spokesperson said. "We have had robust policies for pregnant women. We encourage any employees witnessing or experiencing this type of conduct to report it so it can be investigated."

“Worship of specific hero figures and being untouchable/inner circle is just so baked into [Blizzard’s] culture.”

While Activision Blizzard reportedly did make some changes, one source described the process as just “putting lipstick on it.” Company-wide inclusive bias training was completed “once” at Activision, a source told IGN, but “money wasn’t invested to make it sustainable.” An Activision Blizzard spokesperson didn't counter the idea that includive bias training has only been completed once, but said that the training to create an inclusive work environment "is a continuous effort, not a one-time program," pointing to multiple "Equality & Diversity and anti-harassment trainings."

Perhaps the biggest change was that Blizzard did ultimately crack down on its pervasive drinking culture, which included the so-called “cube crawls” described in the DFEH report. Our source reported that a two drink maximum was introduced at company events – an Activision Blizzard spokesperson confirmed that this became policy in 2018.

No matter the small changes made in recent years, it’s clear Activision Blizzard hasn’t done enough to address the “frat” culture described in the DFEH report, as evidenced by the heavy internal backlash and the recent walkout.

“I honestly hope going public influences them. The [2018 allegations against Riot] did help the company but I’m also not super confident,” a Blizzard source said. “Worship of specific hero figures and being untouchable/inner circle is just so baked into [Blizzard’s] culture.”

Activision Blizzard leadership’s responses since going public will have done little to assuage that worry. The Memo That Sparked the Walkout

In the wake of the backlash provoked by Activision Blizzard’s initial response, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack struck a more concerned tone, calling the DFEH allegations “extremely troubling” — this despite being named in the report for allegedly giving the since-fired senior developer Alex Afrasiabi a “slap on the wrist” for his behavior around women.

But it was a memo from Chief Compliance Officer Frances Townsend, who also serves as the executive sponsor of the Activision Blizzard King [ABK] Employee Women’s Network, that struck the biggest nerve. In the memo she called the DFEH lawsuit “meritless and irresponsible” and reiterated the position that it presented “factually incorrect, old, and out of context stories.”

Seeing the memo had one source within Blizzard “laugh-crying in just pure disbelief.”

“Whatever [Bobby Kotick] says now, I don't think [it] matters as long as no one addresses [Frances Townsend’s memo],” they said. “In my opinion whoever wrote that, if it wasn’t her… whoever approved that... that was just such a huge misstep.”

"Up until this lawsuit broke most people weren't talking about [the problems at Blizzard] in the same way that they are now."

Aside from the upset caused by that response coming from the head of the ABK Employee Women’s Network, Townsend’s comments also served to highlight how few women there are in any position of authority at Activision Blizzard. At Blizzard, it’s possible to count the number of women in a senior leadership position on one hand. Speaking with Blizzard sources while compiling my last report on the company, one of them called the gender balance at the company “f*cking miserable.”

It was Townsend’s memo that ultimately did the most to spur Activision Blizzard employees to action, a Blizzard source told IGN. “That’s when employees really began to feel like the narrative was not heading in a direction that was reflective of our beliefs and of the demands [for] the changes that we want to see,” they said. “So in an act of solidarity with the victims, as well as to create this call to action, a walkout was formed. Once the logistics were all confirmed, that's when we publicized it to the rest of the company.”

On July 26, an open letter ultimately signed by more than 2,600 employees was released by Activision Blizzard employees saying that “immediate corrections” were “needed from the highest level of our organization.” Meanwhile, employees were developing a more specific list of demands in what was described as an “immensely collaborative process.”

“It came together over such a short period of time, but it was organized so efficiently and was the result of countless hours of labor,” a Blizzard source said. “I would say that it started with common discontent with the way — not just with the lawsuit — but with the way that leadership responded to it, and what we saw in their response was not reflective of our feelings as employees. And when we came together to discuss this, we realized that this community and this content spreads far farther than maybe we'd initially anticipated.”

"At this point we don't expect that we're waiting for leadership. We expect that leadership needs to get on board with us."

“I feel like there was a strong feeling of isolation for victims... for people who have come forward,” an Activision source said, “because up until this lawsuit broke most people weren't talking about it in the same way that they are now. [...] We are actively attempting to support each other and to do introspection and evaluate and improve everything about our working experiences, because these experiences happen all over Activision Blizzard.”

The discussions culminated in the walkout that was staged on July 28, which by most measures was a complete success, the action garnering international attention as well as support from throughout the games industry. An internal email seen by IGN confirmed that employees involved in the walkout would receive paid time off and that there would be no repercussions for attending. Internally, leadership appears to be shifting its stance, and in the wake of Kotick backtracking from the original statement, one source said the “change is undeniable at this point."

However, Activision Blizzard is retaining the services of Wilmer Hale, a law firm that has previously been used by Amazon to prevent unionization. Activision Blizzard has also reportedly canceled all-hands meetings, directing employees to in-house resources instead. Time will tell how serious Activision Blizzard is about engaging with workers to produce meaningful change.

For employees, the challenge is to keep the energy from dissipating as the news cycle moves on and everyone heads back to work. The months and weeks ahead will be a different sort of grind as Activision Blizzard employees meet with leadership to try and get their demands met.

“We don't plan on just waiting around for a response,” IGN’s source said. “We are going to continue to push for change internally to our companies. We're going to keep these demands going. We're not letting this go. At this point we don't expect that we're waiting for leadership. We expect that leadership needs to get on board with us. The End of the Myth

One long-lasting consequence of the events of the past week is likely to be the final death of the Blizzard myth — the idea that its unique culture elevates it above the rest of the games industry. Already under threat amid persistent turnover and large gaps in releases, the DFEH lawsuit and subsequent walkout illuminate what ails Activision Blizzard’s culture in stark terms. It is a company, as one source put it, that is stuck in the past in terms of diversity.

At the corporate level, a tendency toward hiring Ivy League graduates and former government officials at top positions — Townsend previously worked for the Bush Administration — has resulted in leadership that tends to look and think the same, a source observed. Reforming Activision Blizzard’s hiring practices is just one of the items on the to-do list now that the walkout is over.

But at the regular employee level, this week has led to far more personal reckonings. It is already forcing many within Blizzard to question what it means to “bleed Blizzard blue.” More than one source talks about how they worked hard and endured a lot because they believed in the company, and now feel disillusioned not just with Blizzard, but with working in the games industry as a whole.

"I think it's really easy to groom people who are vulnerable financially, who really believe that what they're doing is good."

“Everyone felt we were building a community that was meaningful to someone,” a Blizzard source said. “For every [customer service] ticket where someone was threatening us, there were the players telling us that it was very important because our games let them play with their grandmother who lives in another country. I think it's really easy to groom people who are vulnerable financially, who really believe that what they're doing is good. And there was so much pressure to make it more of a job.”

“[T]o some degree people have a lot of positive associations and passion with Blizzard,” another source said, “and that makes them identify with the company, which makes a breeding ground for power dynamics and abuse.”

No one seems quite sure what moving forward looks like; only that work remains to be done. With Activision Blizzard no longer able to take comfort in its history, it must look to the future. And after the events of the past week, that future looks more uncertain than ever.

Emily Mitchell, a security researcher who at the time was looking for a job, approached the Blizzard booth to see what positions were open at the company. Mitchell told Waypoint that she loves PC games, and played Diablo, Blizzard's roleplaying game.

When she got to the table, she said she asked about the penetration testing position. Penetration testing, or pentesting, is the industry term for a security audit. Mitchell said she was wearing a t-shirt made by cybersecurity company Secure State, which had "Penetration Expert" on the front. One of the Blizzard employees first asked if she was lost, another one asked if she was at the conference with her boyfriend, and another one asked if she even knew what pentesting was.

"One of them asked me when was the last time I was personally penetrated, if I liked being penetrated, and how often I got penetrated," Mitchell told Waypoint. "I was furious and felt humiliated so I took the free swag and left."

Last week, the state of California sued Activision Blizzard for fostering a "frat boy" culture and for being "breeding ground for harassment" and discrimination. The lawsuit cited a series of alleged sexual harassment incidents over the years, including drunk male employees going on "cube-crawls" harassing women, jokes abour rape, comments on female colleagues' bodies, and groping. In what's one of the more damning incidents alleged in the lawsuit, Alex Afrasiabi, a long-time World of Warcraft developer, used to call his hotel room during a company conference the Bill "Cosby suite [sic]." Several Blizzard employees told Kotaku that the name was a clear reference to Cosby's history of sexual assaults, which were already public at the time.

Like the games industry, the cybersecurity industry has been reckoning for years with a male-dominated sexist culture within companies and at conferences, where male attendees routinely dismiss women, grope them, and harass them, as Motherboard reported in 2016.

Mitchell said she did not report the incident to Black Hat's organizers in 2015, as "I didn't feel comfortable saying anything to anyone at the time because I was a single mom who needed a job, and I didn't want to do anything that may have jeopardized my chances of landing a new job."

In 2017, two years after the Black Hat incident, Blizzard reached out to Sagitta HPC, which is now called Terahash, looking to hire the company for security work. At the time, Mitchell was Chief Operating Officer at Sagitta HPC.

When Mitchell saw Blizzard's request, she said she told Gosney "fuck no," and shared the incident with him. Gosney, the founder and CEO of the company, then wrote a scathing email to Blizzard employees outlining the incident:

"One of my C-suite executives saw that you had been added to our CRM database, and shared a very troubling and upsetting story with me:

Back in 2015 at the Black Hat USA security conference in Las Vegas Blizzard had a recruitment booth in the “Career Zone” section of the vendor area. As the name implies, the purpose of the Career Zone is to connect hackers seeking jobs with companies seeking to employ them. My executive (whom I should clarify was not employed with us at the time, but rather was employed as a senior vulnerability researcher at large security consulting firm) approached the Blizzard booth to inquire about open positions; however instead of discussing potential job opportunities with her, the Blizzard recruiters ridiculed her for being a woman. They asked her if she was lost; if her boyfriend brought her to the conference; if she even knew what the conference was about; if she knew was penetration testing was, and how often she got penetrated; and a slew of other extremely inappropriate and wholly unprofessional questions.”

"As you can imagine, this was a tremendously upsetting and infuriating experience for her. And yet when she shared her experience with other women at the conference, she found that she wasn’t alone—many others had received the same treatment from the Blizzard recruitment booth as well," Gosney's email continued.

He left the door open to work with Blizzard—with some special conditions. Gosney shared his response email to Blizzard enquiry on Twitter in 2017, but redacted Blizzard's name at the time:

“Now, rather than dismiss you and tell you that we will not do business with you, we'd like to give Blizzard the opportunity to redeem themselves. We are committed to combating inequality, and I am calling on Blizzard to do the same. As you may or may not know, today is International Women’s Day. And in honor of this day, we are attaching a few conditions if Blizzard wishes to do business with us:

Condition #1: Blizzard will be charged a 50% “misogyny tax”, the proceeds of which will be donated to Women in Technology International, Girls in Tech, and Girls Who Code.

Condition #2: Blizzard will become a Gold Sponsor of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2017 conference.

Condition #3: A formal letter of apology from the Blizzard C-suite addressed to my COO, along with verification that all employees have undergone equal opportunity and sexual harassment training in 2017 Q1.”

"We decided to post a redacted screenshot of the email to Twitter to let other prospective clients know that we don't tolerate misogynistic bullshit, but also to let Blizzard know that we were dead serious," Mitchell told Waypoint.

Three sources who have read the unredacted email confirmed to Waypoint that the redacted company is Blizzard. The sources asked to remain anonymous as they were bound by a non-disclosure agreement. Mitchell agreed to share her experience at Black Hat 2015 after Waypoint learned that the email posted by Gosney was about Blizzard.

Mitchell said that after Gosney's email, Blizzard was "eager" to get her on the phone with their lawyers.

"They made it clear that they were not interested in agreeing to any of our terms, just a lot of empty promises that they were taking the report 'seriously,' that it would be investigated internally, and assured me that they do conduct sexual harassment training," she said. "Ultimately it felt like they were more interested in gauging their own legal exposure and placating me."

Blizzard did not respond to a request for comment from Waypoint.

Chris Fajardo, the director of global security operations at Blizzard at the time of Black Hat 2015, and Mark Adams, who was chief information security officer at Blizzard in 2017, when the company received the email, did not respond to a request for comment via Linked In.

Mitchell said she reported the 2015 incident to Black Hat's organizers in 2017, who got on the phone with her, promised they would not allow Blizzard back as a sponsor, and gave her a free ticket to Black Hat USA 2018. According to Black Hat's website, Blizzard has not been a sponsor after 2015.

In 2015 Black Hat already had an official code of conduct that asked attendees to refrain from "discriminatory or harassing behavior." The code of conduct defined harassment as "offensive comments (verbal, written, or otherwise) related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability."

A spokesperson for Black Hat declined to respond to specific questions regarding the incident, and sent a statement via email instead.

"We take allegations of misconduct at our events very seriously. While we can’t comment on any investigations of reported incidents, we can say every event participant agrees to abide by our code of conduct when they agree to participate in Black Hat, from vendors, to sponsors, to attendees and staff," read the statement sent to Waypoint via email. "Anybody who does not comply with our rules will be asked to leave and will be removed from participation in future Black Hat events."

Stefano Zanero, an associate professor at the Politecnico di Milano University who focuses on cybersecurity, condemned the incident.

“This story is appalling, and a stark reminder of how hard it is to be a woman in our industry," Zanero told Waypoint in an online chat. "We need to do better, and I wish all managers and CE Os would do the right thing and have the back of everyone who is harassed and unfairly treated.”