Reading that and it's like right, all this has happened in the last 3 years.
I'd almost forgotten how badly they treated the Heroes esports scene until the recent reminders just how toxic a company they are.
Edited by deludedmusings on Aug 2nd 2021 at 12:26:32 AM
Oh, bother.
Personally I think Diablo III was one of the earliest signs that Blizzard was in some shit. Anyone still remember the auction house debacle?
Edited by M84 on Aug 1st 2021 at 10:33:04 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
There's also WoW's item shop.
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Funnily enough I just read the chapter on Blood, Sweat and Pixels that covered Diablo III.
The devs interviewed by Jason Schreier swear by their mother's, grandmother's and all their aunts' names that the reason the Auction House was put in was because there were already people selling rare loot back in Diablo II and they just wanted to create a safe venue for that.
Up to you if you believe them or not.
AKA lots of Republican war criminals.
The same company that pushes out a new Call of Duty every year just so happens to have built an executive staff out of the most detestable ex-government figures possible.
How ironic.
How is that "ironic"?
If anything it very clearly explains just how jingoistic the COD franchise has gotten over the years.
Modern Warfare satirized the War on Terror.
Later entries in the game franchise just played them straight and then just made war porn.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
If anything it very clearly explains just how jingoistic the COD franchise has gotten over the years.
True. I should have said it was appropriate rather than ironic.
And I doubt it to be a coincidence either. The series has had the unofficial air of being Backed by the Pentagon for over a decade now.
Edited by BaronVonFistcrunch on Aug 1st 2021 at 8:00:25 AM
Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation fame's been essentially calling them jingoistic masturbation material for years.
Remember the one that was about all of Latin America ganging up on the poor US and... stealing their space laser?
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Mate, no amount of alcohol has made me do so yet.
I find kinda it funny how the Latin Americans are supposed to be the bad guys when the US has a bloody space laser.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Aug 1st 2021 at 5:32:42 PM
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Well you see Latin America acquired the laser and killed a hundred million Americans for apparently no reason.
Because EVIL AMAZON POISONS.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Activision's torture apologist executive is now blocking employees on Twitter.
That's actually the headline, by the way.
Over the weekend, amidst all the turmoil and toxic publicity being generated by the investigation and subsequent lawsuit from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing over the company’s abusive workplace conditions, Activision Blizzard’s Fran Townsend thought it would be the perfect time to tweet “the Problem With Whistleblowing”.
To recap, this is a woman who in the wake of the DFEH’s suit becoming public, sent an email to staff calling it “meritless” and was so widely criticised it was specifically mentioned as a cause of last week’s walkout, while calls for her removal from her position as sponsor for the company’s women’s network are also increasing.
In a previous and more public position prior to her appointment in March as Activision Blizzard’s vice president for corporate affairs, corporate secretary, and chief compliance officer, Townsend once served Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism during the Bush administration, where she was responsible for stuff like:
- She was one of the big boosters behind raising the national “terror threat level” during Bush’s close 2004 re-election campaign based on three-year old evidence, a decision then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge later said he was politically pressured into making. The then-head of Abu Ghraib prison where people were tortured said he felt similarly pressured to increase the amount of intelligence coming out of the interrogations following a visit by Townsend.
- Townsend later went onto defend the Bush administration’s use of torture, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and forced nudity. “Regardless of what you think on the issue of whether or not waterboarding is torture, there were legal documents created and relied upon by career intelligence officials who then implemented the program,” she said during a 2009 interview with CNN after the Obama administration declassified Bush-era memos making the legal case for the CIA’s use of torture. “There were very strict controls on the program. These people relied on them and, now, to release them and to subject these people, these career professionals to a sort of public humiliation and opprobrium and then the potential of a congressional investigation really will make our intelligence community risk-averse.”
Taking all this into account, along with the content and timing of her tweet, public reaction has not been positive! It has been almost universally challenged or mocked, which is expected, it’s Twitter and that happens every day, it’s what the ratio is there for. But what’s notable here is that rather acknowledging that she, as an executive employed in a leadership position at a company in turmoil, had made a bad tweet and responded accordingly—by doing something like locking her account, deleting the tweet or simply ignoring the criticism and getting on with whatever the rich do on the weekend—she began systematically blocking anyone even mildly critical of her decision to share a story about the perils of whistleblowing while her company is in the midst of historically shocking allegations brought on by employees testifying confidentially.
That includes multiple journalists and developers from outside companies, but also many current and former employees of Activision Blizzard as well. Her employees, and colleagues. Now is as good a time as any to take a look at Blizzard’s core corporate values, one of which is “every voice matters”.
- Great ideas can come from anywhere. Blizzard Entertainment is what it is today because of the voices of our players and of each member of the company. Every employee is encouraged to speak up, listen, be respectful of other opinions, and embrace criticism as just another avenue for great ideas.
Huh.
...I know this is an overused metaphor, but clicking on this thread in the past few days has felt like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
I've seen thinking about a massive sewage pipe that's just been spurting shit all over the place for weeks now and every time I look there's another load.
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Oh, bother.
I think of it as chickens coming home to roost.
Far from being a trainwreck, this is more of a long overdue reckoning. In the long run, this is a good thing for Activision-Blizzard as a whole.
Maybe not so much for the executives who are running things now like the torture apologist, but fuck'em.
Disgusted, but not surprised
One Winged Egret
Frankly, I don't see a way they're getting out of this with anything worse than a golden parachute and a cushy gig at another company. The entire structure of society, and corporations in particular, is designed to protect executives from the consequences of their actions.
Edited by Clarste on Aug 1st 2021 at 10:03:05 AM
Professional Forum Ninja
Shit's bad in the industry.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
Not that East Asian developers are less innocent. The only difference is that, if a Japanese, Korean or Chinese employee were to do the same, they would risk being blacklisted, and would not be able to get a job anywhere, not even outside the same industry, and not even their own colleagues would dare to support them, at the risk of ending up facing the same consequences.
Acting as if these horror stories are exclusive to Acti-Blizz is naive. Assume that every game development company, major or indie, has similar stories that are yet unspoken.
Oh, bother.
It's a systemic issue that permeates the STEM industries as a whole and exacerbated by the relative lack of regulation in the videogame industry and the perception of big game developer heads as "rock stars".
With East Asian developers the problems in their game companies are symptoms of the general patriarchal mindset of East Asian culture. Not only is sexual harassment likely still an issue in these companies, women are less likely to get hired period. Heck, women are even less encouraged to go into STEM fields in the first place than they are in Western culture. And Western culture isn't that great about it either — and it starts as early as grade school, with girls discouraged from skipping a grade in math or science.
Edited by M84 on Aug 2nd 2021 at 2:07:03 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised
Professional Forum Ninja
And going off of that: Nintendo, one of the most family friendly gaming companies, has one female director in a series that could be considered "feminine." Aya Kyogoku in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Edited by tclittle on Aug 1st 2021 at 1:22:12 PM
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
Oh, bother.
Another problem with the AAA game industry is the lack of unionization, something that's been brought up more and more often.
This is the big difference between the game industry and the other entertainment industries like the movie industry in Hollywood. Actors, directors, writers...they all have unions. If you've ever bothered to watch all of the end credits in a movie, said unions are even included.
The videogame industry doesn't have that. It's so bad that publishers can even get away with not including a developer's name in the credits of a videogame. If a studio in Hollywood tried to pull that shit, you bet unions would raise a shitstorm.
And the AAA game industry's bigwigs know this. Why do you think Activision-Blizzard has recently hired a law firm with a reputation for union-busting to handle their supposed independent investigation into the company?
Edited by M84 on Aug 2nd 2021 at 2:32:45 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised
No unionisation and a lack of government oversight (see the whole gambling situation).
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Here's an article from PC Gamer dated yesterday on how much of a shitshow Activision-Blizzard has been over the last three years.
PC gamer: How Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just 3 years
From Battle for Azeroth's launch being a disaster in 2018 to California suing Activision-Blizzard's ass for being horrible to female employees in 2021, the last few years have taken a Doomhammer to Blizzard's rep.
Edited by M84 on Aug 1st 2021 at 9:47:38 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised