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United States44287 Posts
On July 25 2021 04:32 Highrock1 wrote:
Kind'a disappointed by how deep below the fold this issue is buried here.
The company and people behind the game this site is mainly dedicated to are being sued over what appear to be horrendous acts. People who made this game, interacted with this community.... how is this not a featured discussion?
Does anyone here really think that "Nice joins Good Game Gaming after leaving Alpha X" is more important community news then THIS?
It's been a long time since Blizzard were remotely relevant to Starcraft.
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Canada8991 Posts
On July 25 2021 06:37 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2021 04:32 Highrock1 wrote:
Kind'a disappointed by how deep below the fold this issue is buried here.
The company and people behind the game this site is mainly dedicated to are being sued over what appear to be horrendous acts. People who made this game, interacted with this community.... how is this not a featured discussion?
Does anyone here really think that "Nice joins Good Game Gaming after leaving Alpha X" is more important community news then THIS? It's been a long time since Blizzard were remotely relevant to Starcraft.
Well they are paying for like 80% of the SC2 prize pool so saddly we can't forget them compleatly.
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One current Blizzard employee, Josh “Devolore” Allen, calls Morhaime’s statement “100% bullshit,” alleging the former executive knew what was going on within the company.
“‘If I’d known this was happening I would have stopped it’ says the man who was told repeatedly that it was happening and did nothing to stop it
“I’ve refrained from giving my own comments on the situation at Actiblizz because frankly, there are more important people you should be listening to right now. But that statement from a certain former leader was 100% bullshit and I’m furious about it.
“He knew. He did nothing. Don’t get me wrong, current leadership is fucking up hard right now too. But please don’t believe for a second that the culture that allowed all of this to happen for the last couple of decades was somehow built by the guy who’s been in charge for 3 years.”
https://www.vg247.com/2021/07/24/activision-blizzard-harassment-lawsuit-mike-morhaime-j-allen-brack/
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Yeah, tbh game industry culture was WILD back in the day, theres basically no way that Morhaime wasn't at least aware of the kind of shit that was going down.
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On July 25 2021 17:10 BaneRiders wrote:One current Blizzard employee, Josh “Devolore” Allen, calls Morhaime’s statement “100% bullshit,” alleging the former executive knew what was going on within the company. “‘If I’d known this was happening I would have stopped it’ says the man who was told repeatedly that it was happening and did nothing to stop it “I’ve refrained from giving my own comments on the situation at Actiblizz because frankly, there are more important people you should be listening to right now. But that statement from a certain former leader was 100% bullshit and I’m furious about it. “He knew. He did nothing. Don’t get me wrong, current leadership is fucking up hard right now too. But please don’t believe for a second that the culture that allowed all of this to happen for the last couple of decades was somehow built by the guy who’s been in charge for 3 years.” https://www.vg247.com/2021/07/24/activision-blizzard-harassment-lawsuit-mike-morhaime-j-allen-brack/
Well, about that.
As noted by Massively OP, Brack is one of the parties listed in California’s suit against Activision Blizzard, for not taking “effective remedial measures” when it came to claims made by female employees.
Easy enough to explain that he's trying to cover his own ass by throwing blame at bigger fish. A VERY common tactic.
If my state of California has as much evidence as they claim to have. We will know who the actual guilty parties are VERY soon.
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Is there already a date for when the lawsuit will be on court?
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On July 25 2021 18:18 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2021 17:10 BaneRiders wrote:One current Blizzard employee, Josh “Devolore” Allen, calls Morhaime’s statement “100% bullshit,” alleging the former executive knew what was going on within the company. “‘If I’d known this was happening I would have stopped it’ says the man who was told repeatedly that it was happening and did nothing to stop it “I’ve refrained from giving my own comments on the situation at Actiblizz because frankly, there are more important people you should be listening to right now. But that statement from a certain former leader was 100% bullshit and I’m furious about it. “He knew. He did nothing. Don’t get me wrong, current leadership is fucking up hard right now too. But please don’t believe for a second that the culture that allowed all of this to happen for the last couple of decades was somehow built by the guy who’s been in charge for 3 years.” https://www.vg247.com/2021/07/24/activision-blizzard-harassment-lawsuit-mike-morhaime-j-allen-brack/ Well, about that. Show nested quote +As noted by Massively OP, Brack is one of the parties listed in California’s suit against Activision Blizzard, for not taking “effective remedial measures” when it came to claims made by female employees. Easy enough to explain that he's trying to cover his own ass by throwing blame at bigger fish. A VERY common tactic. If my state of California has much evidence as they claim to have. We will know who the actual guilty parties are VERY soon.
Is it very common that your state sues companies for discrimination against women generally and pregnant employees, sexual harassment, retaliation and unequal pay?
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I mean, Blizzard in the old days was a bunch of friends getting together and making games. I don’t know about everyone else, but my experience of “the boys getting together to hang out” would typically involve doing/saying shit that was totally reprehensible and should never see the light of day, and also had at least 1 or 2 guys that were fun to hang out with but you were pretty sure were not the best human beings around.
I’d be willing to bet large sums of money that that’s the kind of environment early to mid 90s Blizzard was like. They ended up busting out great games and garnering a huge fan base, and a big part of why that happened is the sort of “brand” that developed of “bunch of friends getting together to make games we love from the heart”. It’s basically been their mission statement and key to success, so of course they’d embrace that ideal and culture wholeheartedly.
Now you’ve got a legit company, with a lot of employees who are not part of the original friend group, but you’ve got to stay true to your roots because that’s what got you this far and that’s why you’re all here in the first place. So all your friends get executive positions, including the 1 or 2 friends that are shit human beings that you keep around for fun. Time goes on, you hear some shit through the grapevine about some bad stuff they do, and you pull them aside as a friend and say “dude, Afrasiabi you can’t do that kinda shit anymore. Cut it out.” And you get a “fine fine, my bad. We cool?” “Yeah of course we are, it’s just this is like a big deal now so we gotta step up.”
Spoiler alert, they don’t step up and just do more to hide it from you. They get together with some others in the friend group and say “dude Mike is letting this shit get to his head. This all started because we wanted to hang out and have fun and do whatever the fuck we want, right Chris?”
Anyway, it’s basically a fan-fiction but the point is I could very easily see this situation having happened. It’s exactly why it’s a bad idea to mix friendship and work.
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On July 25 2021 19:11 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2021 18:18 Vindicare605 wrote:On July 25 2021 17:10 BaneRiders wrote:One current Blizzard employee, Josh “Devolore” Allen, calls Morhaime’s statement “100% bullshit,” alleging the former executive knew what was going on within the company. “‘If I’d known this was happening I would have stopped it’ says the man who was told repeatedly that it was happening and did nothing to stop it “I’ve refrained from giving my own comments on the situation at Actiblizz because frankly, there are more important people you should be listening to right now. But that statement from a certain former leader was 100% bullshit and I’m furious about it. “He knew. He did nothing. Don’t get me wrong, current leadership is fucking up hard right now too. But please don’t believe for a second that the culture that allowed all of this to happen for the last couple of decades was somehow built by the guy who’s been in charge for 3 years.” https://www.vg247.com/2021/07/24/activision-blizzard-harassment-lawsuit-mike-morhaime-j-allen-brack/ Well, about that. As noted by Massively OP, Brack is one of the parties listed in California’s suit against Activision Blizzard, for not taking “effective remedial measures” when it came to claims made by female employees. Easy enough to explain that he's trying to cover his own ass by throwing blame at bigger fish. A VERY common tactic. If my state of California has much evidence as they claim to have. We will know who the actual guilty parties are VERY soon. Is it very common that your state sues companies for discrimination against women generally and pregnant employees, sexual harassment, retaliation and unequal pay?
If I'm being honest, I do not know. Honest answer.
I do not know how often this happens, because it rarely comes up in my day to day conversations. This is the first time I've heard of a high profile California based company coming under this kind of fire. I really have no idea how often this happens. I could possibly find out if I tried hard enough to do research on the topic, but I don't have enough motivation to do that at the moment, I have enough going on.
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On July 25 2021 23:41 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2021 19:11 BaneRiders wrote:On July 25 2021 18:18 Vindicare605 wrote:On July 25 2021 17:10 BaneRiders wrote:One current Blizzard employee, Josh “Devolore” Allen, calls Morhaime’s statement “100% bullshit,” alleging the former executive knew what was going on within the company. “‘If I’d known this was happening I would have stopped it’ says the man who was told repeatedly that it was happening and did nothing to stop it “I’ve refrained from giving my own comments on the situation at Actiblizz because frankly, there are more important people you should be listening to right now. But that statement from a certain former leader was 100% bullshit and I’m furious about it. “He knew. He did nothing. Don’t get me wrong, current leadership is fucking up hard right now too. But please don’t believe for a second that the culture that allowed all of this to happen for the last couple of decades was somehow built by the guy who’s been in charge for 3 years.” https://www.vg247.com/2021/07/24/activision-blizzard-harassment-lawsuit-mike-morhaime-j-allen-brack/ Well, about that. As noted by Massively OP, Brack is one of the parties listed in California’s suit against Activision Blizzard, for not taking “effective remedial measures” when it came to claims made by female employees. Easy enough to explain that he's trying to cover his own ass by throwing blame at bigger fish. A VERY common tactic. If my state of California has much evidence as they claim to have. We will know who the actual guilty parties are VERY soon. Is it very common that your state sues companies for discrimination against women generally and pregnant employees, sexual harassment, retaliation and unequal pay? If I'm being honest, I do not know. Honest answer. I do not know how often this happens, because it rarely comes up in my day to day conversations. This is the first time I've heard of a high profile California based company coming under this kind of fire. I really have no idea how often this happens. I could possibly find out if I tried hard enough to do research on the topic, but I don't have enough motivation to do that at the moment, I have enough going on.
Yeah, no need to do any research.  I asked, because I have never heard of anything like this before, but I live on the other side of the world so I could easily have missed similar cases. It would be interesting to know about rulings of earlier cases course, if the companies were found to be guilty.
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On July 22 2021 18:30 MockHamill wrote:
This is one of the reasons I why I prefer a work environment where the male/female ratio is even. Eighty percent men often leads to a dysfunctional work environment.
Ultimately it the leaders that create the culture though. If the top is rotten the rest of the company will follow.
Agreed, but unfortunately practically impossible in the IT industry. I've worked in programming companies which have had a massive focus on hiring women, and only ended up with a ratio of 1/30. There just aren't enough of them in industry, tho recent numbers from universities seems to indicate the ratio is going up.
That said, as other's have pointed out, company culture always comes from the top down. You can have a male weighted company without it being a massive dickfest. I have worked for several companies with massive problems, but testosterone has never been one of them. If the CEO hires people with good attitudes, they will in turn hire people with good attitude, etc. If the CEO is an asshole and hires likeminded, then shit stars flowing downhill
On July 25 2021 18:18 Vindicare605 wrote:
If my state of California has as much evidence as they claim to have. We will know who the actual guilty parties are VERY soon.
Very soon..so in 5-10 years? That's usually what very soon means in these types of cases, with this many people and evidence involved
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I really hope frost giant peeps weren't doing this...
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they should be sued over the 2-years-and-counting mmr/ladder ranking bugs that puts everyone in bronze and master.
in all seriousness jon oliver did a segment on the abusive practices of the video game industry, unfortunately this is nothing new.
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United Kingdom20344 Posts
On July 26 2021 05:46 Cricketer12 wrote:
I really hope frost giant peeps weren't doing this...
I get the strong impression that a lot of the people leaving Blizzard were doing it to get away from the cultural issues, while new hires were being selected to fit in to such a deranged environment.
A lot of it has been publically on show as well, with Blizzard forum moderators instabanning anybody who brings it up and even r/wow mods making automod filters to delete any message that mentions certain abusive acts within Blizzard. Make no mistake, they've been complicit all of the way down. People don't like to think badly of their idols even when it's staring them in the face.
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On July 26 2021 05:46 Cricketer12 wrote:
I really hope frost giant peeps weren't doing this...
From what I've heard, it's largely associates of some of the veterans (Morhaime) and senior people. But some teams were notorious for it because of the bro culture, while others were pretty much free of it and more wholesome.
While I think it's good that there's action being taken, it's laughable when people think this is remotely unique to Blizzard. The state will have to sue the entire video game industry, because stuff like this is prevalent everywhere. Riot is even worse, apparently, but they do pay more!
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On July 25 2021 02:03 Charoisaur wrote:
"Some of the coolest moments in sc2 happen due to worker harassment"
Too soon?
Oh my god, this is the funniest thing I will read all week.
As for the news itself, this is really sad. I would never be surprised to hear the Blizzard of old was up to shit like this, as has been heavily suggested. The one thing I thought may have improved from "going all corporate" with Activision was getting rid of shit like this.
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China6331 Posts
Team 1 (SC) is apparently run by good people so that's that.
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Unfortunately it's not. No matter how much praise gets heaped at the OGs at Blizzard there will be witch hunters searching for the biggest fish they can fry. So they will keep coming for them. Not for any logical reason, only to further their own notieriety as being the person who got this person fired.
This is the witch hunter culture of twitter, and ESPECIALLY in situations like this they are the most destructive and toxic culture on the internet.
What we need here is facts. We need to know who is responsible, who let this go on, and who the fucking asshole was that brought butt plugs on a business trip.
The witch hunters will want to skewer fucking EVERYONE whether they are guilty or not. They need to be kept in check, because all they do is create an equally toxic counter movement of apologists that will stick up for everyone just to balance out their zealous hunting.
It's so fucked. Everytime something like this comes up, this same dynamic plays out. I'm fucking sick of it. Get the facts, get the evidence, prosecute accordingly. People are going after people like Mike SPECIFICALLY because he's popular even though by most verified accounts he had nothing to do with any of this.
Very soon..so in 5-10 years? That's usually what very soon means in these types of cases, with this many people and evidence involved
If that's how long this takes, that's how long it takes. Do you want this shit done properly? or do you want to hang a man just to say you did something quickly?
This case has developed over the course of years, it might take years to resolve. Are you really surprised about that? What is the fucking alternative?
Are we just going to cruficy EVERYONE? What century are we living in here? The guilty get punished, the innocent go free. That's the goal. That takes time, trying to rush it for some ridiculous sense of vengeance especially when you ARE NOT one of the aggrieved is barbaic. Simple as that.
AND
Just to clarify before people start throwing ad hominems at me. I want the guilty people described in this lawsuit punished. I want them fired, sanctioned, fined, as much as the law can possibly throw at them that is what I want.
I DO NOT want people punished who simply worked there and had nothing to do with the harassment that took place there. Especially those in the lower rungs who didn't want to risk their own job by ratting out their superior.
I want this done right. I want justice to be served. Witch Hunts are not fucking justice. Do it right. Get evidence, prosecute accordingly. Seal the deal. California says they have enough. So let's have them prove it.
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She said Morhaime was a good guy, so no reason to go after him.While i hope she gets justice in court, reading through her tweets on her account just reminded me why i gave up on Blizzard and other big devs a decade ago and just focus on smaller development companies now.
The writing was on the wall long before War 3 Reforged, Diablo Mobile game and the Hong Kong drama.
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On July 26 2021 17:53 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
She said Morhaime was a good guy, so no reason to go after him.While i hope she gets justice in court, reading through her tweets on her account just reminded me why i gave up on Blizzard and other big devs a decade ago and just focus on smaller development companies now.
The writing was on the wall long before War 3 Reforged, Diablo Mobile game and the Hong Kong drama.
Indeed it was. The writing has been on the wall for a long while. I didn't want to admit it, but honestly ever since Cataclysm the writing has been there. Blizzard has gotten progressively worse.
The Blizzard of old would have never released WoL when they did, the way that it was. Do you remember how fucking bad B.NET 2.0 was when it launched? Old blizzard would never have let that happen.
It just got worse and worse as time went on, and that period of getting worse and worse is now at this point nearly 10 years.
Blizzard was poisoned and is dying a slow and painful death. Only now at the end does everyone actually see it.
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EPT
