Blizzard Activision Sued Over Company Culture - Page 9

On July 31 2021 05:07 NonY wrote:

I am surprised by how much support they've garnered, but I'm not surprised that some people did flock to the cause. In this day and age, I'm not surprised by any cause gaining supporters. No matter how dumb or hateful the cause is, or how awful the people behind it are, there will be supporters.

What I don't understand is why people think I'm wrong for not supporting them. It is far from a black and white issue. A government agency is already taking legal action. And all that aside, the quality of their work and the direction their work both deserve criticism. To me, the obvious course of action is to continue to be critical of them until they actually show some results, since they already had all our support at one point and have only declined since then. Or just forget they exist, let them try to sort themselves out, let the legal action take its course, and give them a clean second chance at some point in the future. But how dare I be critical at a time like this when they just said they're trying to better themselves (and the opportunity to gain leverage over their leadership is just a coincidence, of course).

On July 31 2021 02:19 404AlphaSquad wrote:
When i read this forum, i wonder where all these “perfect people” who go on about what they would do if they were in this situation are hiding in real life.

On July 31 2021 09:27 plasmidghost wrote:
I'm sure that almost all the people reading this are cis dudes, so here's my thoughts as a trans woman on this coming to light:
I work in cybersecurity so while not the same industry, there are many similarities between what I've experienced in my life and what is going on at Blizzard. Pre-transition, whenever I would go to security conferences, the talks and presentations would be professional and courteous. Everything had the appearance of being chill and accepting. Outside of the official conference time, during parties, get-togethers, and the like, the misogyny from the tech bros was fucking rampant. All the women in cybersecurity would be judged on appearance, rated on a scale of being fuckable, be called all sorts of slurs that I'd rather not repeat, and the guys would say in extremely disturbing detail what they'd want to do to these women. Another "fun" thing that honestly made my closeted self want to quit tech forever was hearing them debate on which women were trans and just say the absolute most horrendous comments I've ever personally heard. And this was just several days of the year. If just a small taste of that would make me want to never work in the industry again despite being passionate, I cannot even begin to imagine how bad having that happen to these women every day would be. Anyone of these pieces of shit that harmed these women deserve to be named and shamed and never be allowed a job in gaming again. And the worst part is, it would be more generous than what they gave the women harmed by this.

On July 31 2021 06:04 KwarK wrote:
Who is calling for you personally to support them? I don’t know that I’d have noticed your lack of support had you not brought it up.

On July 31 2021 08:13 Excludos wrote:


Nothing is easier than arm chairing from a position of privilege. Yes, I too can sit here and go "If I found discrimination at my job I'd quit!" But you know what? I have money saved up and could get a new job practically tomorrow. It doesn't take a whole lot of empathy (even if you don't have sympathy) to realize that not everyone is as lucky, and isn't able to just up and leave from their dream job, with no security, no backup plan, families to take care of, and bills that needs to be paid.

I would easily consider ignoring injustice at my workplace if it meant I didn't have to live on the street, and that brings us to the biggest systematic issue in America: A complete lack of safety net. How does one expect employees to stand up for anything when you stand to completely fuck up your life in the process?

On July 31 2021 07:11 WombaT wrote:

In a micro or macro sense, this is how social changes work.

The ‘if I die, fuck it’ people lead the charge and eventually spurn on those in the ‘this is wrong but I’m not putting my ass in the line’ camp, and if there’s sufficient mass and a power shift then the ‘I was on the fence but now I’m not’ people swing over, and eventually the behaviour that was perceived as wrong is now policed by the same social and structural powers that enabled or actively encouraged it.

As someone alluded to earlier, the history of Labour movements in the States elsewhere is pretty choc-a-bloc with Union guys fished out of rivers. While a much more entrenched and heinous situation, not everyone is wired like a Rosa Parks is.

Perhaps for the best really, while it can be useful in forging a better social order, if absolutely everyone peaced out at impingements to their particular moral codes, it would be quite difficult to maintain consistently agreed and adhered fo moral frameworks that aid cohesion in various areas.

But yes it definitely does slow down the pace of needed change, in all sorts of areas and the phenomenon exists even in purely social environments with no real stakes. I assume it would still be a frequent occurrence in whatever utopias people conjure up, but it’s sure entrenched in systems that give people real power over others.

I do admire your attitude, and hell if more people shared it I might see some good old socialism in my lifetime! Equally that’s an outlying attitude and I can’t criticise people too harshly for merely being normal. Speaking of employees at Blizzard and what’s going on there now.

I do not particularly see the point in pressure via slacktivism though if the wider population want to jump on the train. It’s not a huge sacrifice to just ignore the company and their products, if you want to do something tangible there is an obvious something there. Notwithstanding people loving jumping on bandwagons before much of anything is known, which isn’t always helpful either.

On July 31 2021 06:04 KwarK wrote:
Who is calling for you personally to support them? I don’t know that I’d have noticed your lack of support had you not brought it up.

On July 31 2021 12:08 RenSC2 wrote:

TL being closed for a day was clearly the TL staff throwing their support behind the movement. Users of TL had their typical use interrupted whether they supported it or not.

It's the type of thing that usually helps me turn against a movement. It's like when people protest out in a street and block traffic. You made me wait in traffic for hours? Fuck you and your movement. I'll vote against whatever you want out of spite even if I believe in your movement in principle.

On July 30 2021 09:20 NonY wrote:
the worst that can happen is your life ends shorter than you were hoping for. do what you want with your life.

On July 31 2021 16:46 Poaktree wrote:


And what if you have a family, or young kids, you fucking jackass?

Some of the takes in this thread are beyond ridiculous.

It's the type of thing that usually helps me turn against a movement. It's like when people protest out in a street and block traffic. You made me wait in traffic for hours?

On July 31 2021 11:38 tec27 wrote:

America's self-mythology is largely to blame here, imo. We tell ourselves that every big change was accomplished through the action of a determined individual, we ignore the collective behind them, the organizing and work it took to get there. We learn of Rosa Parks as a person who had had enough, and wasn't going to give up her bus seat, in a spontaneous event. We don't learn of the community organizing she did before and after that event, that the reason she was able to take such a risk was because she had built up a community of people who were willing to take risks for her. That her power was collective power, not individual.

We tell ourselves that systemic issues are best solved individually. That fixing the destruction of our environment is solvable by simply bringing a reusable bag to the store, or not using a plastic straw. That global warming can be solved if you just plant a tree, or bike to work, or turn off some lights. That we can fix rape culture by simply being willing to speak up once or twice. At best, these ideas are hopelessly naive. At worst, these ideas come directly from companies and entities who stand to lose money if people's ire were to be directed productively, and these sorts of individual-focused narratives allow them to direct people's energy into unproductive action. Quite simply, systemic problems cannot be solved through individual means.

These problems at Blizzard are not an isolated event, we know they are prevalent across the industry, as brazen and shocking as some of the stories included in the lawsuit may be. If a woman experiences harassment at Blizzard, she knows that if she leaves her job, a lot of other jobs available to her are likely to have the same problems. She knows that if she speaks up about it, to try and get these things fixed, she's likely to be forced out, blacklisted, and unable to find good work afterwards. She'll probably have to change industries entirely, to throw away a career she spent her life dreaming about. I'm not sure about everyone else, but the idea of throwing everything away and starting from scratch 30 years into my life isn't really that appealing!

I worked at Google through the years of the walkout there and subsequent actions. I worked closely with people involved in the upper levels of that organizing, I participated in some actions myself, I tried to make myself useful. As a cis white man that was a full time employee and a US citizen, the risk to me was fairly low. I could almost certainly find a job elsewhere in the industry (companies are totally fine hiring "problematic" white men, it turns out). But when looking at my options: leave or organize, there really was only one moral choice to me. By leaving, I was giving the company a (very tiny) signal that I was unhappy with their actions, unlikely to produce any real change. By staying, I could instead lend my power and voice to people that didn't luck into that position in life.

These companies very much want their employees operating on an individual level. They hire firms that specialize and have tons of experience in tracking organizing work, subverting efforts to change things, and forcing out "problem" employees without technically violating the law. You come into work one day to find your role has changed unexpectedly. You talk to your boss about it, they give you an excuse that doesn't make sense. You escalate, you tell your coworkers, suddenly you find that an executive 3 levels above you has emailed the entire department to tell them what a terrible person you are, how ineffective you are, how you've been lying to everyone. You go to HR, they tell you, "wow you've been acting pretty stressed and not yourself lately, maybe you should take medical leave? Talk to our therapist?" If you do take either of those options, the company uses it against you. You come back to find your old position is completely gone, you work with entirely new people, your responsibilities reduced completely. The company asks for the therapist's records should you ever decide to sue them. If you take neither option, they'll continue to gaslight you in front of your coworkers until you decide to show yourself the door.

This all sounds pretty crazy, right? No way this is a real situation. Except, it is:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/us/google-workplace-complaints-counseling.html
https://www.elle.com/culture/tech/a30259355/google-walkout-organizer-claire-stapleton/

These problems are not unique to Blizzard, they're not unique to Riot, they're not unique to Google or Amazon. They are prevalent across the whole games industry, the entire tech industry, many other industries as well. These companies all run to the same firms to help them shut down any efforts to change, they release the same sorts of statements about how these bad apples are all safely in the past, the discrimination and harassment problem has been fixed! Certainly no further action is needed! The goal of all of this is to defuse the energy that exists in this moment, to prevent it from affecting real change, to direct it into something unproductive that costs them little. We don't have to settle for that, we can demand more, together.

On July 31 2021 17:32 WombaT wrote:
The company asks for the therapist's records should you ever decide to sue them.