Activision-Blizzard Lawsuit

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik

No thread on this yet but you nerds must've heard about it by now. Activision allegedly having a Frat Boy culture and being a bunch of assholes to their female employees that makes their work culture almost look as bad as the FBI or something... :sneaky: So the State of California or whatever is bring legal action against them.

I haven't looked into the case much and I don't think it actually has much bearing as to the merit or lack thereof of the case... but I did see this on the Twitter... so I know it's reliable.



Gamergate... still giving Liberals the Ree's seven year later.

At this juncture... I wish good luck to both parties and hope they can both win... or lose... or just both lose. Though if I really had to choose between dumping on Blizzard-Activision or the State of California without looking at the merits of the case... I guess I'd go with Blizzard-Activision.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
Even if there is an even gender balance among gamers, its irrelevant.

I've read a number of marketing research studies regarding spending habits, and men still spend substantially more on gaming than women. Even if the number of men and women gaming is the same, that's irrelevant if men are spending twice the amount of money that women are.

Even in areas where women game more than men (on mobile, for example), evidence still shows that men spend more.
 

Battlegrinder

Someday we will win, no matter what it takes.
Moderator
Staff Member
Founder
Obozny
The aligations about improper pay or limited promotions sound plausible, certainly that sort of thing has happened many a time in the past and have happened again here.

The more egregious stuff though, like this "cube crawl" where drunken male employees roamed the offices harassing women.....I can buy that happening once, maybe. But there's no way that was a regular thing and we're just now hearing of it, the idea this could happen and not be posted up on YouTube within the hour is not believable.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
The aligations about improper pay or limited promotions sound plausible, certainly that sort of thing has happened many a time in the past and have happened again here.

The more egregious stuff though, like this "cube crawl" where drunken male employees roamed the offices harassing women.....I can buy that happening once, maybe. But there's no way that was a regular thing and we're just now hearing of it, the idea this could happen and not be posted up on YouTube within the hour is not believable.
Oh, the more egregious stuff is believable when the environment punishes those who speak up and say "this ain't right and needs to stop" while protecting those who do the egregious stuff.

We have things like the Whistleblower Protection Act to punish people who retaliate against those who expose misconduct. They don't always work and inappropriate things can often be hidden with an NDA and a large cheque.
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
There are several holes in the lawsuit.

  • The lawsuit was filed by a government entity called the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. If you go to their website, you see that they say "You may file your own lawsuit for employment discrimination in court rather than using a DFEH investigation." You should be asking: why aren't the women involved in this lawsuit suing Blizzard themselves or together? Private attorneys only take a lawsuit case if they think they have a good chance of winning and getting a good money. A lawsuit costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. No one is going to take it on unless they think they are going to win. Blizzard is a big company, so winning a case would get them a lot of money. The fact that the women are having to use the government as their baseball bat would imply that private attorneys don't think they would win the case. But the government will do it because they are paid salaries in taxpayer dollars, regardless if they win or lose.
  • They said they had been doing this investigation for more than 2 years, but they don't know who they are suing. Once you get down to the parties, you get to something really interesting. "Defendant DOES ONE through TEN". 10 people is a lot. 10 unnamed people. "DFEH is ignorant of the true names or capacities of the defendants." So they don't know who they are suing. They don't know who did anything after a 2 year investigation. "DFEH will amend this complaint to allege their true names and capacities when the same are ascertained." In other words, they will name who they are suing as responsible once discovery begins. So after 2 years of investigation, they don't know who did what and don't know who they are suing. "We did a very thorough 2 year investigation but we don't know who did anything! Let's go on a fishing expedition and we will find out who our 10 imaginary defendants are!".
  • Then you have the "factual allegations". No one is named except for Alex Afrabsabi. The rest is just "yeah, we talked to somebody and they heard that someone did something, but they don't know who". There really wasn't that much of an investigation. They're throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. In lawsuit, you're allowed to commit unlimited defamation. They can allege whatever they want. They alleged that Bret Kavanaugh was involved in giant rape orgies, etc. High profile sexual allegations are more likely to be false than true, whether it be Michael Jackson, or Bill Cosby, or Bret Kavanaugh, or Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, or Donald Trump, etc. Notice how none of the allegations ended up sticking through the courts. Almost none of them, because they are usually spurious, done for political reasons.
  • The lawsuit lasted 2 years. Blizzard is a huge company. If the sexual harassment was as pervasive as the lawsuit claims, then why didn't Kotaku makes tons of articles on this? if this was happening, you wouldn't be able to hide it.

The point of this is to get Blizzard to settle. Discovery is very bad for software companies. Discovery can last years and would really harm Blizzard's business as their projects are uncovered, which would influence their stockprice and influence competitors. Blizzard will settle and Alex Afrasabi will be thrown under the bus as the sacrificial scapegoat. The women cough up easy money from Blizzard and get free attention online, and this government agency gets a trophy on the wall.

They're making a mountain out of a molehill, but twitter and the media doesn't look for the truth. They just suck up and regurgitate whatever pushes their narrative.

The one actual mistake Blizzard made here was allowing their HR department to get infiltrated by SJWs who hired women for diversity reasons. Can't get accused of sexual harassment if there are no women who work at your company in the first place. "Woman joins company with a bro culture. Accuses Blizzard of having bro culture!" no shit sherlock.

It also seems hypocritical for people to be singling out Blizzard here. Every large franchise has had stuff like this happen. The Blizzard allegations are small fry compared to the stuff that the big franchises actually had going on behind the scenes back in the day. For example, Star Trek, with TOS, Denise Crosby in TNG, Terry Farrell in DS9, Jennifer Lien and Jeri Ryan on Voyager, etc. But people didn't stop watching ST because of that.

The internet is hyping up FFXIV as the alternative to WoW, though it is interesting that no one will is singling out FFXIV. The sexualization in FFXIV puts WoW to shame, and then there is the groping of women in Japan on trains and in the workplace is well known. I haven't heard any stories out of Square Enix but there's a decent chance there is more stuff going on there than what these people are claiming is happening at Blizzard, but the narrative right now is that FFXIV is the internet's darling golden calf and Blizzard is the popular whipping boy.



The actually infuriating thing to come out of this has nothing to do with any claimed harassment. It's the Blizzard devs continuing yet again to insult their paying customers.

Teqx2bm.png


"Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome aboard! We would like to inform you that todays flight will not take place, as our co-pilot has some girlfriend trouble (with Sally, from accounting). If your reaction to this going on right now is to complain that your flight is going to take longer to reach its destination, then you need to take a step back and realize that you are part of the problem. Continue to pay us money while we do not provide the service you desired!"
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
The actually infuriating thing to come out of this has nothing to do with any claimed harassment. It's the Blizzard devs continuing yet again to insult their paying customers.

Teqx2bm.png

Then just make the content without sexually assaulting each other. Easy fix.

I have no idea how the consumer is involved in this entire process in any way. 🤷‍♀️
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
I have no idea how the consumer is involved in this entire process in any way. 🤷‍♀️

In recent years, Blizzard has developed a habit of blaming their customers for the poor quality of their products.

  • When Legion was in beta, players were telling Blizzard for months that the RNGendaries and the Artifact Power farming was terrible. Blizzard ignored them and Legion launched with those systems as is, and then when Blizzard got blasted for it, they acted like they didn't know that the systems were broken.
  • When BFA was in beta, players were telling Blizzard for months that the Azerite Power system was garbage. Blizzard ignored them and BFA launched with those systems as is, and then when Blizzard got blasted for it, they acted like they didn't know that the systems were broken. "If only our players had warned us!"
  • And then, just a few weeks ago, Blizzard had the nerve to blame their (unpaid) beta testers for why Torghast was so bad... despite players having told Blizzard for months prior to release that it was bad.
WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas said:
The problems with Torghast were not easily picked up in the beta because players on the beta were there to simply check out Torghast and didn't have the specific goals in mind that come in a live environment.

And when it comes to the abysmal writing of WoW's story after Metzen left, the writers would rather blame their paying customers and call them sexist or racist or whatever, rather than acknowledge that their stories are unpopular because of rather blatant, objective issues. It's clear that the people at Blizzard seem to be egotistical. "No no no, we didn't make a bad game or a bad story! It's our customers who are bad for not liking it!". They have developed a clear disdain for the customer.
 

S'task

Renegade Philosopher
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
The internet is hyping up FFXIV as the alternative to WoW, though it is interesting that no one will is singling out FFXIV. The sexualization in FFXIV puts WoW to shame, and then there is the groping of women in Japan on trains and in the workplace is well known. I haven't heard any stories out of Square Enix but there's a decent chance there is more stuff going on there than what these people are claiming is happening at Blizzard, but the narrative right now is that FFXIV is the internet's darling golden calf and Blizzard is the popular whipping boy.
The hype up of FFXIV began before these allegations against Blizzard began, and in large part that has to do with the fact that a bunch of big name WoW streamers decided to try out FFXIV and liked it, like, REALLY like it, and it got other people to try it and they liked it, and it began to snowball.

Add on how Blizzard has been mistreating customers and, apparently, FFXIV has been much better to them, and things we turning towards FFXIV even before these allegations. These allegations are just the icing on the cake for that storm.

And when it comes to the abysmal writing of WoW's story after Metzen left, the writers would rather blame their paying customers and call them sexist or racist or whatever, rather than acknowledge that their stories are unpopular because of rather blatant, objective issues. It's clear that the people at Blizzard seem to be egotistical. "No no no, we didn't make a bad game or a bad story! It's our customers who are bad for not liking it!". They have developed a clear disdain for the customer.
Metzen was a hack writer who's Marty Sue of character sucked out any and all nuance from the factions in WoW and his love affair for the Horde twisted things so constantly that even when they constantly took evil villainous actions, they never truly paid the price for it. The fact that the writing quality has dropped even further is kinda hilarious.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
The core issue seems to be that these clowns were too busy playing gay chicken with each other and condemning the fan base for engaging in similar frat boy behavior, then developing Diablo IV.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
One of the founders of Blizzard North, David Brevik, one of the original creators of Diablo and who since left the company, stated there were no such cultural problems at Blizzard North and expressed general outrage at what he's seen transpired.

 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member


A must watch video to gain some perspective.

In the video, Alanah talks about how devs are pretty much universally against the Activision Blizzard boycott.

In particular she references the example of one female worker at Activision Blizzard who's worried that she won't be able to pay her pregnancy-related hospital bills because the boycott will make her lose out on her sales-target bonuses.

Basically, in the gaming industry a LOT of bonuses/pay is based on making sales targets, so a boycott essentially hurts the devs as much as it hurts the company.
 

bintananth

behind a desk


A must watch video to gain some perspective.

In the video, Alanah talks about how devs are pretty much universally against the Activision Blizzard boycott.

In particular she references the example of one female worker at Activision Blizzard who's worried that she won't be able to pay her pregnancy-related hospital bills because the boycott will make her lose out on her sales-target bonuses.

Basically, in the gaming industry a LOT of bonuses/pay is based on making sales targets, so a boycott essentially hurts the devs as much as it hurts the company.

My response to that is "tough shit".

If your paycheque is tied to sales targets and those targets aren't met because people don't want to buy what's being sold for whatever reason, no matter how dumb don't come whining to me when your paycheque is not as big as you think it's supposed to be or you feel you deserve.

As for the gal worried that she'll be unable to pay her pregnancy-related hospital bills? Umm ... does she not have health insurance? Or, if she does, does she have shitty insurance where her annual out-of-pocket isn't capped?
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
My response to that is "tough shit".

If your paycheque is tied to sales targets and those targets aren't met because people don't want to buy what's being sold for whatever reason, no matter how dumb don't come whining to me when your paycheque is not as big as you think it's supposed to be or you feel you deserve.

As for the gal worried that she'll be unable to pay her pregnancy-related hospital bills? Umm ... does she not have health insurance? Or, if she does, does she have shitty insurance where her annual out-of-pocket isn't capped?

This is an incredibly ignorant response from someone who clearly didn't watch the video.

The point is that many of the people boycotting Acitivision Blizzard are nominally doing so to support the devs, and the devs do not feel that is doing anything to actually support them.

If you don't understand the point there, you are making a serious critical thinking error.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
Note: I did say "no matter how dumb"

Boycotting a company in support of people who work for said company is counterproductive, at best.
 

Stargazer

Well-known member
Note: I did say "no matter how dumb"

Boycotting a company in support of people who work for said company is counterproductive, at best.

So... You agree that the boycott is dumb then? If you're boycotting Activision/Blizzard or encouraging the boycott and you admit that the reason for boycotting them right now is dumb, where does that leave you?
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
Honestly, I couldn't care less what happens to the people who work for Activision/Blizzard; they're not why I boycott the company.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
I boycott a lot of companies... it's inadvertent because they usually just make crappy games or other products I don't like but when their name comes up I can proudly say that yes, I've boycotted them for years. :cool:
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
Were you boycotting them before this whole scandal, then?
I've been boycotting them for years for various reasons. Lootboxes in Overwatch, the debacle that was Warcraft III: Reforged, "Do You Guys Not Have Phones?"; the list goes on and on. That's just the stuff specific to Activision/Blizzard mind you; I've had a loose boycott going on for almost a decade now, of nearly the entire mainstream western entertainment industry.
 

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