Activision Blizzard Sued By California Over ‘Frat Boy’ Culture

[Guyverarmor]

I will say, though, that posts like this do a lot to assuage the trepidation I felt after reading Mike's statement.

Yeah, I've actually been able to talk to Morhaime a couple of times on FB back in the day when he was at Blizz, he's an awesome guy overall and reading his statement... I believe it is genuine.

As Cher said, I'm pretty sure a lot of it or almost all of it was kept from him.

[Gredival]

Been watching some chucklefucks in the D3 forum trying to argue it's just CA trying to extort money from Blizzard because lol-leftism. "This is why #MeToo was important" thoughts aside, my ultimate concern was that Blizz would just throw money at litigation until things disappeared because the other side's wallet couldn't keep up. Nonetheless, the usual right-wing anti points crept in, alongside a peculiar claim that the middle class is suffering because of laws that have sprung up over discrimination and harassment as some definite strawman whataboutism. Lot of it just reeks of idol worship, but the usual concern that people still think like that tells me we have a long, long, long way to go as a society.

We don't rack up typical attorney costs because no one is on billable hours as a gov't attorney. However while we work at flat salaries, when we win attorneys' fees, we are awarded rates as if we worked billable hours based on fair market value for our experience. So we added 2M to our warchest from just one lawsuit in 2013 (College Board). One of the top lawyers at the Dept. when I was there was a former name partner at a big firm, from Harvard, etc. retired from private sector to pursue civil rights in her golden years. She was considered to be a fair billing at $2000 per hour. My ass billed at $171 per hour as a first year.

So yeah there is no way they win by attrition.

[Lucavi]

Yeah, I've actually been able to talk to Morhaime a couple of times on FB back in the day when he was at Blizz, he's an awesome guy overall and reading his statement... I believe it is genuine.

As Cher said, I'm pretty sure a lot of it or almost all of it was kept from him.

Then he's incompetent at his job. Your job as boss is to know what your employees are doing. Its not just meetings with other companies and management. Its the same fucking defense as Dan Snyder of the Washington Foreskins. "I'm so sorry but I had no idea about anything!" and these useless owners and CEOs get protected by other vets in the industry because if one of them goes down, all of them do.

There are 2 options.

1) He was aware, but didn't have the heart (or other reasons) to fire his higher-up friends. He also wasn't paying attention to or outright encouraged HR to protect those at the top.
2) He wasn't aware of YEARS of pervasive harassment, discrimination and abuse, which means he's completely useless at his job.

Its too fucking easy for the guys at the top to say the same thing over and over again. Morhaime knew. Snyder knew. They all know. Whether they ever want to tell their good friends to stop, fire them, or watch them get hauled off to jail or not is another question entirely.

If one at the top goes down, he'll most likely squeal and name all the others. Its a literal "too big to fail" situation. That's why the NFL protected Snyder. That's why these mega-corp CEOs protect one another in the industry.

[Zealot]

WoW is still the most successful MMO of all time so I don't know if "completely" useless is an accurate description.

[Corrderio]

Hasn't WoW been hemorrhaging subs lately? I know there were some supposed leaks on 4chan about how the newest expansion were met with generally negative reviews but Activision didn't seem to care since as far as they're concerned there is no real WoW competitor out there.

[Daydreamer]

Hasn't WoW been hemorrhaging subs lately? I know there were some supposed leaks on 4chan about how the newest expansion were met with generally negative reviews but Activision didn't seem to care since as far as they're concerned there is no real WoW competitor out there.

There has been a fairly large shift from wow to ff14 these past few weeks. https://www.google.com/amp/s/kotaku....1847283978/amp

[Krandor]

Large shift for 14 maybe.

WoW still likely has an active daily playerbase in the 3 million range

[Gredival]

Hasn't WoW been hemorrhaging subs lately? I know there were some supposed leaks on 4chan about how the newest expansion were met with generally negative reviews but Activision didn't seem to care since as far as they're concerned there is no real WoW competitor out there.

As an entire company, ActiviBlizzard are losing players but their profitability is up.

[Lucavi]

WoW is still the most successful MMO of all time so I don't know if "completely" useless is an accurate description.

Oh, I'm sorry. Completely useless at his job outside of making money, which is the problem with the industry as a whole. Its perfectly fine for the boys to abuse the fuck out of women so long as the profits are rolling in, because profits are all that matters.

Same as Snyder. Washington makes fat stacks off of their moronic fanbase (as a reformed skins fan who got the fuck off of the copium decades ago, I speak from experience) drunk on hope, to the point where it doesn't matter how many cheerleaders get paraded around in front of fat, greasy execs to be oogled and literally objectified in "private showings", they're untouchable because they're rolling in profit for the league.

And the League fucking defended him and gave him a hilarious slap on the wrists as a "stop getting caught, moron!" punishment.

Gred's right: ActiBlizz's profits are up every year, so the financial strategy is working. I suppose that excuses all other crimes and abuse in our corporate culture.

Edit: https://twitter.com/cherthedev/statu...htmode%3Dfalse

I wanna see Morhaime respond to this, and publicly. Not some private back and forth about "psst! Keep it private! I have an image to maintain!"

[NotGreyheim]

Metzen's statement.

[NotGreyheim]

Guess I'll just carry on with not trusting anyone and not believing anything...

[Lucavi]

And lets not forget: all of these guys claiming to never have seen anything -ever- and "failing everyone" are running their own companies now, bringing up another generation of "ol boy's clubs" to perpetuate the cycle once these businesses become profitable and make new "rock stars".

None of them retired and stayed gone. I remember Metzen being all "I can't wait to spend more time with my family."

That lasted long.

Edit: https://twitter.com/devolore/status/...htmode%3Dfalse

Stop worshiping humans because they made something you like.

[NotGreyheim]

Thank you for swooping in to remind me I haven't hit rock bottom yet, Luca.

[NotGreyheim]

[Lucavi]

Thank you for swooping in to remind me I haven't hit rock bottom yet, Luca.

Nah, it ain't about that. Its just frustrating hearing people making excuses for people they don't know, simply because they made things they like.

[Ksandra]

There's no way they weren't. It sounds so reductive to always say "where's there's nothing but men running the show, women will suffer", but fuck, man, prove me wrong at this point. We know the default settings for thirsty males in general. Now give them complete power over people they employ.

So we've got Ubisoft, Riot, ActiBlizz confirmed to be run by a bunch of thirsty boys. Anyone else? Everyone else?

Better to just realize they all do that.

When I worked at EA, company threw a fancy Christmas party, open bar, whole nine yards. Friend managed to get onto the upper floor if the hotel where the execs had strippers.

Another friend in the industry got invited to Sony's E3 after party where he got introduced to the wonderful world of sushi girls.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

So I wasn’t going to bring them up because they are indie, so don’t really apply here, and shameless plug etc. but I was looking up Wayforward stuff today on Reddit and I found 1 piece of female drama….but not what you think. Apparently some incel gamers are upset at the company because a couple years back a girl on Twitter posted concerns about an “all-male team” creating the new River City Girls (female duo). The game director defended her against a bunch of trolls and pointed out they had more female leads than males on that team. Meaning, of course, he is a “sjw cuck.” (Thread for reference. Article in question is an absolute nightmare but you can get the jist from the Twitter screenshots):

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAct...tm_name=iossmf

It was refreshing to see for me personally, because my hubby worked so hard for many years trying to get a job at Blizzard as it was the “industry’s king” for so long. I am very very thankful he ended up where he did.

[Anoat]

One of WoW’s senior devs has commented saying that no work is being done on WoW at all right now while this plays out.

[Gredival]

Gred's right: ActiBlizz's profits are up every year, so the financial strategy is working. I suppose that excuses all other crimes and abuse in our corporate culture.

I mean this is also what is killing multiplayer games in general. Corporatization of studios and alternate monetization go hand in hand in sanitizing game development and design from the art of crafting the best game, into the art of making the most profitable game.

Capitalism guarantees efficiency of profit. Not quality of product.

[Lucavi]

So I wasn’t going to bring them up because they are indie, so don’t really apply here, and shameless plug etc. but I was looking up Wayforward stuff today on Reddit and I found 1 piece of female drama….but not what you think. Apparently some incel gamers are upset at the company because a couple years back a girl on Twitter posted concerns about an “all-male team” creating the new River City Girls (female duo). The game director defended her against a bunch of trolls and pointed out they had more female leads than males on that team. Meaning, of course, he is a “sjw cuck.” (Thread for reference. Article in question is an absolute nightmare but you can get the jist from the Twitter screenshots):

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAct...tm_name=iossmf

It was refreshing to see for me personally, because my hubby worked so hard for many years trying to get a job at Blizzard as it was the “industry’s king” for so long. I am very very thankful he ended up where he did.

I remember that specifically, Ksan. I also remember Sankaku's shitty site picking it up and blustering with their usual anti-women rhetoric.

[NotGreyheim]

This entire Twitter thread must be purged.