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More High Profile Developers Out At Activision Blizzard Including Diablo 4 Director, Jesse McCree |
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More High Profile Developers Out At Activision Blizzard Including Diablo 4 Director, Jesse McCree | MMORPG.com
Yesterday it was confirmed that more high-profile developers are no longer working at Blizzard in the wake of the ongoing lawsuit circling the game studio. These departures include Diablo 4's Director Luis Barriga, World of Warcraft designer Jonatha LeCraft and lead designer and Overwatch hero namesake Jesse McCree.
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Yes, the sky is falling.
As always I will hope for the best and wait till the product actually ships and I play it before speculating.
POE 2 is a great game, hopefully Blizzard can produce a good quality product as well.
In my experience there are bad actors and rotten apples on both sides of the fence and I can think of multiple examples where I have very detailed knowledge about bad employees, bad employers and even criminals on both sides.
But also in my experience when there is a lot of smoke coming from somewhere, there' a fire there.
A government agency spent two years investigating workplace complaints. After the two years they sat down with the employer to go over their findings. The employer chose to deny everything and only then did the government agency decide to file a suit to get the changes made that couldn't be made by simply talking it out with the denying employer.
The news of the action taken by the state made the employees working under those conditions feel vindicated and empowered enough to begin speaking out publicly about their experiences. Not one or two employees but hundreds telling essentially the same story. That's one hell of a lot of smoke.
So you can shove your one-of anecdote about that one woman whom you say was working the system unethically. It's anecdotal garbage in the grand scheme of employee relations at Blizzard.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Having saying that and what happened in the past 3-4 years at Blizzard, aka pathetic launches and x-pacs, it seems a ..shake-up at the company was/is really necessary. Maybe they felt that they are...untouchables and could release "whatever"..I don't know.
All I know is that a change is really necessary at Blizzard. I don't have much hope that things will get back to .. normal, giving that Activision ..hands are seen more often in the backyard of Blizzard.
There is a ..line of hope. Jennifer Oneal is one of the leaders at Blizzard now. She was leading Vicarious Visions ( which is now part of Blizzard ) in the past, the company which works at D2:R which, from my point of view, they are doing a fantastic job.
Anyway, time will see. Fresh faces are always welcome, especially when the old ones have done a terrible job.
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
Fresh faces can mean change, but even if their ideas are ideas that will result in a better product it means nothing if the fresh faces aren't in the position to implement/approve those ideas. Old, large companies are often stuck in status-quo mode because the real decision makers don't change. If the new co-leaders at Blizzard have good ideas then hopefully those above them in Activision etc. allow them to implement those ideas.
I hope I'm misreading what you're trying to say here, but I'll address it anyway. This is the equivalent of telling a sexual assault victim, "You shouldn't have dressed so provocatively." Those that think that way are part of the problem in my opinion. It is never acceptable, in ANY environment, to touch someone (man or woman) without consent. Period.
In the end, it comes down to this: Don't poop where you eat. Even IF some of the victims had an "agenda," an executive at one of the largest gaming studios on the planet should have known better, both morally AND professionally. Every single one of them are getting exactly what they deserve, and I hope they never work in the industry again.
The items and class trees initially presented were horrendous but I'll assume they were pressured to reveal things when they did. And frankly it allowed discourse with the community. Itemization has improved since the early reveal and the skill tree is a step in the right direction but still lacking.
I'm going to assume Luis will be replaced by someone with a similar point of view in terms of where the game will go. I just hope they are aiming big and plan to deliver something no other developer could hope to.
You are right!
But assuming they know wtf they are doing since they worked in the business for the past 10-15 years, it seems they will bring good changes!
I mean, this is what I'm hopping for, because I really want D4 to succeed. Oh, and the next WoW X-Pac to be amazing. Unfortunately, Ion is still at the helm of WoW, even after 2 massive fail expansions, so there are small changes that (good) changes will come to the next x-pac. Anyway, THIS is "bro culture" no questions asked, because at any other normal company, if you lose players and you release 2 THE worst x-pacs from the history of (WoW) the game, you will got fired instantly. But nope. Seems he's...liked by some higher-ups which is the reason why Blizzard is in this mess.
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
Doesn't matter, these situations get very complex and if a woman feels uncomfortable at work for any reason then trouble will soon follow. As a man you have to have your guard up 100% of the time, no mistakes.. period. This isn't the 1970's where men could be pigs at work and get away with it.. times have changed and like it or not, it's not a mans world anymore.
With that said this will be devastating to Blizzard, for each charge that CA is leveling against them there are probably 200 more incidents that HR has hidden. Some of those over time will come out as the people who went through this will find the courage to come out.. think Bill Cosby.
One big misconception that I think most have is that HR is there for the employee, to protect them and help them resolve conflict. That is not their job, their job is to protect the company and every time something is reported to them they ask the question.. can this employee sue the company over this and would we lose in court? If the answer is no then the employee is silenced, transferred or fired, if the answer is yes then the boss may be written up (if they think that is enough not to have legal action taken against them) and in the worst cases the boss will be asked to leave. They only do this when they feel any potential case against the company will go badly against them.
At the end of the day HR is their to protect the company when issues come up, they could care less about the employee or the boss.. many employees mistakenly think they can go to HR and things will be taken care of.. that is not the case. I repeat, they are not their for the employee.
With that said, Blizzard is screwed. This isn't something that goes away quickly and don't expect their projects just to kick up and move forward with fresh new faces.. it's not going to happen. There are going to be those that remain who are going to be disgruntled because they believe.. as you that it's the woman's fault.. and they are going to make things difficult.
Add to all of this is COVID where many employees just don't give a shite about their work anymore and see no reason to break their back to make things happen. Many people are quitting just because of that and it's made it very difficult for companies to keep employees. It's just not going to be good for Blizzard.
It's almost as if the stock market is not indicative of the reality of companies the stocks represent. ?
Tell me you hate women without telling me you hate women.
Fishing on Gilgamesh since 2013
Fishing on Bronzebeard since 2005
Fishing in RL since 1992
Born with a fishing rod in my hand in 1979
Perhaps those that don't want to be taken advantage of should be more clever than fish. The responsibility of these situations is shared to a degree.
*---------------------------*
Ferrying children about is not a gender exclusive activity, so depending on the needs of each particular instance can be done by either parent.
Men lie to get off work as well, causing similar issues.
What of that implies hate? There is a lot of presumption and assumption that I expect overstates the propensity of women to use their children as a means to secure an inordinate amount of time off. However, I am certain some needlessly do at times.
Personally, I would attribute that more to need in the majority of cases. Many women are single parents so simply must take off time if their children need extraordinary care or go to the doctor and such. The same would be true for male single parents.
Even with both parents such would be best done by the one that earns the least if pay will be lost due to the time off, which probably still remains the mother most often.
We cannot be certain as to why these people left the company, so conflation with an unresolved lawsuit is journalistic reaching. It seems likely that some of them were asked to leave due to these allegations, but once again we simply can't be sure.
I have looked into this matter somewhat more now, previously the only time I read or heard anything about it was on here, indeed only those articles we could comment on in fact. What I have now read is more than enough to raise a huge question mark over the company and what is happening to women in the workplace.
The question was raised above that some of the women involved might have been bad actors, yes they may, but when so many are involved your position cannot be that they all were, clearly there is an issue here.
But even so there is a lot of reaching and conflation in the articles I have been reading here and elsewhere. There is a reason we trust the legal process to handle these issues and good reason not to trust the "court of the media". I think it likely that Blizzard/Activision are guilty of numerous failings in regard to how women were being treated, but we cannot have the media being our courts, which to our detriment they are ever more frequently becoming.
I used to watch all this but all the boss noticed was the physical absence of the woman from her workplace. So he promoted the guy who was doing half the work and goofing around chasing skirts.
People assume that just because someone is physically in the office they are doing more work. Lots of time the men are playing video games at work or coming to work with a hangover. One of the guys in my guild is playing hours and hours while at work and this is not at all uncommon.
Employers should actually look at the work produced compared to the hours they spend at the office and promote accordingly. I am not saying women don't goof off at work but what my boss did was stupid.
I thought data comparing the two on their comparative percentage of single parent families would be easy to find with a search. Not so much. The U.S. consistently came in as higher but the gap varied depending on source, at times significantly.
I expect lies about family to get out of work to be low, even among the deceitful. The resources available for such usage are limited. One only has so much family to go around. Also, it will provoke suspicion before too long if extensively used without some sort of corroboration of a justifying situation.
You could use that as an example, but it is lacking in detail, especially on the male co-worker side. I would certainly look more into it before assuming gender bias.
However, I am one that doesn't take the potential of impropriety as proof of it or confuse the accusation of something with guilt of it. There is a social trend of late that presumes guilt until proven innocence. If left unchecked that view will eventually cause more injustice than it eliminates.
We also don't know how badly the Blizzard management pushed this alleged toxic culture. They will downplay it, but I could be less or worse than anyone really cares to admit. Again, we will never really know.
What we do know is the people who did wrongdoings, if fount guilty, will probably never feel the results of their actions. The settlements will not come out of their pockets and, even though some have left the company or lost their jobs, I doubt they will really feel the financial hit.
So... enjoy the games you enjoy and let the professionals weed out all this stuff. Speculating or boycotting will really have no effect on any of it.
Stock market looks to the future of a company's profitability. Convince the stock market that ATVI is going to lose money in the future, stock will tank right now. Buy puts.