Activision Blizzard Sued by California over ‘Frat Boy’ Culture | Hacker News Reader

Activision Blizzard Sued by California over ‘Frat Boy’ Culture

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105 pointsgundmc20 comments

> The suit also points to a female Activision employee who took her own life while on a company trip with her male supervisor. The employee had been subjected to intense sexual harassment prior to her death, including having nude photos passed around at a company holiday party, the complaint says.

Yikes. After the stories that came out about Riot Games, it seems like this sort of behavior isn't super uncommon amongst Gaming Companies.

This is one of those headlines where I expected the cases to be a bunch of micro-aggressions that I would not really empathize with.

But no, this is absolutely disgusting.

What stories about Riot Games?

I agree these allegations are unusually bad. Worse than I was expecting. If this doesn't get settled - or even if it does - the evidence that would be required would be pretty damming. I'd bet it exists given that this was brought at all.

https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-game...

https://www.wired.com/story/riot-games-ceo-culture-complaint...

> Riot’s CEO sent an e-mail to employees describing the punishment its COO, Scott Gelb, will face after multiple employees alleged that, as a comedy bit, he has repeatedly touched subordinates’ balls or butt or farted in their faces.

> Scott Gelb, Riot Games’ COO, whom current and former employees allege participated in “ball-tapping” (flicking or slapping testicles), farting on employees or humping them

He is still active COO.

And their response is:

> We are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family.

Anecdote: I work on a game team at Activision Blizzard and have seen nothing like this behavior. If anything people are terrified of creating a harmful climate because the company is so “woke”. (2 hour webcast featuring a non-binary skateboarder’s experiences growing up in the middle of the workday! [that’s just this week])

How long have you worked there, and how long has it been this way?

The company has been under investigation for a long time and known it. Of course you've been subject to an oversized response: the company wants to portray that clearly they've always been ""woke"".

They know that a single new incident right now, during this lawsuit, will cost them dearly.

Companies that present themselves as woke seem to be among the worst perpetrators.

I don't work there and I'm shocked after reading all the 29 pages, not to mention your company's response to the allegations.

https://aboutblaw.com/YJw

https://www.ign.com/articles/activision-blizzard-sued-by-cal...

This investigation by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing uncovered a substantial amount of discrimination, harassment and retaliation. A female employee killed herself on a company trip, many others since spoke about their ordeals.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/op1t7m/activision_bliz...

If you haven't seen anything it's because you failed to notice it, just like you failed to notice that your company is currently trying to save face. This also means that the company failed to address any of the issues, otherwise there would have been a conversation about it, and not just these insubstantial exercises.

You working for them, yet being completely in the dark speaks volumes.

you say it "speaks volumes". Post bad things you've seen and name names. Don't be cowardly

Piece of shit company that declares another character gay to cover up any bad press turns out to be a piece of shit company.

Can't say I'm surprised.

They have to introduce a lot of gay characters to cover for this.

that's awful

and publically the company is super-woke (other than when Chinese/Russian profits are at risk)

I guess it's projection...

Wow, pretty disgusting stuff. I suppose it isn't hugely surprising how sexist gaming companies are considering how sexist a large portion of many online games player bases are.

How’d you connect those two? Devs do not equal their toxic player bases.

People working in game design choose to accept lower pay and worse working conditions than other industries offer for the same skills.

That makes no sense unless they're gamers themselves.

There’s probably a couple billion gamers and less than a hundred thousand game developers of which only an even smaller fraction have been accused of anything.

That’s a tiny, tiny fraction to use as the reason to assassinate the characters of everyone else.

I’ve been in Game dev for the better part of a decade and money has never been the driving factor in what positions I worked. I have ADHD and unable to work normal dev jobs (I’ve tried and I find them too boring). The game industry is a small world the ones that are intolerant quickly find out no one wants to work with them.

This is basically the same Argument as the one that really kickstarted Gamergate IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STl7-_f4_eA

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