Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
promethean.news
promethean.news
I haven't purchased new Blizzard products since the Hong Kong censorship debacle[1] and quit playing Hearthstone at that time. However I had still played some of my other old favorites, reasoning that I was not providing them further financial support. The recent announcements about their terrible, sexist culture had challenged that notion for me, and I was not sure what to do.
This news is the straw that breaks my back. That Activision/Blizzard would double down on their despicable behavior and stance in this way is completely beyond the pale, and I for one will never again fire up those games that I loved so much.
Thanks for ruining that for me, Blizzard.
China does not care about the West’s uproar over most things. Blizzard does not care if you buy Diablo 4, they care if the East buys Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal.
I’m no CCP apologist by any measure.
Still a voracious consumer of Chinese goods, as is the world.
The manufacturing industry in Asia isn't very pretty.
Less tongue-in-cheek, I'm really not sure it's China's responsibility to ensure good working conditions in the foreign companies that produce the goods they want to buy, and I'm not sure it's the west's responsibility to ensure good working conditions for the Chinese workers who produce the goods we buy either. I feel I may be in the minority with that view though.
But the consuming country is still participating in the exploitation knowingly. It's not like we're unaware, so it's definitely a conscious choice being made to ignore it. It's worth considering the weight of that, since being loud about it has been cause for quite a lot of positive change over the decades.
It's not like I think someone who buys something made with exploitation is a monster, or even shares much of the blame at all, but it is a choice you can make to support less exploitation here and there and I think that's worth doing.
I think it's important to add that with China t's not simply poor working conditions (happens in other countries too, but CCP on a vast scale and what we're talking about).
It's forced labor and genocide, which I think we have a fundamental human obligation to do the smallest bare minimum of trying to avoid those goods (like cotton). That should rise above states and politics.
Though tougher action that could make a difference of course has big consequences and a big ethical dilemma for sure. But a boycot seems like the most basic bare minimum.
I want to lead off with saying I don't want __anyone__ exploited, but this more or less is what US consumers have and continue to do world wide, and I'm not sure that dystopian is the most accurate word for it.
I'm not fully convinced that the original comment that Blizzard wants to sell in China is entirely accurate (there is truth of course, but somehow I think they'd really feel if the American market lost confidence), but dystopian is a pretty specific word for me, and just curious what you are meaning to communicate.
Diablo Immortal is them outsourcing development of a flagship franchise to a Chinese company Netease to develop a mobile version. Netease mobile games are really big overseas. That to me is similar to Facebook outsourcing to Bytedance to make a social network with China in mind first. There’s a world of difference between having an office China and literally handing over your IP to a Chinese company. It’s a big deal.
It’s not they don’t want American’s money, everything adds to the bottom line, but China is showing itself to be bigger markets for video games (just as Hollywood is seeing that they are becoming a bigger market for movies).
It’s a very real thing, and forward decisions are being heavily influenced with that market in mind first and foremost.
Edit:
To put a final stamp on my main point, if the Chinese people were to be offended by these allegations, I can promise you Blizzard would turn the world over and rectify it over night. The same way they got John Cena to apologize in Mandarin to not fuck with the Fast and Furious release in China.
We matter very little at this point to these industries.
Are you talking about DOTA2? It was hugely successful, both from a gamer's perspective, as well as in the eSports world.
I also find its enemy design and atmosphere lacking in consistency and quality. It just doesn't have the dark, dangerous, and foreboding feel that Diablo 1 and 2 have mastered.
Well, if everyone reading about Blizzard's malfeasance decides to not do business with them, as some commenters in this thread are doing, then they will suffer a problem in the short term as well.
I'll also vote for policies and representatives to enact sensible (opinions will differ, obviously) legislation to enforce better morality and better safeguarding of the commons, especially with respect to externalities -- as I see those as a major source of the failings of capitalism.
Beyond that, I don't really know. And I'll readily admit that looking around at where we as a society are and where we seem to be headed, especially with respect to things like climate change, those seem like very small measures. I just don't know what else to do.
Other things that come to mind: "Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice." https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/ags - "If the stock market made any sense, you'd be able to exploit that sense and capitalize on it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
So it makes "logical sense" IFF short-term improvements/non-losses of control, power, and position lead to profit, and that's not something that's logically provable. Rather, that's something that's got to be observed experimentally, and AFAIK it ...isn't.
If your goal-metric is money, you run into both what SMBC is pointing out, and Goodhart's law. If your goal-metric is something else, money is an "easy" by-product.
> how can we work to promote moral behavior?
IMHO sociological studies examining this. "Seek money, make nothing. Seek to make, get money twice", or something.
Do you have links to any studies backing this up? The idealist in me really wants this to be true, but the cynic in me believes capitalism is set up to reward the most ruthless, unscrupulous people.
But - what's be your top 10 list of successful startups? How many of them are either directly mission-driven, or have a strong mission?
If you like a game, keep bookmarks on the people who made it and follow them around the industry.
This is how I normally find new books to read (by following authors) for some reason it just hadn't occurred to me to follow individuals in the gaming space. (Except for the Mode 7 Games, which put out Frozen Synapse, the awesome turn-based RTS [0] )
I'm curious how you follow people when so many games are made by teams of people - how do you find them, how do you decide which ones to follow, etc. I'd love to hear more
That is a very confusing argument to me.
Not only you’ve already given your money to them and received your end of the transaction, whether you make use of it or not, is this the most robust way to conceptualize the identity of a corporation? No temporal limitations, no account for the actual people that make up the corporation at a given time?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying keep buying their games or give support to what they do but if the people who made your beloved Diablo aren’t the same people responsible for today’s shitshow, what’s the point of your gesture?
The inverse concern applies too, VW, IBM, Hugo Boss among many other had affiliations with Nazi Germany. Should they be condemned today, if so for how long more? What determines the cutoff?
This is a classic Theseus’s ship problem, if you change every board of a ship one board at a time, is it still the same ship, how do you define the identity functions.
Sounds like this is less about the identity of the corporation you affiliated with and more about identity of you through what you choose to/not to affiliate with.
There is certainly an element of this, I am sure. But frankly it is that I don't want to give them even the millionth-of-a-cent of value that they could derive from my +1 to their active player numbers. I don't want to contribute anything to their advantage.
I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with demonstrations of purity in protest, for the record, as long as we’re honest about what they are.
These companies are organizations who can change rapidly as management and staff turn over. Blizzard from last year isn’t the same as blizzard from 5 years ago isn’t the same as blizzard from 20 years ago.
The veneration of brands based on their inheritance from what the brand used to be distorts people’s view of reality, and leads to brands that feel they don’t have to continue in terms of excellence.
Personally I think the start of WoW was the end of an age for Blizzard. Similarly the release of Fallout Shelter was the end of an age for Bethesda. Beyond those points the organizations were distorted by the success and profit they encountered there, and basically shifted to new companies with different priorities yet still holding the brand name.
Sure, if a company does something that you find reprehensible, not giving them further money (or attention) is certainly a reasonable -- and honorable! -- thing to do.
But if you've already purchased a standalone[0], non-subscription product from that company, and that company doesn't gain any benefit from your further use of that product (or lose anything from you stopping use), I feel like you're only hurting yourself if you stop using it.
I will concede that if the act of playing one of these standalone games makes you think of the bad thing the company did and makes you angry/upset, I guess it makes sense to stop playing them. But unless the bad thing they did is something personally/viscerally important to you, it feels like that's a bit of an odd trigger.
[0] If the game is multiplayer, and connects to a company-run server, I guess you could make the argument that they benefit in some way from their active-users numbers being higher. I personally don't find that argument all that compelling, but everyone can of course decide where the cutoff of benefit is for them.
Do you have a citation?
At the time of this writing I had 13 upvotes for a mostly wrong take. Still maintain that the jail time puts Kelly closer to Cosby than Jackson.
I’d like to have a database that tracks the C-Suite employees. I’d personally boycott any company that hires any of them. Their careers should be over IMO. I wish we could take away Bobby’s money too, but that’ll never happen.
We should totally not give our money to shitty companies. But global commerce is so intertwined that it would quickly become very difficult to buy anything if we start closely looking at every company we give money to.
I don't know what the solution is. Boycotting is a start.
Sure, we may have somewhat high manufacturing standards in the US, but take a step into foreign soil and all the sudden all the rules are out the window. With companies specifically using countries with the weakest safety regs to cut costs.
It's why walmart keeps getting busted for using slave/child labor.
Just by being a part of the starcraft community, you are providing support to activision blizzard.
If we were talking about offline-only non-community driven content, sure... but this is a company that is almost entirely driven off of multiplayer games.
Going back further in time will only make you miserable if you hold the work closely accountable to the person. Terrible people can still say really good things, and I don't believe it is different with games or modern entertainment in general. Old Blizzard games are still good, and old Louis CK sets are still funny.
Why spend the limited time you have in this world on consuming the works of terrible people? There is more out there than you could possibly experience in a lifetime. Why not dedicate that time to people who are not awful?
Also understanding the enemy.
Also not all “consuming” of work is for “entertainment”.
There is only one of any given person, that is not an argument to read them either.
On the contrary, real insights tend to stand the test of time, which is why Nietzsche continues to remain relevant and timeless. Lysenkoism, not so much.
Your logic is exactly the reason many people tell us we shouldn't bother learning too much about, say, the founders of American democracy.
You should have a strong moral compass, and you should be able to tell right from wrong, and awful from decent. And you should let that compass guide you in everything you do, including who you give the precious resource that is your attention to.
Framing it as "other people consider awful" makes it sound like you do not actually agree that awful people are all that bad, and that is a moral failing on your part.
Everybody has done and said awful things. If you don't want to read the works of sinners, then you won't be able to learn from anyone.
My example highlighted folks like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, unrepentant slaveholders who happen to be keystones of American democracy. They said and did awful things in life. Do you think therefore that you have nothing to learn from them?
ACTI doesn't have that excuse. They're all with us now, and their actions don't have the shield of being reasonable in the society they exist in.
Not being able to relate to an other if they are not pure is a failure in having strong enough ego boundaries. High functioning requires complexification of our boundaries; a confidence in deciding what goes in and what doesn't on the fly without requiring rigid codification of rules, which ultimately requires a confidence in ourselves; what we are and what we are not.
All-or-nothing purity is a way of keeping things simple and reducing the complex calculus the reality demands. Not saying this in a demeaning manner, because we all do this in varying degrees. But if one can't tell if they are being a "bad" person or not for making use of a "bad" person's valid idea/product, that could as well be a shortcoming of their own self-conceptualization than the "badness" of the other.
We still celebrate conquerers like Genghis Khan after hundreds of years, even though they brought a ton of misery (especially Genghis, who was known for his cruelty) to the people they conquered and often to their own people. The pyramids, great wall of China etc were all built on the death of tens of thousands of workers.
Sometimes the more we learn, the more depressing it gets (Ignorance is bliss? lol)
At the end of the day, another player booting up an Activision game is another (tiny) data point that says whatever activity Activision/Blizzard is engaging in is a-ok with that player. It’s not revenue driving right now, but in 6-12 months, this has blown over and enough of the tiny subset of temporarily outraged players will eventually start to generate revenue. That’s what they’re banking on.
Decide what you care about or don’t, but at least accept/own the impact of your decisions and don’t conflate the situation with century old authors.
This is definitely how Activision/Blizzard will interpret it. However, not every single gamer is tuned into these kinds of stories about the game makers. Some will be totally unawares of any of the shenanigans that occur behind the game. Not everybody has the time and/or interest for that. Just like people do/don't care about Amazon, Walmart, Nike, etc. Someone that does care will bring to light something that may garner media attention. Some people will see that, and get worked up about it. However, the majority of people will be just as happy to put their head back in the sand and continue on with their day-to-day.
I also came here to see if anyone else was calling that Activision/Blizzard's next move were to call in the Pinkertons.
But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water here. This case however is a pretty simple B2C relationship and if a consumer is aware of what Activision is up to and continues to support through revenue or engagement, simply accept that you don’t care about these issues enough to change your behaviour, we all make compromises in life.
What I’d like to avoid is consumers deluding themselves into thinking that playing Starcraft is fine because it’s the same as people buying the books of dead racists.
Opinions of celebrities don't exist in some sort of extra-dimensional cloistered thought bubble; they influence other minds and affect society in very real and measurable ways. Amplifying the celebrity status of these individuals by cherry-picking their acceptable works will in turn, unavoidably, also amplify their less-acceptable opinions -- though probably not by the same magnitude. But in general the masses are terrible at sorting out "oh, this is a righteous opinion that I should listen to" vs "this is a despicable one by the same person, but I have the intellectual & emotional maturity to be able to compartmentalize it". We're too tribal a species, on the average, for that. Our brains, societies, and cultures have not evolved to effectively handle multiculturalism well, ivory-tower internet freethinkers notwithstanding.
The flipside of cancel culture is moral nihilism, in which speech has no consequence and exists purely as a form of harmless intellectual exercise. But that's just not how it works in the real world. Speech has consequence, and for those wishing to prevent those consequences, sometimes ignoring the speaker and refusing to amplify their voice is the only realistic option they have, if they have no power to censor them outright or sufficiently amplify contrary opinions of their own. A canceled author isn't really very different from a boycotted company; it's a moral vote by a like-minded mass of humans who together value their version of morality more than that author's impacts. It's really not that difficult to not be an outspoken asshole.
Saying "I don't want to read this book" or "I don't want to play this game" because you don't like the author's values is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It's very different from, say, government ban lists. So what if someone doesn't want to read Harry Potter or watch Weinstein movies anymore?
Back to the first question: why ought greatness be the measure of a person, instead of righteousness? Our species is largely full of mediocre apes with mediocre thoughts who nonetheless manage to coexist and thrive to some degree, yet are all too often led astray and into peril and evil by the "great" Machiavellian few among them. How does that help anything at all?
I also think that these kinds of products, because they are indivisible creative works, suffer from rotting from within. Where you might be able to use the "reasonable" parts of Facebook or Google, once you start to think about a core element of a narrative as being in-geunine or compromised, that can undermine the other elements of the story.
Especially in this golden age of game development, I think there are many other alternatives to Blizzard's games that allow people to think less and escape more.
Seeing that they're making literally no changes at all to management or executive leadership, I'm having a hard time describing the rage that I feel inside. These people who knew and covered up the harm deserve prison, not just being fired.
I've been a huge fan of Blizzard games since I was a child. When I see Blizzard pushing back by aiming to crush internal protest, these feelings I have about this corrupt anything good I ever felt for these games. These people in leadership positions and the HR department that covered this up are criminals and should be seen as such.
I never feel good about boycotting a company. I certainly understand the people that do though.
I still play a couple games (Hell Let Loose as a 3-person tank crew is great) but only as a way to spend time with distant friends.
I know about the wishing system but that seems to be a completely optional mechanic that allows people to gamble with money, which seems fair for a F2P game. But can be skipped and is not essential to the gameplay.
I don't think Blizzard has released any new products (other than game updates) since then anyway, so I expect most people can say the same :)
By the way, check out Grim Dawn with the Reign of Terror mod if you want a "Blizzard-free" Diablo 2 experience.
They clearly mean they have purchased no further Blizz products since the news.
If he'd held up a sign for ending apartheid in another country he probably would have gotten some small penalty, it was clearly motivated by Blizzard's relationship with China. And it was so over the top and unprecedented that a ton of casters and pro players spoke out against it.
I remember Bobby Kotick TD in SC 2. If he hits you, you lose money, if you hit him, you lose money too. It was banned after a short time.
I enjoyed SC2 very much, but I left their platform shortly after. Most of my friends stopped playing too.
This effort seems like it's part of the ruthless approach to controlling costs that slowly strangle a company from within.
I believe WoW is the #2 property (after CoD) at Acti-Blizzard and it's clearly changed from one of delivering a game to simply extracting as much money as possible from each customer much like how almost all mobile games do.
The state of California's complaint is bad. I mean really bad. The fact that 3-4 different people from AB all released different statements in the last week should tell you exactly how bad it is. That's classic panic mode. There should only be one.
This latest move tells you the company believes it will blow over and they're looking to do the minimal required to appease the detractors and get back to business as usual without having to pay people more or pay out a bunch of lawsuits.
Honestly, the heads of J Allen Brack and Bobby Kotick in particular should roll over this lawsuit.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlBjNmXvqIM
EDIT: commenters have noted (correctly) that I overlooked Overwatch. This was a significant release but it seems to also have waned in popularity and Overwatch 2 is inextricably going in some weird PVE direction.
Other than that you have a poor received Diablo sequel, a series of lackluster to bad WoW expansions, a disastrous Warcraft 3 remaster and complete abandonment of the RTS genre that propelled them to success in the first place.
WC3 Reforged ("Refunded") was significant in that it was not only underwhelming and plagued with problems it made the original game worse with a forced download and loss of functionality.
The most significant change however was Blizzard not wanting a repeat of missing the MOBA boat with Dota 2 by adding a condition that all the IP for third-party maps belong to Blizzard, completely killing that ecosystem.
A quick search tells me that Overwatch has 6M players, which seems significant.
From a layman's perspective, it seems like a copy of Paladins, TF2, etc.
Upon it's release, it didn't seem like something original (at least not to me), but rather something to compete with the unique games other studios had already created.
2D top-down MOBA games have huge numbers of heroes and a lot of variety, but I think that's an easier lift to balance in that type of game and with that type of control scheme. Other 3D "hero shooters" opt for less variety between heroes or a smaller number of them, or rely on other gameplay elements to help balance things.
I think that the design effort that it took to produce Overwatch is tremendous, and it isn't easily replaced or replicated, though it will be eventually as long as game design keeps on marching forward.
I do think Activision-Blizzard is a shell of what it once was, but that game was definitely a positive, not something they just phoned in.
when I was playing a week ago (not anymore), more or less every single game I was matched against the same 20 or so people after a 8-10 minute wait
and it was the same 20 people in month in month out
and if someone quit the 6v6 mode while a game was ongoing (leaving it 5v6): the leaver's position wouldn't be filled most of the time
The reality is that over the years, Activision has kept their hands off their golden goose, and that the company's rot originates with the original management team. Notice how most of the harassment, and the retaliation that followed took place under the leadership of Mike Morheim (And that he's been personally called out for the latter.)
Hearthstone was release March 11, 2014. Overwatch was released May 24, 2016. Both of these were hugely popular titles.
Let's talk about Heroes of the Storm. Not as a counter to your argument, but as a perfect illustration of your points.
First thing to know is that HotS started out as a Starcraft II arcade game. It uses the Starcraft II engine. Nothing new there.
Next, for those who don't know, HotS is a MOBA. Just like DotA (and DOTA 2), and League of Legends. DotA was a mod of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, created by the community. League of Legends is a standalone game inspired by DotA.
In HotS, all the player heroes are Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo heroes. It's free-to-play. After a brief legal spat with Valve over rights to the name DotA and Blizzard trademarks, the two companies settled.
It's a decent game, but it's just repackaging Blizzard assets for a type of game that emerged out of Blizzard in the first place. To me, HotS is exactly the sort of thing a company coasting on its franchise would release.
Epitaph: AB completely abandoned the game three years after release, to the complete surprise of the small esports community that had grown up.
it doesn't unless you know the exact peopel hired are the union busting ones. It sounds like this is their HR consultants.
People really need to read past their title. This is a century old firm that has been on all sides of the fence for a signifigant part of American history. They don't have an agenda to regress society (no more than the legal system does).
https://www.wilmerhale.com/en/solutions/labor-and-employment Under "Executive and Workforce Training" tab
Therefore, yes, it is accurate to define them as a "union-busting firm". They fulfill other roles than just that, but they do act as union-busters, and they even describe themselves as such.
The firm directly states they help companies with "union avoidance."
Even charitable interpretations here support "busting" the aims of the union. This isn't an issue where "both sides" are equal in moral standing when one is advocating for better working conditions and the other is legally fighting for more profit
> Activision has called in the experts to put down the claims of sexual harassment and discrimination and stop the protests by workers. Activision has hired WilmerHale. WilmerHale has been hired to “review” Activision’s policies.
and if you look further
>An email to Bloomberg Law, also revealed that the firm has appointed its anti-discrimination practice chair, Brenda Lee, and special counsel Tania Faransso to work on the probe with the company citing that it has “extensive experience assessing workplace culture and helping organisations strengthen their workplace environments”.
if you care enough to find the people who did the union busting at amazong you'll see they are different people. Trying to compare one lawyer to another is like comparing an anesthesiologist to a cardiologist Just because they are both "doctors" doesn't mean they understand or work on the same stuff.
I'm not sympathetic of Activision, but I don't appreciate yellow journalism full stop.
I'm actually starting to doubt how many people here hold jobs in specializations. We should understand already that prgramming isn't equivalent to IT fixing a friend's computer. You're doing the equivalent here with lawyers.
Not sure what "I am doing the equivalent of" to lawyers. (Other than legalistic ones; those that adhere to western legalism)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
Edit: wrong Pinkerton massacre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
While WilmerHale may not have a direct connection to actually cracking heads open, their current methods were picked directly from the Pinkertons in the 1970s.
And no, it's no coincidence when the state sues them that they hire the best firm they can find.
WilliamHale covers just about every area of law you can think of. Saying they are here to purely union-bust is a huge exaggeration (and outright wrong once you see who they _actually_ hired).
Your assessment is a decade out of date.
The marketing material is unfortunate, though, and the connection with Amazon labor work is notable.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmer_Cutler_Pickering_Hale...
Contextually, ActiBlizz is responding to the DFEH situation with a new biglaw firm.
Will ActiBlizz use WH's union-response services? I would be surprised if they don't. WH will likely sell guidance about what can be legally done to chill early unionization pressures. If unionization efforts really get rolling at ActiBlizz, no doubt they will spend more at WH.
What is good: WH's tactics at Amazon, AL were monitored and reported as disgusting. If they repeat those at ActiBlizz, there may be pressures for regulators to increase protections against corporate interference of unionization efforts.
This was a BLOWOUT loss by the unions. I mean, the vote wasn't even close even though they protested something like 500 votes?
I didn't know WH was involved on company side - but if so it was a mighty effective campaign.
[Originally I had gotten this backwards and stated that WilmerHale represented the citizens]
I'm wondering the same. I suppose it comes down to the semantics of where notoriety begins, but they're representing some slimy clients regardless.[0]
>Representing citizens in a lawsuit against a polluting corporation is not incompatible with busting unions.
Oh no, they were defending the polluter—Beatrice Foods—against said lawsuits.[1]
[0] https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/jamie-gorelick-amazons-a...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmer_Cutler_Pickering_Hale_a...
I have corrected my original comment.
The main controversy mentioned there is them representing people who are held in Guantanamo under suspicion of terrorism. It seems more like Wilmer Hale is a huge bunch of lawyers doing all sorts of things, than some union-busting hacks.
That is placing way too much trust in Wiki pages not being manipulated to portray their subjects in an unfairly positive light
Contrast this with what BP's page looks like and it's obvious Exxon payed top dollar while BP's PR team cheaped out (gave up?). BP's page has a paragraph dedicated to the Deepwater spill in the introduction section, has a "Violations and accidents" section in the table of contents, and has "Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill" in the table of contents as well. And that section? It has a dozen or so paragraphs, not just three lame sentences. The page has several photographs of the aftermath. BP's page looks like an authentic wikipedia page, while Exxon's page was obviously bought and paid for by Exxon's PR. Exxon's page should look like BP's, but doesn't.
And since you mention the article dedicated to the spill, lets compare those too. The Deep Water Horizon page is 4 times as long. The Deep Water Horizon page gets prominent links from BP's main page, at the top of the section titled "Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill"
> Main article: Deepwater Horizon oil spill
> See also: Deepwater Horizon explosion, Deepwater Horizon litigation, and Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust
BP's page also has an infobox all about the spill: "This article is part of a series about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill"
Exxon's page? The link for the spill's dedicated page is hidden as the 4th link in one of the three sentences that page has about the spill:
> On March 24, 1989, in what is regarded as one of the worst oil spills in American history,[9] a tanker owned by Exxon, the Exxon Valdez, crashed into Bligh Reef, [[Exxon Valdez oil spill|spilling]] its cargo of over ten million gallons of crude oil into the Prince William Sound in Alaska
What an absolute fucking joke. I can't believe you defend this.
They're both awful companies doing terrible things to the earth. I don't need to believe in your wikipedia conspiracy to have a low opinion of them.
You can also look at the edit history of a page. Are there unethical removals of information there, in your opinion? You can even link to the edit that removed them, like this one that removed some juvenile vandalism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/102148089...
I am by no means taking Activision's side here, but this website is sketchy.
edit I guess you mean the news site this article is on, that is pretty sketchy indeed.
Dates 30 days old
Created on 2021-06-29
Expires on 2022-06-29
Updated on 2021-07-04
I would be surprised if there was more than, say, 30% overlap. IME people who act out generally aren't the most productive and generally don't command the most respect from the most productive people.
I've done some research and the claims people are making about the bad environment at Blizz are not without merit - can't say they are real because IDK but too strong to just dismiss. I would not even consider a job there without real and verifiable proof that my worries are unfounded. I'm probably not going to consider them over the many other viable offers I have.
How is that different from losing? Just because she was set up to lose?
Influential people can dislike the culture, and leave so their reputation is not besmirched by the much Blizzard is currently being dragged through.
https://kotaku.com/inside-blizzard-developers-infamous-bill-...
It looks like the employees are almost universally on the equality end of the ethical spectrum (given how widespread the walkout was), which is even worse news for union busting.
Perhaps straight from the horse's mouth?[2]
Or is the issue more with the claim they're a union-busting law firm? Because they even basically claim that on their website.[3] That said they otherwise look like not a terrible choice though as with all things like this the optics to something like this are incredibly sensitive.
[1]: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/activisi...
[2]: https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-d...
[3]: https://www.wilmerhale.com/en/solutions/labor-and-employment -> Executive and Workforce Training:
"Throughout the United States we offer a wide range of customized training programs and workshops at our clients’ premises, as well as seminars and innovative programs adapted to clients’ specific needs. Our training programs include: providing a legal-psychological perspective on managing employees through effective communication; preventing, identifying and dealing with sexual and other unlawful harassment; *advising on union awareness and avoidance*; dealing with violence in the workplace; managing the interaction between the FMLA, ADA and workers compensation; enhancing interviewing skills and hiring while minimizing legal risks; and understanding restrictive covenants (e.g. non-competition agreements). "
"Activision Blizzard Inc., a video game maker coping with an employee revolt over claims of sexual harassment and discrimination, has hired Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr to investigate its corporate culture"
Did you want AB to get through this without hiring any lawyers? Because that isn't how the business world works. Lawyers are in charge of this country and they have a way of making themselves necessary.
The supply is massively saturated, with dreamy eyed programmers ready to give their lives to work in gaming. On the other hand, a very small group actually gets to make any of the creative decisions that every gamer has dreamt of making. The wages are below what the market pays, hours are exploitative and the companies are making massive profits. It is really difficult to compete with the AAA studios, because Indie games take years to make and working without a wage for a decade isn't possible for many. On the other hand, medium sized and successful indie studios get acquired before they can grow to a decent enough size to serve as any real competition. There is also a lot of shady practices with monetization, where the employees do not get a say if the company should or shouldn't indulge in said practices.
We've already seen soft-unionization of this type in a similar industry : media production. It works.
AAA game development in the US has been quite stale for the last decade. The big EA-Blizzard-Activision-Ubisoft have not come up with a single quality game in this time. Even Bethesda, Bioware seems to be on a decline. Rockstar,Valve and Id software seem to be doing fine, but no where close to the hit-after-hit that certain japanese studios are producing. Naughty Dog and Super giant would be the only 2 American studios creating 10/10s consistently, but both have an order of magnitude fewer employees than standard AAA studios.
The industry is in dire need of shake up. I hope this goes the employee's way this time around. It's about time.
> The wages are below what the market pays, hours are exploitative and the companies are making massive profits
I do not need a huge amount of money to enter or move around in the market, and even if I do, it is readily available. That's a 'free-ish' market.
Getting funding for an unmade indie game is substantially harder. The first demo takes years instead of months. The employee has zero leverage, because their access to the market is artificially limited through only a few hyper competitive AAA channels. There are many such broken markets, gaming is just an extreme case of it in our tech world. SpaceX worked in almost exactly the same manner. The free market doesn't work, because the market is not free.
In such a non-free market, the one who controls the supply (AA dev) can easily set up an almost ponzi scheme-esque revolving door of hyper exploitative setups. (modern academia with post-doctoral adjunct revolving doors is a similar example). The AAA studio is taking advantage of information asymmetry, and massively profiting from this use-n-throw setup.
Unions are a way for the demand side to combat the latent asymmetry of information and power in the non-free market. AAA studios make big promises to starry eyed new-grads who have served their purpose by the time they realize they were lied to and are disillusioned. (ie. Contract workers don't get made permanent. Crunch, hire-n-fire, lack of upwards mobility in the structure are endemic and permanent afflictions in the industry)
Unions can force companies to enforce the promises they make. No more than x% crunch. No un/under-paid interns. Path from contract-> fulltime. Some level of ethical standard for exploitation of school children using gambling techniques. Profit sharing ?
If the union's demands are too unreasonable or not reflective of their leverage in the industry, they will get left to die. (see the political unions at Google) If this was truly an information asymmetry situation, where game devs were paid lower than they were worth, then the union will flourish and sustain itself in the interest of the employees.
The realities of the unfree-market do not change, but the union makes sure that demand side (people who want jobs) can negotiate in a manner that actually reflects the cards they hold.
My opposition to unions in general comes from my general opposition to unnecessary bureaucracy. Bureaucracy should be avoided in don't fix what's not broken situations. Big Tech's free market looks healthy. Don't need unions. Gaming does not. Maybe Unions will help. Simple as that.
Does it work? Wasn't it medium (or someone) who when faced with unionization pivoted the company (left severance packages) to a substack like model?
For what it's worth, collective bargaining is, from an economic perspective, a monopoly. In anti trust terms it would constitute an illegal combination in trade if it weren't for statutory exemptions that explicitly give it a pass.
The business/management is a group of people acting under a common umbrella seeking (naïvely, and oversimplifiedly) to trade the least money possible for the most production possible.
The employees/union are a group of people acting under a common umbrella seeking (naïvely, and oversimplifiedly) to trade the least production possible for the most money possible.
A union seeks to even the playing field between management and labor. It's not a monopoly unless the local union is affiliated with a global union that includes the vast majority of all workers in that particular field.
What if I'm a junior worker on a labour market that is saturated by more experienced and skilled workers, and lowering my rate is the only chance to make it in the industry that I have? Existing union and it's members are my natural competitors.
And the evidence is overwhelming that unionized workers make more than non-union workers of equivalent skills/qualifications. So it sounds like this boils down, once again, to the argument, "I am amazing and exceptional, and I'm afraid that if there were unions, I wouldn't be able to get more money for being amazing and exceptional."
First of all, this argument cannot be true for the majority of workers—by definition, most people in any given field are not exceptional. So even if it would benefit you to not have a union, it would not benefit most people.
Second of all, there is absolutely no requirement for unions to prevent compensation from being increased based on actual performance. Some unions may have strict seniority-based pay schedules, but not all that currently exist do, and if we were to create a brand new union for tech workers (or just for game devs), then the people actually forming that union would be the ones to decide what its priorities would be.
Are they also a monopoly?
Joan Robinson studied labor and monopsony, her books are very illuminating for anyone interested
Unions are bureaucracy. Adding politics, people and power to any structure inherently adds inefficiencies.
If individual bargaining is working just fine in an industry, then I would not push for collective bargaining. Because, it is tradeoff is between 'bridging the information asymmetry between how much power you think you command, vs what you actually command' and 'inefficiencies added by bureaucracy'.
Gaming has clearly crossed that tradeoff threshold. IMO, big tech has not.
Efficiency, for example, is often the opposite of robustness. Many companies have learned that the hard way when COVID hit, even though they had an efficient supply chain and production pipeline, it was not robust.
Watching how deeply these inefficiencies from bureaucracies plague us, has been genuinely angering.
So yeah, I do come into it with personal priors which lead to be deeply suspicious of any unnecessary inefficiency. (emphasis on unnecessary. Your covid example clearly shows that the word necessary itself is subjectively evaluated)
With that said, is it really fair to call India pseudo-socialist? For all intents and purposes, India is closer to the EU and a region/confederation of nations than it is to a single country. One can say that inefficiencies from Indian bureaucracy plague the country, but that would be to treat India like a monolith, which it certainly is not.
India is a panoply of genetic, cultural, and linguistic diversity -- a plurality, and one of the world's oldest democracies. Even so, India's growth remains blistering in real terms. Perhaps we see things a certain way because our finite lives exist in a certain point in history; but could our children or grandchildren see India the same way we see China today?
It's personally hard to fathom that the answer is yes, but it's equally hard for me to fathom that the answer is no. In a way, I almost expect to be surprised.
I think a robustness/efficiency dichotomy isn't the right way to look at this. One doesn't preclude the other. A medical system that is both efficient and robust is certainly possible. This discussion deserves its own thread.
Workers can find the same value in consolidating their interests by unionizing.
That is definitely a free market restriction on my rights as a worker, to have a mutual agreement with that specific company.
But it doesn't, you can choose to not be part of the union
The union puts a limit on the contracts that I can make with the company.
So I would be prevented from bargaining for certain contracts with a company.
So me and this other company's mutual right to make an agreement would be limited by the union.
This is a bit like saying that criminal law takes away your right to be mugged, beaten, and murdered.
So then I am not free to negotiate, and me and this other company right to engage in a mutual agreement are prevented.
Yeah, that's my point.
> I fail to see how the right to work for less pay
I get paid way way way more money than the average unionized tech worker, where they exist.
So actually, my ability to negotiate for myself, outside of the restrictions of a union, has worked out pretty darn well for me.
> the absolute minimum fair pay
Oh that's funny. You aren't aware that union contracts cover much more things than just a minimum wage.
The whole point is that many union provisions can be bad for many people and are not strict benefits for workers.
I have also negotiated my pay up, but under the umbrella of collective bargaining agreements. As far as I know, you are always able to negotiate your pay up. This has worked pretty well for me as well.
Ok... and thats my point. Certain union provisions are bad, for many people, and you cannot pretend that they are a universal good.
> you are always able to negotiate your pay up
Non-union jobs in tech pay way way more, than most union tech jobs though, and union provisions prevent certain contracts that many workers would prefer.
So the actual, measurable facts show that I and many others, in non-union jobs, are doing way better than most unionized tech workers.
The truth is that no one is forcing you to work a union job.
That's pretty disingenuous. Try working for government at any level without also working for a union. I could turn your argument around and say, "if you want a union job just go find one!"
Regardless, that choice you speak of represents a profound injustice according to union leaders. The ultimate goal of mainstream political labor movements is universal unionization. They would very much like to make it so that everyone is forced to pay union dues, no matter where they work.
No, they don't. Actors are able to negotiate themselves and with the help from their union, and they're all members of SAG-AFTRA.
So, in other words, their rights to bargain and engage in mutual agreements is restricted.
You literally just explained how their rights are limited.
Specifically, it is limited in that you have to be a part of this group, to engage in certain agreements.
And even within that group, people are prevented from engaging in certain mutual agreements.
You can negotiate without union representation.
You're also free to be a non-union actor.
There are limits on the contracts that I could engage with, with another mutually interested party, is the point.
If there were no limits, then, almost by definition, it would not be a union.
So yes, a union puts limits on the contracts that mutually interested parties can engage in.
Were you not aware that unions put limits on the contracts that mutually interested parties can engage in?
Did you think that a company, and an interested worker, could just completely ignore union rules, and create their own contract, that conflicts with the rules of the union?
Also the EA-Blizzard-Activision-Ubisoft studios do consistently deliver quality games: COD, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, etc. Formulaic, perhaps, but it's tough to claim that these aren't quality and popular games. Valve, on the other hand, have only produced Half Life: Alyx in the last decade (you could include Artifact, but it flopped).
Wait until you hear about the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA.
>"Our commitment to diversity and inclusion starts at the top and cascades throughout the firm. WilmerHale is one of very few AmLaw 100 firms with a woman co-managing partner, and part of an even smaller number of such firms that have had both a woman and a person of color as a co-managing partner. Our diversity and inclusion journey is one of continuous assessment, progress, and partnership with others committed to advancing these principles in the legal profession."
Complaining you are being bullied? Let's hire a company to bully you some more, this time professionally.
Achieving equal representation across the entire industry is going to be literally impossible without a huge influx of woman into the industry.
Further, because the big tech companies are pretending this is not the reality and strive to have equal representation in their workforce it means even sub par female developers are able to get jobs at the likes of google and facebook, further depleting the remainder of the workforce and causing wage inflation disincentivizing smaller or less well funded companies from hiring them because they can find better and cheaper male counterparts.
Not defending "bro culture" but I think the industry needs to come to terms with the realities of the situations. Legal action will do nothing to change this.
I hope that's true. I hope COVID has woken up labor to the power it has if it organizes (see also the restaurant industry).
for warcraft3: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/blizzard-botched-warcraft-iii-re...
>Blizzard also faced widespread criticism and calls for a boycott after banning a player who .
>In lieu of official support, a group of fans began writing their own patches for the game, building a service called that aims to add back missing features.
Any source on that? I always imagined the current Blizzard customer demographics in the 20-40 years old range. Kids definitely don't play WoW, Diablo or StarCraft/Warcraft. Not sure about Overwatch but I'd guess kids prefer Fortnite. So perhaps Hearthstone? You kinda need a credit card to enjoy the game tho.
But you have a point, people still buy their games, expansions, loot boxes, skins, monthly subsriptions and so on.
I refer as kids for those who in general aren't able to sacrifice anything in order to be empathetic to others or true to their ideas
The truth is? It doesn't matter nearly as much as people think. Companies have caught on - a vocal minority will call them out, but it won't matter. People will still buy the next COD. At the end of the day, that's all anyone cares about top to bottom.
At some point Blizzard was my dream video game studio, but the people did the hard work and built it are long gone.
What's really surprising is that a former BigLaw attorney is now the director of WoW!
In 1982 someone laced Tylenol with potassium cyanide and seven people died. Johnson & Johnson within 2 months released a triple-sealed package and had a nation-wide recall. Their market share dropped from 35% to 8%, but rebounded within a year. It's often talked about as a great PR response.
I doubt Activision Blizzard feels the need to be as responsive to this situation, but I don't see this as a great reaction.
Excellent example of how this headline can mislead people. They're lawyers "hired to review Activision’s policies", not armed thugs who bust union skulls.
Do you have some evidence for that allegation or are you just making things up?
That would be quite serious, and illegal, if it's true. If it's true.
Instead it's reputation management firms for the alleged perpetrators and investigators that dredge up personal info about the victims who reported abuses.
It's a well known approach.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3yn/amazon-leaked-reports...
Well. Time for employees to make WilmerHale have another fail on its list.
The 200k figure is for a first-year associate who has graduated and passed the bar exam [1].
It's interesting to me that you can only hope to crack 300k at a top law firm after working for five years and going to law school for three. I.e., not until you're over 30.
The majority of SWEs at FAANG companies get there in two years. I.e., at age 24 [2]. Some might say the potential upside of becoming a partner outweighs higher early career SWE income, but I would retort that making director or VP are comparable accomplishments; not everyone makes partner.
Social status hasn't caught up to income, though; family and friends outside my tech circle still respect law and medicine more than engineering.
[1] https://www.wilmerhale.com/en/careers/lawyers/entry-level-or...
[2] levels.fyi
Plenty examples of doordash/airbnb/etc. SWE’s with less than 5 YoE making +$1M TC thanks to their equity
However, you're not comparing apples to apples. The pools of students who are targeted for FAANG or top law firm recruitment go to the same universities. People who would be able to get through law school and get an offer from a top firm can get a solid FAANG offer. I believe that those students get > $200k total comp offers from FAANG right out of college.
Vesting cliffs have been replaced with immediate monthly vesting at many companies, including at least two FAANGs, making that part of your package as similar to cash as stock compensation can get.
I agree that Levels has a data problem: sometimes people report numbers from W-2s (counting stock appreciation), sometimes they report offer letter numbers. Moreover, the numbers there suffer from selection bias; people with high numbers are more likely to report them.
But let me offer some anecdotal evidence: everyone on my team and sister teams received > 200k offers right out of college; we are generalist SWEs at a FAANG. Same for all my friends at similar companies.
The days where being buried in the bottom of Steam listings is gone, as long as you aren't insisting on launching via Steam.
This is the hard part, as I see it. Maybe that's not as difficult as I think.
Also, creating and recording all of the voice lines. There must be hundreds, by a large and diverse cast.
you can avoid EA, Blizzard and Ubisoft very easily these days
Additionally, between UE, Unity, and Godot, I don't feel like it's a lack of tools holding studios back. If you wanted even more games (but why - we're already drowning in a flood of them), one of the big steps might be to provide a stable funding solution for new developers so they didn't need to play financial Russian Roulette to create their art.
Game engines are now cheap/free but what deep pockets buy are more and better artwork, level design, story writing, voice acting, sound design, background music, motion capture, etc. that are the hallmarks of AAA games. While small studios can (and do!) build great games, they can't replicate that because of the cost and I don't see a way to work around that. There's no way to automate artistry.
That's it.
Buy indie games, usually in Early Access if the game is something you like or would like.
Phasmophobia has made millions. Gunfire Reborn has made millions. Small game companies are more popular than ever. There's even a game about powerwashing out right now.