New Leadership at Blizzard | Hacker News Reader

New Leadership at Blizzard

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252 pointsbdz207 comments

Make no mistake: this is Bobby Kotick trying to save his job. He may well succeed. I hope his head also makes it to the chopping block.

Firstly, Brack was only president for 2 years and a lot of these incidents happened prior BUT if you're in charge you're responsible. That's part of the deal that comes with that giant pay check. You don't get to say "it's not my fault". So Brack absolutely should go because he's seemingly failed to correct the toxic culture.

You'll note the email talks about "Blizzard", not "Activision Blizzard". This is how you can tell Kotick is distancing himself from this. It's "Activision Blizzard" when things are going well and "Blizzard" when it's not. Kotick is I'm sure busy selling this narrative that Blizzard is an autonomous unit. It's not. It's fully Activision at this point.

Activision Blizzard has squandered their most valuable properties. The only thing propping up WoW is a 15 year old version of the game that's quickly being ruined with the exact micro-transactions that ruined the game to begin with. Does anyone still care about Overwatch? Prediction: Diablo 4 is going to disappoint. This is the same company that brought you Diablo 3 after all.

As for the new co-leaders, ugh... this just screams PR. One of them is a woman of course. I'm not saying she's unqualified (although both of them are relatively recent hires, interestingly). But you know given the lawsuit that this was going to happen. But the main issue is that there's two leaders. We all know countries need two presidents, armies need two commanders, etc.

So what this suggests is that Ibarra had the confidence of Kotick and the board, she would now be president. So she's co-president because of the lawsuit. It may not be true but that's how people are going to interpret it.

To get out this rot it can't stop at changing the executives. Blizzard honestly needs someone to come in and clean house. This goes beyond the lawsuit, which is no doubt a relatively small minority. This is about half the company probably being useless.

She's not even "co-president", just "co-leader". Morhaime was CEO, Brack president. Odd title deflation in play here.

When things get totally rebranded into "Blizzard, an Activision Studio" the title deflation will make sense.

Jason Schreier had a good tweet about this title shuffle this morning. [0]

> Titles mean a lot in the corporate world. Until 2018, Mike Morhaime was CEO. When Brack took over, he was president. Now, Oneal and Ybarra are described as "co-leaders."

> A clear glimpse at who's really in charge: Bobby Kotick

[0]: https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1422536264851640320

Re: Oneal, it's true she's new to the Blizzard executive staff, but she's a 17-year veteran of Vicarious Visions where she rose through the ranks to be Studio Head before they were moved under Blizzard earlier this year.

And Vicarious Visions has been doing great work for a while, if anyone can turn it around it's probably the two outsiders, but I doubt that they will be given the tools to actually fix this.

We'll see I guess, I know I won't be spending any money on Activision-Blizzard in the foreseeable future, there are more than enough games out there.

Diablo 1&2 were Blizzard North things who were more or less autonomous though. I feel this needs mentioning.

Diablo 2 came out over 21 years ago; if it were a person, it would be old enough to go to the bar in the US and get wasted.

I don't think it needs mentioning. It is impossibly hard to keep the same culture at a game company two decades later, especially when the company grows so much. It's not like Valve is the same Valve that released Half-Life, or Bungie is the same Bungie that released Oni. None of these companies today could possibly have a similar culture to what their company culture was when those games came out.

Changing company culture, it turns out, is easy. Stupidly easy. I say it's "stupidly" easy because all you need to do is hire new people, and most companies already do that. The hard thing is changing company culture in the right direction.

Even if you kept the culture perfectly intact, gaming itself has changed. Players expectations have changed dramatically. You'd need the same culture perfectly adapted to the changing gaming landscape which never happens.

Games have changed vastly more than gamers. Nobody actually wants micro transactions or paid DLC.

My 8 year old nephew spends vastly more time on very old and Indy games not because their “popular” but simply because their more fun.

Which is why there's the biannual Diablo 2 clone that flops, and the "horrible", "failed", Diablo III is on its 24th season and sold like gangbusters on consoles.

I don't really think that the culture at the company to be equal to the culture of gaming overall to be honest.

In fact Blizzard and especially Activision aren't really well loved company by gamers. Didn't EA got the title of worst company multiple times? They probably have a decent competitor now.

> I say it's "stupidly" easy because all you need to do is hire new people

Don't forget turnover rates, too! The games industry especially has turnover rates that would be astounding in some other industries. Crunch culture and youth culture (both direct co-factors in the issues Activision are being accused of) leads to a games industry that is perpetually stuck "young". The median age of a developer in games has pretty much always been close to 25. (We're getting very close to the point where the median age of developer at a videogame company is younger than Diablo 2.)

It's easy to believe that videogame companies especially have short memories and cultures that lack maturity when they are perpetually stuck in an elongated sort of adolescence by mostly only retaining developers that can put up with crunch and lack of work/life balance in the name of "passion" (who by nature of those challenges are almost always going to be younger and more naive).

Just here to say that I loved Oni very much when I was a kid. So ahead of its time. It lives on as the Office of Naval Intelligence in Halo.

Blizzard North more or less dissolved 18, and officially defuncted 16 years ago.

At least Mike Ybarra is a hardcore WoW player. I feel a little bit better knowing that.

Brack also played (plays?) WoW and he brought us LFR [1] so there's that...

But hope springs eternal.

[1]: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/wow-producer-discusses-k...

I don't see the issue with LFR. If you want to join a guild and run raids you still can. However, some of us don't feel like joining a guild and would rather just queue up every now and then.

That's missing the point though. Its introduction was a marked change in server/player culture that only accelerated over the next decade; players didn't want to put effort into something that took time, they wanted it now.

Yes, low effort queues remove the incentive for cooperation and community.

Fuck community. I just want to play an RPG

I went back and played a little while ago. Dungeon Finder was near instant, and would stick me in a dungeon I had zero context for. Magically transported there. Nobody was from my server. No conversation/chat. The encounters/dungeons themselves were utterly without context (I never had a clue where they were) and felt like clicking through to get loot with no sense of storyline.

For me, that's a huge negative. I remember that the dungeons on the shattered plains (i think) specifically revolved around the shattered hand orcs or whatever. They synced with the area and the quests I'd been doing locally. It felt like a cohesive world I was involved in.

I cannot argue that the new system isn't efficient. It got me playing and it got me loot. But I never learned anything about anyone. I never engaged with the story. I'm just old I guess xD

I don't see it that way. I'm cool with things that take time like moving up the ranks in Mythic+.

What I didn't like was the forced socialization. I'm fine with my IRL friends, I don't want a bunch of people pinging me when I login to Wow. I just want to login, group up for a Mythic and log off.

Not everyone has to play like you do.

And some people are lonely and would prefer the game design which forced them to socialize with others (or forced others to socialize with them). You can't please them all.

To be clear - I support LFR but here's why I think some people don't like it:

There was a "golden age" of WoW where things were new, and hard. It was a perfect balance of difficulty and grind made bearable by the newness and marvel of it all. I liken it to finding a new programming project which you are stoked on. The effort/reward loop is finely tuned.

LFR was part of a bunch of changes, spanning years, that evolved WoW but moved further and further away from that initial magic.

The gripe many have/had is that LFG/LFR removes the community building element of having to find a group, or find a guild. You had to really work to get a group, and work even harder to get (and stay in) a guild. I remember when I first stepped into SSC. I had spent months working for that. To then work with that guild to clear SSC and move on to Hyjal was thoroughly amazing.

Yes, you can still "do" that (get a guild, hardcore raid) but there was something about knowing that other people hadn't even seen what you were seeing, that was thrilling.

I think some people also don't like that the same gear (or nearly the same) models are available to LFR groups. Back in the day, if you saw someone walking around with a full T3 set it was something magical. Nowadays, everyone kinda looks the same.

I remember that I first started feeling that way when LFR was introduced.

That's the curse of all long-running MMOs, though.

You have to have power inflation, for any of the common content models to work.

And you have to also provide a fast lane for new players, otherwise no one is going to join, only to be a decade behind where everyone else is now.

It's unfortunate because it screws existing players. But ultimately, that's only because they believe the myth that MMO stats / levels / gear actually have value.

I actually think their current model works pretty well. You have a fast track to the current content but the current content has levels of difficulty that you can work on.

Totally. I don’t fault Blizzard really at all for the evolution of WoW over the years. It had to evolve, and so it did. It just meant that for me, a lot of the magic was gone. But I had also grown up a lot, and had dramatically less free time, so I don’t even think I could ever support that “golden age” of WoW gaming even if it had never changed.

All in all, they grew up with their player base and I don’t fault them for it in the slightest. Sure, minor gripes here and there but generally speaking, they have made the right calls.

My experience as a Final Fantasy XIV player is that Duty Finder (the equivalent of LFR) is such a massive necessity for quality-of-life that I'd never ever be able to go back to an MMO without it. I used to play EverQuest back in 1999-2000, and I ultimately left after a year or so because everything about that game was an exercise in frustration despite the cool concept. I didn't get back into MMOs until I discovered an MMO that actually respected the player's time and didn't require everyone to jump through hoops and sit around and wait for people to bite just so they can play the game.

And, mind you, Duty Finder in XIV isn't just a raid thing: every single piece of instanced content uses it, even levelling dungeons, and that applies whether you're queueing solo, queueing with a partial party, or entering content with a fully premade party (even right-clicking on a dungeon entrance just opens up Duty Finder). XIV doesn't just respect the player's time: the entire design of the game is built around respecting the player's time at a fundamental level.

Yea I fully appreciate this. In fact, when I do pop back to WoW I am always grateful that LFG and LFR exist. That system is a godsend for casual gamers (like myself).

I just used to be a hard core gamer so I share the sentiment that some may feel which is that the glory days of WoW are long passed. What we have now is objectively “better” in every way, and yet, you can’t help but miss the past.

So this scratches a big topic of what's wrong with WoW.

In short, WoW has transitioned to being run by people who don't play the game, don't understand people who do play the game and are targeting the game at people who don't play the game at the expense of those that do.

LFR undermines both the aspirational part of the game, which is extremely important, and the social aspect of building relationships, which is super-important and the real reason most people stick around.

Now we have 4 raid levels (LFR, Normal, Heroic, Mythic), which is too many. The differences are largely cosmetic and minor ilvl bumps. There are some unique items in higher tiers, to be clear.

Lastly, LFR is essentially an interactive cinematic. It's part of what I like to call "conveyor belt content". There's no choices to be made. The outcome is almost certain. You may as well be watching a cinematic. This probably goes well beyond LFR.

You can just play classic and go back to the good old days.

It isn't the good old days.

Classic was "hard" because of organizational challenges, patience requirements, and most importantly lack of information. Access to information has completely changed the game, explaining why it took people virtually zero time to beat MC this time around. The classic of reading some sketchy material on forums to understand raid mechanics and raiding with keyboard turners is gone and can never be recreated.

> WoW has transitioned to being run by people who don't play the game

Current game designer Ion Hazikostas is a hardcore raider, guild leader and completed every raid in game on the highest difficulty. I don't think it's fair to qualify him as not playing the game. Of course I have no idea about their internal chains, that's only a public high-ranked figure.

I'm generally agree with your stance and I don't like many changes either. But I can accept that those changes actually were necessary for the game to survive, as current playerbase is completely different from those who played the game 10 years ago.

Yeah and the raids are generally good but everything else is, well, trash. Coincidence?

Also, Blizzard tends to over-focus on the behaviour of Mythic raiders who are like 1% of the population. And I don't mean they cater to their needs. I mean they burden everyone because of perceived "abuse" that would otherwise occur were something not in the game (eg conduit energy).

Final Fantasy XIV has been experiencing constant growth since Shadowbringers came out in 2019, and in the last few months has absolutely exploded and obliterated WoW's numbers even before the harassment allegations came to light, and yet XIV's instance system is thoroughly built around an LFR-esque system called Duty Finder.

The original version of XIV wasn't like this at all, and that version was a massive flop, but then it was rebooted into its current incarnation by Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida, who has extensive experience playing MMOs for decades from Ultima Online to EverQuest to old-school WoW (I would recommend watching Noclip's documentary on XIV [1] [2] [3] for more on Yoshi-P's background and the decision to completely reboot the game). It's precisely because of his experience with the warts and frustration of old-school MMOs that XIV is so streamlined and committed to not wasting the player's time, and XIV is massively, head-over-heals successful for it.

It turns out people really, really don't like forced socialization, and when an MMO comes along that does away with it, people flock to it in droves. The facts don't bear out your allegation that forced socialization is "the real reason most people stick around": XIV's runaway head-over-heels success is due to the fact that it so thoroughly eschews forced socialization that it's often described as a single-player JRPG punctuated by multi-player instances and a completely optional set of social side content.

[1] part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0yQKI7Yw4

[2] part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoOI5R-6u8k

[3] part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONT6fxiu9cw

Yes thank you. All these people acting like guilds don’t still exist

At current iteration LFR is nothing but an improvement for the game IMO. Everyone who wants to play on a high level, have no reason to visit LFR. LFR is very easy to implement, as it's the same raid with nerfed numbers, so it takes very little resources for development. And apparently there are enough people who want to experience game in a story mode, so they get that content.

There was time when LFR was boring, yet necessary for hardcore players, but that's just bad game tuning, not failure of LFR mode itself.

This is about Ybarra feeling he has a claim to the role and not wanting to pass him over for what would be seen as a PR reaction. This is pretty typical, and the companies I’ve seen be successful with these types of overhauls send a message loud and clear to their executives: expect to be passed over for promotions more than you’re used to. Building the right executive team in 2021 includes diversity of experience as an aspect, and you may be passed over for promotions you’re qualified for because we are building the best performing team, not locally optimizing for the best individual performers.

Sure this causes turnover, but it’s usually the kind of turnover you welcome during a culture shift. Especially with the transition to remote work, empathy and diversity from senior leadership will only become more important to recruiting and retaining the best talent.

I like the bit about building the best performing team at the expense of the individual. Seems like something you could say to let down a report in a 1 on 1. Im going to use that from now on, whenever it serves my purpose. Thanks!

"BUT if you're in charge you're responsible."

Right next door to this post is another where the ebay CEO escaped responsibility for his employees' harassment of an e-commerce news letter publisher.

The Ebay CEO was fired (or asked to resign, I don't remember), which are the same consequences that Brack has faced so far. Also, from what I can tell they are both facing civil lawsuits, not criminal, although one is being brought by the government and the other by the victims.

So at this point they both appear to held accountable to the same degree, whether that is sufficient or not.

Make no mistake: I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederates, or the Protoss, or anyone! I will rule this company or see it burnt to ashes around me.

The fact that they have two "co-leaders" and one of them is a woman makes me really wonder if they went for the two leader approach just so that they could have a woman without making a woman the sole "leader". As in, did they really want Mike Ybarra but were scared of being torn a new one by the Internet and their employees?

Has Blizzard ever done this before without being in middle of a massive shitstorm?

Michael will be in charge of big picture stuff, and Jim^H^H^H Jen will deal with more of the day to day.

“ Brack was only president for 2 years and a lot of these incidents happened prior BUT if you're in charge you're responsible. ”

Surely moral responsibility cannot be assigned like that? Legal, technical perhaps, but people by and large won’t assign all responsibility to the last person in a line of hot potato. Especially since the person in question didn’t actually have 100% freedom to change the organization as he wanted. There was, and still is, a board of directors above him who has to sign off on any big changes. Responsibility should go with whoever or whatever has the substantive decision making authority, and if that’s shared then …

Moral responsibility isn't, but a company's policies, policing, and enforcement are. These were well documented things, involving numerous employees; why were they not noticed and acted upon? -That's- a corporate failing.

New ceos will get their choice of execs. While it's not 100% freedom, it's high.

With big CEO compensation should come big responsibilities.

It’s also why they often come with a golden parachute.

Feels more like well-paid scapegoat. I understand some of the dynamics are difficult, but I'm still not sure I like it.

The CEO runs the company. If the company does stupid things on their watch, it is their negligence that let it happen. Given that they get paid so much, taking responsibility for things that happen under them is an earned hazard.

saying "Given that they get paid so much, taking responsibility for things " sounds exactly like a paid scapegoat. Also what constitutes a "watch"? CEOs aren't omniscient, they aren't observing everything their execs do.

Being responsible for the company under them is far more than just being a scapegoat, but yes, it includes taking ample blame when things go terribly wrong. No one needs to be omniscient, and maybe Bobby earned his salary through concentrating on other things, but he certainly didn't earn it by shaping company culture. The chief executive is supposed to see risks and mitigate them, or hire people that can, and if they don't, it's their screw-up regardless of who elses it is. I'm feeling repetitive here, but the difficulty and importance of the job is why they get paid many multiples of other employees, ostensibly.

> Diablo 4 is going to disappoint. This is the same company that brought you Diablo 3 after all.

and, importantly, more the team that brought you Diablo 3 than the team that brought you Diablo 2...

Diablo 3 has improved a lot since release.

Seasons. Themes. Give it another go if you haven’t in 5+ years.

That would require giving money to Blizzard, which there are an increasing number of good reasons to not do.

If you think the game was a disappointment, doesn't that imply you already gave them the money? It is not a service. If you bought it 5 years ago, you don't have to pay more to play it.

But you can avoid having some information brought to light specifically because of their abuse from turning you into a DAU. If their userbase goes up as a result of this scandal it's the market responding in a manner that encourages further behavior of this sort.

+1 to this

Launch-time Diablo 3 actively felt bad to play. It had about 20 hours of fun Diablo content, and then it turned into this horrible experience that was half: inspecting the dozens of crap items in your bag looking for something someone might buy on the AH/looking for items to buy on the AH, and the other half was trying to play a "Bullet Hell" style game using click-to-move

Since then, they've completely cleaned up their act. Diablo 3 today is a lot like Diablo 2 in that you can just keep enjoying the core Diablo gameplay as long as you want

I'd really prefer not to give them any success metrics right now TBH. I'm not someone who was actively making microtransactions a month ago so I can't hit them in the wallet - but I am abstaining from using any of their products at least.

D3 has no micro-transactions, though.

That's part of what I'm saying - while abstaining from D3 doesn't hurt their income it does still hurt their metrics. Every gaming company in existence tracks DAU on their products to know how much to continue to invest in it - while they might not actively care about upping D3 DAU due to the lack of any upcoming expansion they are still watching it.

> But the main issue is that there's two leaders. We all know countries need two presidents, armies need two commanders, etc.

I can sense the sarcasm here, but I'm curious as to why this isn't the case? I'd imagine having two leaders provides more stability and thoughtfulness especially when it comes to executive decision-making, so what's the problem?

In my experience 2 leaders is a lot like no one in charge. Doesn't work too well.

I’ve never had any issues trying to figure out where to go to dinner with my wife, after all.

As much as some personality types don’t like it, sometimes you need one person just to be in charge and make a call.

People are afraid of change. Anyway, there is a bunch of studios that have two-heads, and this seems to work amazingly well.

I would wager that studios can more easily divide projects into two silos than most companies.

I find that when making soup, adding a second chef improves the quality. I also routinely change horses while crossing rivers and streams. Usually about half way.

Sarcasm aside, when there is a disagreement between coleaders, whose point of view prevails? When you know that then you know who is really in charge.

You misunderstood the idea. These aren't two leads with the same power. The decisional power is split between them and each has and bring their own responsibilities and specialities.

Then who controls the money? Who approves projects? I’ve seen this coleader idea in practice in the corporate world. It lasts one budgeting cycle.

One person is in charge, one person thinks they are charge too.

I'm going to share a story my mom told me about when she was in high school in the '60s.

There was an academic achievement award at her school, given based on objective criteria. I don't remember exactly what this award was called or what the exact criteria were (and my memory of the exact details of her story is hazy enough that I'm wondering if she was talking about being named her class's valedictorian). For the school's entire history, only boys won the award. Until my mom came along. She qualified for the award based on the objective criteria by a decent margin. And so, beginning with that year, her school decided to start issuing two awards: one to the top-performing girl and one to the top-performing boy.

So even though she won, she still had to share the award because the school suddenly changed the rules in response to a girl finally winning.

Activision didn’t ruin Blizzard. Blizzard ruined themselves by giving up control of their destiny to another. Such things affect the way you think, to be not independent.

I'm a bit out of the loop on what has led up to this. I did a bit of searching and came up with a recent thread (within last 2 weeks) of an Activision employee (female) committing suicide after experiencing sexual harassment (involving nude photos being distributed) while on a business trip with the harassing supervisor?

The thread is here: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/employee-takes-her-o...

The state of California has announced a week or two ago that it is suing Blizzard over a lot of different sexual harassment cases (including the one you've brought up) after conducting a 2-years long investigation and gathering evidence.

Which prompted a (justified) mass outrage and more people coming out with more evidence and relevant situations within the company.

I love how easy it is for enterprise organisations to make the smart moves once shit the fan. Two good choices for leadership both based on their previous work and the fact that they are new within Blizzard and aren’t tainted by the horrible working culture like every other current high level manger.

Of course it’s something they’ve likely prepared to do as a contingency since January.

I don’t agree with people calling J. Allen Brack a scapegoat considering his role in this. There are YouTube clips of Blizcon WoW panels being lead by him where the named director that I can’t recall the name or is making misogynistic jokes that the panel continues with. He’s also worked so close to these people that he must have known and failed to act, unlike the head of Activision. Bobby Kotick may be disliked, I don’t know much about him other than that, but anyone that’s worked at the higher levels of an Enterprise organisation knows that the key decision makers are so far detached from reality that it’s sometimes painful to work with them. Not that they are delusional or incompetent, but they simply operate on a whole other plane than the rest of the organisation and that means you have to trust your governing body.

Maybe Kotick needs to go as well, but I don’t see any reason Blizzard shouldn’t be making this move and they should frankly be replacing every single manager and middle manager that has been anywhere near the disgusting bullshit if their goal is to alter the culture.

Kotick settled a lawsuit about a 2007 incident (before the Blizzard merger) where he allowed ongoing sexual harassment of a flight attendant on his private jet, then fired her when she complained about it. He has a history, and it's reasonable to suspect that he is a primary source of the rot.

Brack is obviously not innocent, but that he's the only one being ousted does suggest that Kotick is trying to lay all the blame on him.

https://kotaku.com/activision-boss-loses-legal-battle-over-s...

How does the CEO of a company making mediocre (compared to the talent the seem to have available) games have a private jet?

$461 million in total compensation since 2007. Not sure what it was before, but private jets run between $1-90 million upfront, with hourly costs in the air of $2-12k; not sure about maintenance, but given it was co-owned, so presumably half those costs, it doesn't seem out of range. Insane, private jets in general are, but not out of range.

Because “mediocre” games sell incredibly well.

Because it was 2007: Guitar Hero and Call of Duty were huge, and Activision owned both.

there is a reason why he has those horns

You can change leadership, but changing a whole company culture is extremely hard. It's not something you change overnight, and it takes a lot of active effort, with people fighting back and complaining about "back in my days, we could do X".

Banning alcohol would probably be a good start.

New leadership? He took over when it was engulfed in flames (he’s just the scapegoat), they need to clean up above him. This is a CEO and board problem, who let this run rampant for over a decade.

I'm not as concerned about the board. I think they'll do whatever they need to make money and if they need to change Blizzard's culture they will. The CEO is a different story because he was there every day.

CEO is Kotick. Not Brack.

> I think they'll do whatever they need to make money and if they need to change Blizzard's culture they will

That's optimistic. To that kind of institution, what matters is getting back to business as usual with as little disruption as possible. They'll just hope that firing a scapegoat will appease the mob long enough for them to move on to another scandal, and if that doesn't work they'll keep firing scapegoats until it works.

Actual company culture changes would require that the people at the top have incentive to change. The higher ups at Activision-Blizzard already showed they were willing to tank the company's long-term potential for short-term profit.

"They expect one of us in the wreckage, brother."

Well, at least someone has started the fire.

I know that HN discourages low effort replies, but I have to tell you that this comment made me smile. A Bane reference that’s also on topic is simply chef kiss.

Then in order to help you make your case against yourself I waive your statement that the comment was low effort on your behalf. It truly was, _chef kiss_

I love how this was posted in reddit 2 hours before this comment. Who shot first?

I couldn't help but immediately think of this line from Margin Call when I saw the headline. I won't spoil it but at one point the CEO and someone are sitting in a room and he says to the person: "I need a head for the shareholders".

Not sure if this is a typo or a new solecism, but I think you meant "rampant" instead of "rampart".

Thanks for catching that!

"he’s just the scapegoat" - I see him being called a "scapegoat" a lot in this thread but is there any indication of his innocence in all of this? I'm not saying that he is "guilty" but calling him merely a scapegoat seems premature.

He’s definitely not innocent, he has shown both misogyny and terrible leadership, but when you make a press release firing him, while at the same time ignoring all the other problems (people) that is in the company he becomes the scapegoat (a scapegoat doesn’t have to be innocent)

I'm not sure how much the board could be aware, but I agree the whole leadership needs a 3rd party examination.

Boards can find things out on their own. Board members can talk to employees. I personally think they have an obligation to look beyond tidy narratives presented by management, but at the very least they have the capability.

Sounds like Bobby Kotick has chosen his scapegoat.

They're not even being called "president", now, just "co-leaders": he's taking the opportunity to consolidate more power too.

Jason Schreier:

> Titles mean a lot in the corporate world. Until 2018, Mike Morhaime was CEO. When Brack took over, he was president. Now, Oneal and Ybarra are described as "co-leaders."

> A clear glimpse at who's really in charge: Bobby Kotick

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1422536264851640320...

Crazy Bobby is not even a billionaire considering how unethical his leadership methods are.

Bobby is definitely a billionaire. His net worth is currently estimated at $7 billion.

After all, how could you possibly not be a billionaire when you're reaping a salary of $150 million for 12 years?

By spending more than 66.66667 million USD per year, obviously. The same reason that my personal net worth is quite a bit lower than the sum of my incomes over the years.

150 million after tax = 75 million. Spend half and save half, left with 37.5 million. Investing 3 million a month at 10% returns gets you to 800M after 12 years. It's damn hard to become a billionaire, even when you make 150M. Most reports I've seen have Kotick's net worth significantly less than 800M though. He's known as a very high spender

It's not hard if you make that much, just make $150 million and live like you make $100,000. Invest $74.9 million a year at even just 3% a year makes you a billionaire.

I don't see how not spending $37 million is hard.

Live like you make $100k? So like border line poverty?

The median income in the US is around $36,000 a year. $100k a year is a lot of money.

Besides, you could also live as if you make a million and still have 74 million a year after tax to save.

But, why?

If you're making $150 million / year, why would you "live as if you make a million"?

Like, what are you saving up for? A rainy day?

To become a billionaire, of course!

I mean, yeah, I wouldn't care, life's too short not to use the money for something.

Do you actually believe that's borderline poverty?

This is true, but I think there's plenty of evidence that Bobby doesn't live like he makes $100k. The private jet alone would be many times more than that.

You say that like saving more than half of $75M is really hard...

Private jet fuel and maintenance aren't cheap.

> 150 million after tax = 75 million

That's utterly ridiculous, you haven't even accounted for 401k and IRA deductions. /s

Jokes apart, why would you spend $37.5m/year? At that level of wealth and compensation, I'm sure there are super-low-interest, tax-deductible loans available for most of one's spending.

I feel like you are intentionally making the numbers not work. Who in their right mind spends 37 million a year on assets with no value? That does not happen, he would not be leading a company for 12 years if he was doing that.

> Who in their right mind spends 37 million a year on assets with no value?

Buy a boat, then you will see exactly how one could do this...

Instead of telling us to buy a boat, you could describe why you think buying a boat will lead to assets with no value.

> A 180-foot superyacht and/or mega yacht costs a minimum of $4.75 million per year to operate and maintain. Kitty McGowan of the US Superyacht Association estimates an annual budget of $1 million for maintenance and repairs, $350,000 for dockage, $240,000 for insurance, $400,000 for fuel, and $1.4 million for the crew.

It's not hard to figure out how to hemorrhage cash. There was a movie about this - Brewster's Millions.

That's a great quote. The $4.75 million given is an order of magnitude lower than the $37 million per year that Kotick would need to spend. Surely he doesn't have eight 180-foot mega yachts.

Instead of whining for hand holding, perhaps take 45 seconds and research why buying a boat is a huge money sink?

Regardless my post was half humor and half truth and you asking for a break down is baffling to me.

> Instead of whining for hand holding, perhaps take 45 seconds and research why buying a boat is a huge money sink?

I have researched way more than 45 seconds. In fact I've invested in a company that buys large ships for the purpose of making money off of them. So you see, your obvious statement that buying a boat leads to loss of money goes counter to my experience.

> Regardless my post was half humor and half truth and you asking for a break down is baffling to me.

I figured it might just be bar talk, without a strong basis. Given that I don't have direct experience with plenty of boat types myself, I thought I'd open a door for some explanation.

> In fact I've invested in a company that buys large ships for the purpose of making money off of them.

Is that why you are so sore? Why didn't you just say so?

It doesn't take a lot of brain power to understand that most wealthy people don't buy yachts to make money, but to show it off. So your entire "don't you dare say that boats are money sinks because I invested in a boat company" is pretty tone deaf.

private jets and yachts depreciate at 5-10% per year and cost an additional 5-10% per year to maintain and crew. On the low end that's 10% per year in pure expense. Buy a $50M yacht and $50M jet and you are out $10-$20M per year right there. He has his own non-corporate jet for pleasure travel, not sure on yacht, but most of his stature do.

He probably also has several $10M+ properties that while appreciate some, have a lot of upkeep that likely result in a net loss. On top of that, I'm sure he takes plenty of pricey vacations and eats at $1000/person restaurants. It all adds up quickly if you are living a CEO lifestyle. Most here just haven't been exposed to that world.

CEO's don't buy there own private jets.

He has a private jet, but Activision Blizzard pays that bill.

And once he retires and he has to pay for his travel, he will still fly private, but he won't buy a private jet. They do weird time/share type shit to keep the costs way down.

As if that $150M were paid in cash alone. The majority of it is in stock, because of course it is.

As someone who has invested 1000s of hours in EA and Blizzard games, it never crossed my mind that one day I would prefer EA to Blizz.

EA is like MongoDB, you know you are getting a flawed product that's nevertheless fun to use. Blizzard is like Oracle's MySQL, they try very hard to be taken seriously only to eventually stab you in the back.

Sorry I'm new to MySQL, in what way did they stab you in the back? Just curious about the analogy!

Obscure / unexpected behaviour in production, MySQL caused little data disasters at every company where we used it

Do not trust anything it does implicitly (like casting stuff, running triggers reliably, locking properly etc).

Nothing follows logic so if you assume something would work a particular way, it will most definitely do the wrong thing instead.

It is fine otherwise.

In a serious tone, I ran large apps on MySQL, it works and performans fine. But makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. Go with PostgreSQL if you can choose / it is not a big hassle.

Then Valve must be Postgres (I guess it would have been CDPR before the whole cyberpunk fiasco)

With the number of amazing independent games out now, like Outer Wilds (not Worlds!)… I’ve found sometimes I just really enjoy an Excel Add-on.

I'll nominate Zachtronics for SQLite.

My choice for SQLite would be Super Giant. Pretty much all of their games can be used as an argument in favor of videogames being a form of art.

Fire bobby kotick and then I'll care. Remove him from the board at coca cola too.

How the mighty have fallen.

I miss the days when they produced a solid game, charged a single fee, and let a community grow organically around it. SC was a league of its own. WoW was originally created. Let the community tell you what it wants.

It's sad to see institutions decay like this.

Unfortunately Blizzard is done.

There's some debate to be had if that's a bad thing, but it's now a brand and IP holding company with some in-house development.

I agree that the odds are that Ybarra and O'Neal can't turn the ship around... but there is still a non-zero chance.

Seems like Mike Ybarra is a 'Mr Business' type coming from Microsoft XBox who brags about "growth and engagement across services for Gaming at Microsoft" on his LinkedIn (which I don't think bodes well for removing the crazy micro transactions).

Jennifer O'Neal isn't that amazing either... she was the head of Vicarious Visions who have never made original IP, and let's be fair, have basically made mediocre games except for Destiny 2.

Vicarious Visions handled the Wii versions of Guitar Hero far, far better than the horrible versions of Rock Band available for the system. I'll always appreciate that.

> she was the head of Vicarious Visions who have never made original IP

Well it's right in the name, so I'm not sure why you'd expect them to build out their own visions.

Anyway, Blizzard has a lot of IP that people already like, doing work in the same universe is mostly fine. Open a side studio to develop new and different things.

My fault, I didn't articulate my thoughts clearly enough. Essentially my belief is that if a studio creates its own IP successfully, it's indicative of talent executing a well planned risky project.

A positive example is, Sucker Punch with Ghost of Tsushima. Sucker Punch could have kept banging out InFAMOUS games but they created a wonderful, beautiful game.

A negative example is CD Projekt Red with Cyberpunk 2077 which came out at roughly the same time. The game was a mess and they flushed billions of dollars of goodwill and future pre-order money by bad management decisions that forced a release before Christmas, and put the devs through a crazy crunch.

Now when bringing this back to Blizzard, let's take WoW as a first example... the main game works on having an exciting expansion which is analogous to creating new IP. Player subs rise with good expansions (BC, WotLK, Legion) and free fall with bad ones (WoD, MoP possibly but I think that was more a style issue than substance).

If Blizzard is to thrive I think it needs to create compelling new iterative games (like WoW xpacs and D4), but also totally new compelling like Overwatch.

It used to be that Blizzard never "missed" with its releases. You could buy a Blizzard game, in a genre you never played, and you were guaranteed a great time. I'd say 'Classic' Blizzard (before Activision) had Nintendo-level quality. Now Blizzard has the problem of never "hitting".

Add in the terrible work conditions and fans are put into a terrible situation of loving something made by a company that isn't worthy of admiration.

Imho, new leadership needs to have the ability to execute in a big way to overcome the current trajectory, and that's going to take carefully calculated, and well executed risks... something that the new co-leaders have yet to demonstrate having.

Ybarra is a very hardcore WoW player. I'd trust him more than most.

Fair point, I didn't know he actually played WoW until I did more digging. This looks positive, but I'm not sure you can call him "hardcore". I've done M+20 keys, raiding twice a week, and was a top druid healer on the server. Even then I would describe myself as a "good" player but not hardcore... imho world first guilds and server first guilds are hardcore.

WoW subscriptions alone pull about 760m per year still. They are an extremely valuable IP holding company if that.

They could easily spend tens of millions completely retooling leadership and eventually anyone toxic, and it would be worth every penny.

Weird how their dedication to HR practices are highlighted but nothing about making high quality games that people enjoy. Is that just supposed to be a given?

When these big companies start to get older they always seem to prioritize the organization itself instead of the value they provide to customers.

> When these big companies start to get older they always seem to prioritize the organization itself instead of the value they provide to customers.

Do ya think this is an age issue or a size thing. (or maybe a bit of both?)

I don’t have data to back this up, but it sure seems like once a company reaches a certain scale it becomes more about cutting quality than building a better product.

I absolutely recognize the forces that drive this and I could definitely be imagining a lot of it due to a growing sense of jadedness, but it sure feels true more often than not.

They're in the middle of an HR scandal first and foremost (though people are mad about they game design decisions too). It makes sense they're focusing on the HR part.

Based on talking to a friend who used to work at Blizzard, and was sad to leave his dream job, the main damage is long past. Key employees left over a year ago at this point.

I wish the new leaders well, assuming they sincerely wish to make positive change, but the soul of the company is gone

Any insider scoops on why Jeff Kaplan left?

Any chance he was caught up in this as well, months before it became news?

I had to look it up, I don't see any evidence that Blizzard's Michael Ybarra [1] is related to Joe Ybarra [2] who produced The Bard's Tale (1985). So he apparently has nothing to do with Ybarra's Mystical Shield (MYSH) and Ybarra's Mystical Coat of Armor (YMCA).

I can't even tell you how many times I typed YMCA on my Apple IIc, playing Bard's Tale. It was a lot, though.

[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Ybarra [2] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Ybarra

I think it's a good move, but I think it would be better if they were more open about why this is happening. I think they need to explain that this is the first step in a larger move to fix their culture, and what the next steps are.

They need to differentiate between "We screwed up, something is wrong, and it's time for real change" vs "We have applied lipstick to the pig, now please go away".

> why this is happening

They hope that the emotions get attached to the person fired so the company can get rid of it.

I don't think there is any information who has done what, so someone has to go. Severance will probably make for a soft landing.

Firing a scapegoat is meaningless. Bobby Kotick needs to be fired if any real change is to be done.

Given Activision/Blizzard is a public company, investor activism is very possible.

Some shareholders just need to care enough and have enough time on their hands.

He had only been in the position for less than three years, this has been going on for over a decade. I'm sure he's partially culpable, but I also think he might the fall guy allowing Bobby Kotick (CEO) to stay in place.

the allegations are coming from the WoW team for a major part, and he was the Executive Producer and VP of WoW for forever.

He's also easily the most publicly hated manager at Blizzard thanks to his "you think you do but you don't" speech. Perfect scapegoat.

Ironically enough, looking at the current state of WoW Classic, he was 100% correct. Given Blizzard in its current state, you don't want whatever nostalgic offering they give you, because it will inevitably be butchered.

people wanted classic wow, which they got (and was well received)

whereas TBC has a load of extra changes, plus the boosts, which makes it a completely different game

> Both leaders are deeply committed to all of our employees; to the work ahead to ensure Blizzard is the safest, most welcoming workplace possible for women, and people of any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or background; to upholding and reinforcing our values; and to rebuilding your trust.

what a load of bullshit. all that trust was lost when those two were already in leadership positions.

Blizzard is beyond repair

I like battlegrounds but I've uninstalled their games and launcher from my devices.

Summary of plausible bad reasons to appoint two "co-leaders" where one would suffice:

- Both candidates had such strong claims on the #1 spot, and so much influence, that the company was forced to promote both to avoid losing one of them. Hiring an outsider, like a sensible and earnest company would have done, would have alienated both rather than only one. Is Activision known as a fractious organization?

- They really wanted Oneal, but they added Ybarra to avoid looking like they had undergone a feminist coup. Because they care about what their users think of them, and this is what they think of their users.

- They really wanted Ybarra, but they added Oneal to give an impression of greater change, just because she is a woman.

- Both candidates weren't considered really qualified as a sole "leader", but there was hope that they could handle the crisis together instead. Which implies personal conflicts, poor personnel quality (not necessarily Oneal and Ybarra, of course) or both.

Even worse theories would be easy to think of, but since Blizzard executives can be expected to read HN discussions about them speculation about what they are doing would be pointlessly cruel.

What about new leadership at Activision? I'm still confused about the business relationship between Activision and Blizzard.

Activision-Blizzard (the parent) has 3 major divisions: Activision, Blizzard, and King.

This does nothing to address the problems at the parent company (Activision-Blizzard) or Blizzard's siblings (King, Activision)

I've been playing starcraft off an on since the 90s.

what am i supposed to replace it with?

Good time to start looking at Age of Empires 4.

> At E3 2021 Microsoft announced AOE4 would come to Game Pass on PC on October 28, 2021.

If the space themes & generic strategy are more important to you, then check you the XCOM games.

If you want a brutally competitive game maintained by a passionate developer, an active community and has long term support then try Dota 2. (warning - it will consume your life)

If you just wanna build, then city skylines and it's amazing DLCs will keep you busy.

And for what it's worth, AOE2 is still going strong. With the remaster and continuing flow of useful DLC, I still spend quite a bit of time playing.

AOE4 sounds cool, didn't know it was coming out. As for Cities Skylines, I kind of lost interest, unfortunately in favour of WoW again of all things. I'd love to a see a very polished 2nd version of it that can scale down to be run passably on my MBP like WoW.

It's really the mechanics of it that keep me there. My mmr floats around high diamond to low masters depending on how much I play. Getting into a slow game like city skylines isn't what I'm after, just the competitive aspect of it.

I guess AOE would be a good substitute or maybe supreme commander.

Whenever I see a business try “co-leader” stuff I think of that episode of the office where Jim and Michael are promoted to “co-managers”, then Oscar comments, dripping with sarcasm:

> Look, it doesn’t take a genius to know that any organization thrives when it has two leaders. Go ahead, name a country that doesn’t have two presidents, a boat that sets sail without two captains. Where would Catholicism be without the popes?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wF8jmFoQ7zM

Good for them. Though, I wonder how this ever was allowed to get this bad in the first place[0]. Perhaps it's how I was raised, my employment history, or I've just "gotten lucky" with (larger) employers[1], but it blows my mind that any large employer allowed an employee to come within a 100 yards of harassing behavior.

I worked in various lead/senior roles in IT Infrastructure, security, support and development at a 5,000-20,000 (depending on the time) employee telecom. I know of one incident in the 17 years I was there that was serious related to sexual harassment. In that case, the "victimized employee" remained with the company, the harasser handled by suspension during a (hours long) investigation where they were fired with cause (also the only case in the US that I'm aware of). I was asked to collect his computer; yeah, firing him was a good call.

Women and minorities in IT -- both technical and management (VP was and currently still is the same woman) were represented well above the average[2] and promoted at no different rate. On our team and among our larger team -- 17 years -- all of the staff acted like adults (some had quirks, but nothing more). I don't ever recall a frat-boy like attitude and I know none of my co-workers would tolerate it. I don't even recall an incident of inappropriate humor. The only thing that came close was one colleague who dropped an F-Bomb casually about every 3 words (usually a "Fckin'" or "Fcked Up" -- despite the word, I don't recall him using the word sexually). He lasted a year or so and didn't get fired for the F-Bombs -- everyone talked about it but nobody really cared[3].

[0] In fairness, I've not followed this story closely, so that may be my perception.

[1] The tempting explanation of "I didn't experience it, myself, therefore I was blind to it" isn't something I can prove I wasn't affected by, but my unusual set of jobs/position in the company allowed for few places to hide this kind of behavior from me at times.

[2] I'm always uncomfortable mentioning this -- we had higher than average because we actively recruited from places that would increase the number of minority candidates. We did not in any way apply hiring practices that favored under-represented races/genders -- and ended up having a very diverse team.

[3] I'm not suggesting harassing/racist behavior be ignored, however, another part of being an adult is tolerating things that we feel are "moral faults" in others without being uptight about it. "It takes a lot of people to make a world" ... My casually-swearing colleague never swore at people or about people -- he swore about things sometimes, and swore casually, even though he chose a word that many in the US feel to be among the most offensive profanities, co-workers used to just comment about "how strange it is to hear so much profanity out of one guy when nobody else is swearing at all".

... feeling badly for picking on F-Bomb guy and I remembered a story about him that I thought I'd share as context when I say he never landed in harassment territory.

He worked at an office in a different state, but I worked closely with his team and he had been put on a team that my former boss had chosen to move across the country to be a member of. Apparently Bill (former boss[0], not his real name) met John (F-Bomb guy, same) two days after he started; they got to talking, John found out Bill had a moving truck coming that weekend and invited himself over to help, even buying lunch for him, my former boss and the one other guy who was willing to help.

[0] Not his boss, not even on the same team and they'd met that day -- it was one of several stories; we'd often wondered if the profanity was a mental thing because he otherwise behaved like a Sunday School teacher.

I've been f-bomb guy before. Cursing (not for cursings sake, but for the love of the language, if there is such a thing) is a crucial part of my language and when I was younger, before I moved into technical leadership roles, I didn't quite understand why it was unprofessional language to use at work... But sspecially so when everything else abut the job felt so casual. In the last 5 years, however, I have been involved in technical leadership and have restricted my usage.

FWIW, I'm also the type to insist on helping friends and colleagues with physical labor work.

I too was f-bomb guy. But I had spent the summer doing inspections on a construction site, where the language is .. different.

I came back to the office, my friend took me aside and mentioned it. Office vocabulary, I think was the term he used.

Yeah, I spent about 4 years working in construction and factory floors and another 4 years in the military. It's baked in at this point but I've learned to get it under control when needed.

Huge amounts of money (and the corresponding power) make lots of people look in the other direction. These companies are too big for their own good.

I've been a woman in this field for 30-odd years and I'm surprised at the stories coming out. The harassment that I've known of happen 'behind closed doors' with senior leaders - terrible and inexcusable but nothing like the relentless frat-boy behavior described at Blizzard. I've been on teams which would make HR's hair stand on end but even on those the insults flew in all directions, I never felt picked out for my gender.

It's clear that at Blizzard there was a culture of harassment which was effectively bullying. I wouldn't' be surprised to find that men who didn't participate were picked on too. I don't think that changes when a few heads roll at the top. I don't know how to change that honestly.

In telecom you get to work with real living adults, media industries are rife with exploitation because they're peoples "dream jobs".

If you read the legal complaint filed by the state of california, blizzard had gaming lounges with booze that people would often walk in on a couple having sex. At work.

Those of us who can't imagine working at a place like that should just consider ourselves lucky.

IMO it's because of the industry. I have worked in the Video Game industry and there are a mix of reasons why I see people sticking around through these types of issues:

1. They are a non-STEM role and this is one of the best jobs for them.

2. It is a video game company. The amount of STEM professionals that I know sticking around in low-growth, high-stress, overwork, and toxic environments is worth it to them because the industry is "fun".

I think a lot of time leaders/companies know they have employees hooked in these roles and don't focus on improving culture because of it.

To be honest, I would leave a place that tries to improve culture. Either the employees carry decent behavior themselves or not. You can enforce it to a degree, but that will never be not toxic.

That said, business environments are most often "clean". That has advantages and disadvantages. But it allows you to work without distraction.

Culture comes from the top, from every hire, and is something that needs to be managed. It includes firing or outing people that do not carry decent behavior and promoting good behavior.

Completely agree, and it's really complicated to do right. I've been blessed to work for some great bosses and great organizations in my life. I've worked at one or two lousy ones along the way, too, but one thing I've noticed is that problems like this become disasters when people aren't comfortable talking to leadership.

At the "Great Organizations" -- both had founders and CEOs who's "Open Door Policy" wasn't just paper. Both had more complications than a typical company of being able to actually execute on an "Open Door Policy" -- one being fully remote with global (evenly distributed) staff, the other is in-office/global. They both took the time to make employees comfortable enough to be willing to speak up -- to them, if necessary -- in the face of difficulty/evil.

The place I'm at, now, it is a core principal of how the company functions. I don't recall the founders actually saying this was a core principal and I don't think it's written on any walls in the office. However, on day #1, I was set up with a laptop, all of the appropriate credentials and a meeting on my calendar with one of the founders scheduled about two weeks from now.

By Noon on day 1, I had casually talked to both founders four times. If there were a few people in the kitchen, one of them would introduce me to them[1]. By the next day, the founder who I ultimately had the 1:1 with was asking about my kids, by name. By the time the two weeks had passed, it almost seemed silly to have a 1:1 and I've never had another scheduled -- if the founders were in the office, I often talked to them multiple times a day[2]. I would have expected this at a single-office, 5-developer shop kind-of-place but not at a 150+ shop with offices on both coasts and Europe.

Leadership at some companies try to "gimmick" the whole "Open Door Policy" by doing things like "The CEO sits with all of the rest of us"[3]. Our founders have amazing glass-all-around (with window-shades) offices with a really nice lobby area. Our desks were/are pretty basic. I've never thought of it and never heard anyone comment on it in relation to its affects on open communication. 99.999% of the time both glass doors are open, the shades are up and I have walked in there without prompting on multiple occasions. I have been asked questions like "What could we fix with this/that" expecting answers that one would expect "they might not want to hear". I'm a more extroverted individual, so I was comfortable pretty quickly, but I've seen the most introverted members of staff talk like they're "old friends" with the two founders. The only thing I can attribute it to is that they are relentless about having a real open door policy.

Many take discomfort talking openly to people with authority over them, however, if there were ever a "general vaccination" against Blizzard Culture, I'd imagine "a company where every member of staff feels comfortable telling the founders exactly what is wrong, when it is wrong, without fear of being fired" is a principle that goes a long way toward solving that sort of problem. It solves a million others and allow for things like really flat reporting structures. There was one situation a couple of years ago involving a very complex project and even more complex customer that I know I would have quit were it not for the knowledge that I could talk about my concerns, be trusted, and have them addressed -- most of the time I can handle things on my own and just the knowledge of that is enough. Outside of that, I don't think this company could exist without an open communications policy -- our product is "creations/inventions[4]".

[0] And well at that -- not your typical, "here's the new guy" but "this is Matt, we hired him because he really loves Baz-lang -- you should talk to him about that issue on the Foo project"

[1] As "culture comes from the top", if I misjudged a company and discovered during a 1:1 that the CEO/etc was a horrible human being, I'd like to know that as soon as possible so that I can start finding alternative employment. And any CEO (assuming 500 or fewer employees) who wouldn't have time to carve out a single 30 minute meeting after hiring a senior member of technical staff raises a few red flags on its own.

[2] This was partly helped by the fact that my desk was between the kitchen and their offices.

[3] I even had a buddy in a senior role at a software company, locally, where the CEO participated in a roll call every morning. He sat in a standard cubicle away from windows.

[4] I'm not entirely sure what I'm not supposed to share, but we've created a few IoT products; I did the Alexa/Gooble implementation for a device that's sold at Walmart/Target/the likes from a company that's a household name in a lot of the world for their category. We do a lot of different categories, though, including designing the customer experience of a retail store for a massive technology brand. I think the two old-school table-top Microsoft Surface PCs in the lobby won me over, though.

I kind of agree with the other comments that Blizzard is probably done. It will be interesting to see what emerges as the successor. They have made spectacular games over the years and those franchises will be sorely missed. But someone, someday, will probably do even better.

I hold on to a scrap of hope that somehow they will turn it around. But I can't think of a Fortune 500 that ever turned it around, so I can't be too optimistic.

More than one person is responsible for the illegal culture. More than one person should go. And they should be fired before having opportunity to resign.

> More than one person is responsible for the illegal culture

Firing them sends a better message than resigning. But if the culture is illegal then they should be charged as such. Otherwise this same problem will continue to fester elsewhere.

A two-headed hydra is an excellent way to improve proper decision making in a crumbling company.

Now I'm wondering if these two get fired, if four more "co-leaders" will take their place.

I think two-headed is actually the best way to do a lot of executive jobs.

One person to analyze information, ask questions, and make policy decisions.

One person, to have meetings communicating those decisions to everyone who needs to know. Do interviews. Collect feedback.

It's not like one person does all the work, and the other person sits through all the boring meetings. That shit never works.

But one person pursuing new goals and change, and the other person maintaining current responsibilities can work really well. A lot of CEO's have named this "co-lead" their chief of staff, and they have a shocking amount of power for someone unfamiliar with that position.

I wonder if Townsend will be next https://www.activisionblizzard.com/leadership/frances-townse...

Sounds like a good change.

Blizzard has not been run as an independent studio since 2008 when it merged with Activision. The head(s) of BLizzard are just a layer of management under Bobby Kotick who has been the leader for more than a decade. I can't see this as anything besides blame shifting.

Too little too late.

Nicely decisive move, going straight for the head. And the optics of a diverse leader duo look great given some of the problems.

The head is Bobby Kotick, who has his own sexual harassment allegations. Activision won't do a thing about him or Frances Townsend.

Going straight for the head would mean replacing Bobby Kotick. If he doesn't resign then J. Allen Brack is just a scapegoat.

The optics are that they thought they needed a woman for PR, but didn't have any confidence in her. I'm not saying she's incapable, but that's what the optics are.

Blizzard tried the good optics strategy for years now. Ironically companies that emphasize it are the ones sexual harassment seems to happen the most.

WoW has been my main game since I was a teenager, and for the past decade it's been lurching up (Legion) and down (WoD), but mostly down (BFA, SL). It seems like Blizzard is out of ideas with WoW. They are like a tired writer who is trying to edit a paragraph trying to make it read better, but ultimately makes it worse with the edits.

Health of their games aside, here is to hoping that they at least take care of their employees moving forward. The thing that's most disheartening about the harassment allegations is how many former female employees (50+) came out on twitter to collaborate the claims of run-away toxicity. Not something I expected from a company that positions itself as the "wholesome gaming company of your childhood."

Whatever it takes for them to clean up their workplace, they need to do it. The games, too, will be better for it. Workplace toxicity doesn't just lead to harassment, it kills collaboration and creativity.

There's a big systematic inequality in gaming, particularly PC gaming where Blizzard's products are most popular.

Blizzard has its own launcher, which means they can sell directly to customers, at 0% commissions.

Any new Indies have to go through the monopolist Steam, which means a 30% commission and no direct access to their fanbase.

If we want better conditions in game development, it needs to be easier for disgruntled employees to leave and start their own companies. That means, explicitly, that Steam (holding the monopoly position on PC) needs to be pressured to lower its commission (the 15% level Apple and Google are moving towards seems reasonable) and offer the same terms to Indies as they do to AAA.

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