Activision Blizzard Sued Over ‘Frat Boy’ Culture, Harassment | Hacker News Reader

Activision Blizzard Sued Over ‘Frat Boy’ Culture, Harassment

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I've heard nightmare stories about working for Blizzard/Activision way before this most recent fiasco. I don't understand why anyone capable enough to work for Blizzard wouldn't work for the slew of other awesome tech companies/startups in SoCal/Irvine/LA that don't treat their employees like absolute garbage.

The current situation is shameless, and I really hope Blizzard folks jump ship en masse. There are better companies out there, the pride or fulfilment of working on "video games" isn't worth your mental health.

People are willing to sacrifice an enormous amount to work in gaming.

The salaries are poor. The work hours are poor. The work environments are poor. The benefits are poor.

Just by those metrics they should only be able to hire bottom of the barrel Wordpress engineers. But they can get people who are far better than that.

People are willing to sacrifice an enormous amount to work in _Entertainment_.

Games, Music, Movies, TV.

Its hard not to exploit people when you have constant stream of candidates begging you to work for exposure.

Here is an example casting for Netflix "TV" show, Hyperdrive, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHR66Isz3Ug where whole driver compensation amounted to 2 weeks hotel stay and plane ticket. No damage coverage (cars in $0.1-1mil range), no car prep allowance, no per diem, no insurance, no contest prizes. Produced by a woman too, Charlize Theron.

Game dev also skews very young (I believe - I don't have stats, sorry). I think it gets a lot of people who don't necessarily realise just how bad the culture and other aspects are compared to a lot of other jobs.

> People are willing to sacrifice an enormous amount to work in gaming.

There are many ways you could build a good resume. Gaming companies don't have a monopoly on that.

Gaming companies do have a monopoly on working in gaming though. "Working on games" is the main motivator, not resume building.

I believe independent gaming has never been more popular.

It is, but being an indie game dev is a lot like founding a tech startup. It's extremely risky if you don't already have industry experience to understand how producing games works, and you get industry experience from well established studios.

Agreed, but it is also much worse than a tech startup. It is the most competitive and saturated market, and participants are up against prodigies of talent that work long and hard on their projects. A tech startup usually has some strategy to attack a problem, where a game is more of a creative passion project with hope of pleasing a very outspoken customer base.

They don’t work in gaming for career benefits. They want to work on games.

It may be they don't realise it, but they just want to work on stuff people visibly use.

I worked on games nearly 30 years ago and it was awesome. Did the usual corporate stuff after that, but last few years have been working at a food delivery company you know that is huge.

There is something awesome about working somewhere where your fuckups and successes are visible. I see people sat outside pubs using my app and have to have a nosey to see their reaction, bad or good. It's pretty addictive.

Blizzard has (or at least had) one of the most dedicated fanbases in the industry. People wanted to work there simply because it was Blizzard. Working in video games is already a "cool job" and working at Blizzard was even cooler. That creates a natural supply of workers which exceeds demand. People are therefore willing to sacrifice a tremendous amount in order to continue doing that job.

You find this same type of mistreatment of employees at a lot of "cool jobs" like in Hollywood and the sports industry. The difference is that many workers in those industries have unions to help bring balance to the natural power discrepancy.

Isn’t this a bit similar to FAANG?

Yes and no. There are certainly people who want to work at FAANG companies no matter what. However it isn't close to the same degree as a company like Blizzard.

A simple way to look at it is whether people would do that job for free. Lots of people make video games, act in local productions, or play sports for free. Doing that as a career is a dream. Not very many people have a hobby writing adtech software. This leads to better compensation and treatment for FAANG workers when compared to the video game industry because the job is inherently not as desirable.

Yes, sure I wasn’t trying to compare FAANG to Blizzard in that regard. However, there might be other aspects of working for FAANG that might be a nogo for some (e.g. privacy and/or ethical reasons), despite being state-of-art in other regards. But yes, that’s a different story.

Job seekers in game development are many. These companies will never lack developers.

They can stack warm bodies, but they seriously lack for talented developers which tends to force dumping manpower at most problems.

They still had enough momentum from their history to bring people in I guess. :/

Maybe you should mention that your explanation refers to women ... I mean some men do enjoy harrassing women and those come and stay there maybe particularly for that specific reason.

> I don't understand why anyone capable enough to work for Blizzard wouldn't work for the slew of other awesome tech companies/startups in SoCal/Irvine/LA that don't treat their employees like absolute garbage.

I think this has happened. Many times. They’ve had massive staff departures year after year after year. It’s a Ship of Theseus that’s continued sailing again and again. Anytime that all the employees leave, another fresh slew of kids will take up the name.

I don’t mean to question the talent or skill of anyone who has stuck it out the whole way. But from what I can tell, these companies just churn through fresh blood and slap the developer “brand” on at the end.

Designers of Diablo, most WoW classes, Overwatch, Starcraft, have all trickled out. Then you try and generate enthusiasm with a _different kind_ of remaster (See Diablo 2 Remastered marketing).

It’s probably a bunch of young kids, straight out of school, being told “you have a chance to make up for WC3 remastered, you can do it!”. And they even pay a few of them decent and everything.

Then they’ll push deadlines, encourage crunch out of the young blood (or hell, they’ll want to “prove something”), and the game and developers suffer.

When the game doesn’t sell well as a result? Cut all the kids and try again.

> In a tragic example of the harassment that Defendants allowed to fester in their offices, a female employee committed suicide while on a company trip due to a sexual relationship that she had been having with her male supervisor. The male supervisor was found by police to have brought a butt plug and lubricant on this business trip. Another employee confirmed that the deceased female employee may have been suffering from other sexual harassment at work prior to her death. Specifically, at a holiday party before her death, male co-workers were alleged to be passing around a picture of the deceased's vagina.

Quote is from the lawsuit: https://aboutblaw.com/YJw

I'm not particularly impressed with this allegation.

First off, it tries to use lube and a butt plug as some sort of shock. But personally, I couldn't care less if this guy or gal liked stuff shoved up their butt during sex. It doesn't make me clutch my pearls, rather makes me question the author.

Second, how in the world can you "confirm" that something "may" have happened. It's without meaning. Anyone can "confirm" that anything "may" have happened.

Lastly, what's with the passive voice? "were alleged"? Who is alleging and how do they know it happened?

I don't doubt for a second that she could have been driven to suicide by sexual harassment at Blizzard, but this is a poor attempt at showing that's what happened.

how about reading the article?

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

those photos and them being passed around is a pretty substantial allegation.

Full legal complaint is here; this incident is in point 48 on page 15. https://aboutblaw.com/YJw

edit: original link and title were specifically about an employee committing suicide while on a trip with her supervisor, after having previously had her nudes (allegedly) circulated at a holiday party.

Is that real? It mispells Cosby as 'Crosby' in two different places in point 47 right above, I can't believe state investigators could make a basic typo like that and that it wasn't caught in proof reading for a court filing.

aboutblaw.com is bloomberg law; it's linked on their page here: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-...

Weird, looks like a direct AWS S3 host https://aboutblaw.com And there are 8.5K+ domains hosted on the same IP which doesn't inspire confidence since that's what spam sites do.

>Co-Hosted

>There are 8,554 domains hosted on 204.246.191.81 (AS16509 Amazon.com, Inc.).

Checked the headers on the PDF link above "x-cache Hit from cloudfront" so yeah its just being served via cloudfront with the origin being an S3 bucket, nothing there that would discredit the site in my eyes as its "just AWS" which tons of companies big and small use.

can verify that bloomberg law uses (or at least used) cloudfront, considering I set it up years ago :)

People filing these things often typo as they are just people too. I follow many "youtube laywer" channels and its a surprise then they cover a document that doesn't contain a typo or two.

EDIT: It's even worse in the replies, as they can be worked on until close to the last min of the filing deadline. If its a major issue they will are most always allowed to file an ammended filing, but most of the time judges will let a small number of typos slide.

Judges typically will not even look at the pleadings unless they come up in the case (which they often do not). Even then, the worst a typo will ordinarily get you is a nasty footnote or comment about sloppiness.

Wow I read that same section twice and didn't catch this.

These reports sadden me. I loved StarCraft and Warcraft dearly, I put thousands of hours into those games. Blizzard has enormously failed on sexual harassment, on WC Reforged, and the money-grubbing EA-Activision-Blizzard merger. And what about the fully mobile game debacle, "don't you all have phones?" Or the glacial pace of updates for it's expectant fans? Or the complete lack of self-awareness in blatantly calling abused women liars?

It's just so sad the best RTS maker has completely gone down the shitter. It feels like the cherished game company of years past has completely rotted and left grieving fans and loyalists to look around and wait for...what? Frost Giant? C&C? Indy games?

This doubt is why I nervously watch and play SC, hoping they don't go under so we aren't subject to bootlegged hacker-filled black market versions of these masterful old games. Who will maintain these old treasures or add basic Quality of Life features? Can I ethically play a game whose purchase enriched sexual harassers and their richer enablers?

Jail time. They need to see the inside of a cell. And to think of all the attacks against the women at the focus of Gamergate, years after this happened. Disgusting.

Could someone substantiate any of this? Say a provable former Blizzard employee or a link to a reputable news article.

Because I'm not sure this as it is is HN material. I saw the title with the domain next to it and assumed it was a blog post by the company before seeing a random forum.

Edit:

Ok thanks for the information everyone. I didn't realize that this was such a well known story and I was out of the loop.

It's in the legal complaint by the State of CA.

https://aboutblaw.com/YJw

While this comment is currently downvoted, HN should probably change the link to the source mentioned in a sibling comment.

Changed now from https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/employee-takes-her-o.... Thanks.

Title was changed too and removed from the front page. Kinda white washed the point, don't you think?

What would you say the point was? To take an interest in and honor the person who died? or to single out the most appalling detail in order to intensify rage?

I saw no signs of the former, so I would say the latter. We don't need that kind of "point" here. Matter of fact it violates the intention of the site: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-...

It has been reported on multiple sources, maybe updating the link to a news report would be better. I think OP submitted it because it deserved further discussion. To the best of my knowledge this has already been confirmed though.

In case you're wondering why you're being downvoted, the forum post is referencing reporting on an investigation and suit by a California regulatory agency[0].

NYT:

>After a two-year investigation, the state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court that Activision fostered a “‘frat boy’ workplace culture.” Executives sexually harassed women, the agency said, and male employees openly joked about rape and drank alcohol while engaging in “inappropriate behavior” toward women at their cubicles during events known as “cube crawls.”

>The lawsuit added that women were routinely paid less than men for similar work and were less likely to be promoted. ... >In one case, the lawsuit said, a female employee died by suicide during a business trip, as a result of her sexual relationship with her male supervisor. Before her death, male colleagues allegedly shared explicit photos of the woman, the lawsuit said.

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/business/activision-blizz...

Search: blizzard suicide

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/07/22/activision...

And finally, the most haunting story documented in the lawsuit. Again, a content warning:

A female employee died by suicide on a company trip. The lawsuit alleges this was “due to a sexual relationship she had been having with her male supervisor,” who was found by police to have brought sex toys to the trip. Additionally, it was cited the female employee had previously faced intense sexual harassment at work, including an incident where a photo of her genitals was passed around by male employees at a holiday party.

I went looking for corroboration, too. All the news stories linked so far just cite the legal complaint.

I don’t want to see other sources back up this claim. But if credible evidence comes to light, I wouldn’t wait for a court to make some personal choices about Blizzard and its products.

Serious allegation.

Everything seems to just cite the legal complaint too. Which is not corroboration. And remember a legal complaint isn't a statement of fact, but things that are being alleged and may or may not be true.

I'm not saying whether this did happen one way or the other, but I will wait for more information before judging Blizzard on this specific serious allegation.

I do agree that a news article is much suitable than a forum post for posting on HW.

We changed the URL from https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/employee-takes-her-o... (and the title ""Blizzard employee takes her own life after nude photos were distributed"") to the July 21 news article it points to. (Where by "points to" I mean "consists entirely of a paragraph copied from".)

There have been numerous previous threads about this story. Unfortunately I'm running out the door and don't have time to compile a list like I normally do, but perhaps I can do it later.

allow me:

New Leadership at Blizzard (https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23706475/new-leader...)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28048919 (245 points, 12 hours ago, 192 comments)

Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years (https://www.pcgamer.com/how-blizzards-reputation-collapsed-i...)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28022066 (376 points, 3 days ago, 221 comments)

Blizzard Recruiters Asked Hacker If She ‘Liked Being Penetrated’ at Job Fair (https://www.vice.com/en/article/3aq4vv/blizzard-recruiters-a...)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28011541 (53 points, 4 days ago, 74 comments)

Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale (https://www.promethean.news/news/activision-hires-notorious-...)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27998878 (627 points, 5 days ago, 358 comments)

Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/28/activision-b...)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27991211 (175 points, 6 days ago, 192 comments)

Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday (https://www.axios.com/activision-blizzard-walkout-harassment...)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27975530 (495 points, 7 days ago, 528 comments)

California sues Activision Blizzard over unequal pay, sexual harassment (https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019293032/activision-blizzar...)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27922841 (423 points, 12 days ago, 462 comments)

Activision Blizzard Sued by California over ‘Frat Boy’ Culture (https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-...)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27914062 (105 points, 13 days ago, 20 comments)

there are several more articles without much or any discussion:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Nicely done, and unless you've previously written code to generate these, that was a lot of work. Thanks!

it was really just copy/paste from the algoila search with a bit of cleanup and adding the discussion links. took only a few minutes. would have been possible to automate the editing with a few vim commands.

The president of the Blizzard Entertainment Studio (J. Allen Brack) resigned today too:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/business/blizzard-enterta...

He was named in the suit:

>J. Allen Brack, President of Blizzard Entertainment, allegedly had multiple conversations with [Alex Afrasiabi, former senior creative director of world of Warcraft] about his drinking and that he had been ‘too friendly’ towards female employees at company events but gave Afrasiabi a slap on the wrist (i.e. verbal counseling) in response to these incidents

@dang, why did this get pulled from the front page?

I'm not dang, but it's well known that the HN algorithm penalizes ranking of posts that drive upvote/downvote wars. I don't know whether that's happening on this page but given voting behavior on similar posts in the past its not unlikely some amount of that is happening here.

It's newsworthy. And hasn't been covered by the hacker news front page.

It was also pulled from the front page the same time the title was changed.

The fact it got so many up votes so quickly was that people didn't realize how terrible blizzard was.

it definitely did make it to the front page. there have been several posts with a lot of discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28056296

Does that include the part about the female employee committing suicide after pictures of her genitals were shared?

I don't see it in that list.

I haven't played any Blizzard games since the early 2000's, but I was really excited to pick up the new Diablo 2 remake and catch up on what many have said is a classic.

Gaming has changed, it's brutally monetized, online play is still mean and abusive, and I've downloaded more files than played games as of late.

And now these stories have come to light. I haven't done a deep dive into them, but enough reputable sources have reported that I can spare myself the negative feelings. What a lousy stain on the legacy of their games. I can't in good conscience support criminality that so flies in the face of decency. I know it's a drop in the bucket, but they won't be getting any money from me, no matter how much I want to play Diablo 2.

Sometimes I wonder why I struggle to connect with gaming so much as an adult. I'm increasingly realizing that it's gaming that no longer has any interest connecting with me.

> Gaming has changed, it's brutally monetized

Indie games are not yet corrupted like this. Outside of mobile, that is. Plenty of good (and small) developers around.

What should be the appropriate response to this kind of situation?

The shuffling of leadership doesn't feel like it's really enough and it doesn't guarantee that any positive changes will come of it.

The fact that these issues have been going on for YEARS with women too scared to speak up or being quietly silenced and ignored has really been opening up my eyes to the seriousness of this situation and the need for real change. Why did it require having a woman take her own life for us to finally start having a serious conversation about this? Not that I'd point fingers at anyone, since I'm clearly guilty of this as well.

How many more could be helped or saved if we took action now rather than waiting for more people to jump over the edge?

>Why did it require having a woman take her own life for us to finally start having a serious conversation about this?

It actually took a lawsuit by the California DFEH for this conversation to actually happen. The suicide presumably happened some time ago, I'm assuming before March 2020 at the very least since it was a company trip.

Firings, garnished wages, jail time.

If there is any tech industry that is seriously deserving of extremely strict, federal and state regulation, it's the video game industry IMHO.

Between what Blizzard has done here, EA regularly pushing children to gambling, Telltale Games violating federal and California labor laws, and too many more to enumerate - the video game industry is complete garbage built on a constant source of disposable developers.

Burn it all down.

I hope to one day fix this with an actually sane game company that makes it impossible for companies like this to exist. We need a market leader that is not completely psychotic, genuinely cares about gamers and developers, who can eat these companies lunches.

Why is this a link to a comment in a forum rather than the legal brief?

Is it ethical to play games whose creators were sexual harassers and their enablers?

Are you posting this on silicon made from slave labor? (Yes, you are)

One example is of a game that no one ever has to play. The other is of something that effectively no one in modern society can live without and many more steps removed.

This just sounds like a justification you are OK with. Everyone's bar for "OK" is different and moral/immoral.

Let's stick to the question and avoid making this about the person asking the question.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com