Blizzard being sued by California

@kyary: I agree with all of that. Especially that last part. My brothers don't follow games the way I do, chances are they will not hear about this unless I tell them about it. I will tell them about this of course, then we'll see what we'll do. Maybe send them a link to the inevitable Jimquisition.

@apewins:I don't think anyone should be REQUIRED to talk about stuff they don't want to in a review, but neither do I think they should be silenced if they think it's important to discuss. I just wish more people deemed it important, because the ONLY things that moves the needle on this shit is mass, sustained, bad PR.

@kunakai:I never doubted that, being on Youtube seems like the worse job in the world that isn't physically dangerous. And I agree, I've stopped watching since they started doing exclusively "bitch about the industry" videos and stopped doing Let's Plays of awful Steam games and good indie games. But I respect the HELL out of them for not just throwing up their hands and surrendering, accepting gifts from publishers and giving endless "benefit of the doubt" to pretend "neutrality" when there's nothing "neutral" about it.

@viralrain: it’s never surprising but always disappointing.

I’m gonna get a t-shirt that just says that and is in reference to everything.

This stuff always upsets me to hear, but this is especially upsetting. Perhaps its because so much of my gaming youth was filled with fond memories of Blizzard games. Feels pretty shitty that enjoying something and the fame this generated for some developers empowered them to abuse and murder innocent people.

Its even more disgusting that companies think they can just clap their hands and wash it all away. I mean even if Blizzard somehow turned into a humanitarian group overnight I'd expect them to be prostrate and display humility and sorrow for years to come, perhaps even forever...

An open letter has been put out and signed by almost 1000 employees calling out Activision-Blizzard's bullshit response to the lawsuit:

"To the Leaders of Activision Blizzard,

We, the undersigned, agree that the statements from Activision Blizzard, Inc. and their legal counsel regarding the DFEH lawsuit, as well as the subsequent internal statement from Frances Townsend, are abhorrent and insulting to all that we believe our company should stand for. To put it clearly and unequivocally, our values as employees are not accurately reflected in the words and actions of our leadership.

We believe these statements have damaged our ongoing quest for equality inside and outside of our industry. Categorizing the claims that have been made as “distorted, and in many cases false” creates a company atmosphere that disbelieves victims. It also casts doubt on our organizations’ ability to hold abusers accountable for their actions and foster a safe environment for victims to come forward in the future. These statements make it clear that our leadership is not putting our values first. Immediate corrections are needed from the highest level of our organization.

Our company executives have claimed that actions will be taken to protect us, but in the face of legal action -- and the troubling official responses that followed -- we no longer trust that our leaders will place employee safety above their own interests. To claim this is a “truly meritless and irresponsible lawsuit” while seeing so many current and former employees speak out about their own experiences regarding harassment and abuse is simply unacceptable.

We call for official statements that recognize the seriousness of these allegations and demonstrate compassion for victims of harassment and assault. We call on Frances Townsend to stand by her word to step down as Executive Sponsor of the ABK Employee Women’s Network as a result of the damaging nature of her statement. We call on the executive leadership team to work with us on new and meaningful efforts that ensure employees -- as well as our community -- have a safe place to speak out and come forward.

We stand with all our friends, teammates, and colleagues, as well as the members of our dedicated community who have experienced mistreatment or harassment of any kind. We will not be silenced, we will not stand aside, and we will not give up until the company we love is a workplace we can all feel proud to be a part of again. We will be the change."

a rather late reply on my part , but as a woman who usually works in manufacturing plans i can say 100% that frankly more often than not its usually the older men that are the bigger issue. most of the time the way they talk is more missing the 'old days' when they could actually get away with half the stuff ppl are complaining about here. personally i'm an 'ugy fat' chick so i don't get bothered too much specially since i can 'roll with the boys' personality-wise but i shouldn't have to be ok with half the things i've heard. one guy in particular used to talk about another chick i worked with saying she needed to get laid cause she'd always have a stick up her ass n saying he should take 1 for the team, he'd also mention he thinks something might have been 'done to her' at some point in her life cause of the way she acted coldly towards men. i'd heard of this particular woman even before i'd worked there cause a tech from the same room used to talk about her just as badly , that tech actually got fired for sexual remarks that he think she'd reported so it wouldn't be a surprise. ... those men are/were in their late 40-50s so ..ya know. i know a manufacturing plant isn't the games industry but a job is a job none the less and every industry does indeed have similar issues

As someone in their 50s, and as someone who as worked with a large number of people in their 50s, I have never seen the "frat boy" behavior. I am sure it may exist somewhere, however most of the men I have worked with were the put-my-head-down-so-I-can-finally-get-a-promotion type, or the put-my-head-down-so-I-can-get-to-retirement type. I think they are very aware that it is not as easy to start-over in your 50s and 60s as it is in your 20s and 30s.

@wardcleaver: Okay. You really shouldn't 'nay-say" people's personal experience on this type of stuff though. I've never experienced being targeted by sexual harassment myself, so personally, not a big deal, but you don't need to defend every 50 year old man because you haven't seen it yourself. It's not about how wide spread a scale it exists on. If even one single person has experienced this, that's one more than the number of people that should be experiencing this. The number of "good ones" that exist is irrelevant, isn't helpful in dealing with the "bad ones", and is arguably beneficial to them.

There's no doubt the older generation engages a lot in offensive talk, both men and women. As an example when I was a 25-year old intern in a predominantly female company certain senior female employees kept calling me "boy" throughout the internship instead of my name. But it seems that at Blizzard it goes far deeper than just inappropriate talk and in my field I've never seen people drunk partying and hitting on women during work hours like it's a night club. And in my field if anyone comes to work hungover they are doing everything they can to try to hide it, not celebrate it.

@brian_: @apewins:too true , it does indeed work both ways around tho i've seen in less frequently in my male dominated workplaces. that said at the same plant i mentioned before when my mother worked there you had alot of 'old biddies' hitting on the young guy too. he didn't work there when i did a couple years later so i didn't see it wfirst hand but knowing these woman i wouldn't doubt it even if it was jokingly.so it really is just as bad both ways. that said like brian said nobody should have to deal with it regardless of who you are. yes theres plenty of 'good ones' but its not a matter of outweighing the bad so much as holding them accountable for it. but at the same time i totally get keeping your head down for alot of reasons.

Not that I expect my implied standard to go far (it should not) but workplaces can be rough sandboxes. It amazes me how much politics and personality aggrandizement can go into everyday 9 to 5 (or beyond) Add sexual desires coupled with hierarchy and the workplace can become a world not at all envisioned by pure 'work'. Many thread their way through, some have a rough time, and a number just don't survive.

Not all places are like this for sure, the playing fields are at least kept 'decent' and discreet. Or it can somewhat resemble kind of a monkey world at times. A lot of throwing of shit, and people and their reputations can get hurt.

What is Jeff G. going to do since the only joy he seems to find are in endless CoD regurgitations and Tony Hawk remakes.

@heelbill: Not that I find this to be an accurate assessment of what brings Jeff Gerstmann joy, but it's not like all the garbage at Ubisoft stopped Giant Bomb from playing and covering Ubisoft games.

i think the guys have stated their opinions on the matter, honestly at the end of the day they're still game journalists of a fashion so of course they'll cover things. Not that they don't have the option to not but personally i wouldn't expect that. that said think about those who were actually effected by it does not showing their work even help them? personally i don't think so. i'm all for boycotting things you have issues with but frankly unless the numbers are there it doesn't do much good at all. for the record i'm someone whoo refused to buy diablo 3 cause of the forced online in single player, it did zero good for the issue and look at the worse shape things like that are in the industry now :/

I was not "nay-saying" people's experiences or defending anyone. I was just saying that I had not experienced it. Are you nay-saying my experience?

@wardcleaver: Yes. I am. Again, pointing out the existence of "the good ones" is irrelevant in fighting against this stuff, and lines like "I am sure it may exist elsewhere" only sows doubt on the issue. You should be sure it exists elsewhere. Cause it does.

Activision Blizzard has hired a legal firm known for union-busting to investigate sexual harassment claims

Previously best known for its work with Amazon when it came to handling workers demanding better pay and working conditions, WilmerHale is generally considered to be an anti-union legal firm. The firm’s site explains how it advises on “union awareness and avoidance” with specific attorneys trained to develop “union avoidance strategies and union organisational campaigns” as well as dealing with managing of strikes.

I'm not sure why there's this tacit assumption that unionization is going to help this. Unions represent workers in negotiation with management, which is great if you're trying to get better pay and benefits and it's probably worth doing on that level (I'm not anti-union), but it's also their job to protect workers and if it's workers that are engaging in sexual harassment the unions often come to their aid and make them harder to fire. Just look at all the bullshit that police unions defend from their members.

What scenario are you imagining? Employees going around grabbing the ass of every executive they see? Unions protect their members from retaliation by management, so people hopefully won't be as afraid to report harassment. They can also offer various forms of legal aid.

@antime: Yes, there are the execs and the senior staff getting women drunk in The Cosby Suite

There is also the recruiters at a job fair/conference making "jokes" about penetrating a cybersecurity expert and wanting to know where her boyfriend is. Or apparently the multiple people who think it is okay to enter a breastfeeding room to stare at women until they get shouted out. Or the guys who obsess over their coworkers and write them incredibly creepy letters that are so distinctive and frequent that other women can identify the person immediately because they had to deal with the same stalking. This is behavior that permeated multiple companies and likely isn't unheard of at others based on some responses we are hearing on twitter et al. Before this kicked off people were starting to remember all the microaggressions and shit that drove women out of Insomniac for decades.

Unions shift the power from management to the workers and are generally good. But when the workers have the same toxic culture, it doesn't fix anything. Maybe you are a frigging board member getting pressured into sex by other board members because your boyfriend died a few weeks ago. Maybe you are someone who needs your union to stand up for you who is experiencing the same abuse from those reps too.

And a lot of that is because one of the major contributing reasons that this is so pervasive in the gaming industry is the same reason it is so pervasive in "techbro" culture in general: These are late stage "start up" companies where the management is very much a meritocracy based solely on shipped products and technical ability. You shipped an awesome product so now you are a manger because you know how to ship great products. But you never learned how to be a manager and you think the key is to just replicate what you know works and that leads to "locker room" talk and not understanding why diversity and inclusive workplaces matter. Clearly you know better than all those out of touch suits so they should shut the fuck up if you need to let off some steam by showing your coworkers the creepy binder full of pictures you have of the lead actress of your game. And that tends to snowball and make others think that is how they need to manage their workers and so forth.

And that gets back to the point: it isn't just the managers who are toxic. It is the culture of the industry. So if you shift the power from the managers to the workers... you aren't changing the culture that has the power.

I still think the games industry desperately needs broad unions that encompass everything from golden goose lead developers down to the poor bastard who needs to recreate what is corrupting endgame saves during hour one of a bethesda RPG. I don't think unionizing will have much, if any, bearing on the pervasive misogyny in the industry.

I'm pretty sure a union formed by game devs is probably going to have different goals and priorities than one formed by cops. I would imagine if it's formed to help fight sexual harassment by employees against other employees, it probably wouldn't go to bat for the one committing the harassment over the one being harassed.

A lot of the toxic misogyny in the industry is being aloud to happen. Because women are afraid to speak out due to fear of repercussions. Or when they do, it gets swept under the rug by management. Or HR. A union could give women backing to fight this stuff, less worry of retaliation, and staff more power to fight against policies favoring management protection, and hiding this stuff to avoid bad press and lawsuits. Could it somehow make things worse for employees? I guess. But I don't know why it's members would allow that.

Also Police Unions are a big reason why the police institution are crap: They're run by literal mobsters who do everything in their power to ensure that change can't happen. I don't think that'll be the case with a VG union.

That being said, in order for a union to work, it needs to actually have political power to wield against AAA companies. Otherwise, it means nothing.