Patch 9.1 Hotfixes - July 21, 2021, Activision Blizzard Sued By California

Update: Added Blizzard's statement on the lawsuit

Patch 9.1 Hotfixes - July 21, 2021
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes
  • Druid
    • Born Anew's (Conduit) primary stat bonus reduces to 20 upon the beginning of a new encounter.
      • Developers’ note: The intent of this bonus is to provide a benefit when using resurrections in combat. But it is best to avoid situations where players might feel compelled to min/max something like this before starting a pull.
  • Priest
    • Shadow
      • Shadow Crash's (Talent) ground visual will now match the area effect.
      • Void Volley's (PvP Talent) ground visuals will now match the area effect and has more defined edges.
  • Warrior
    • Arms
      • Fixed an issue where Swift Patrol (Niya Soulbind) caused the auto-attack timer to reset.

Creatures ad NPCs
  • Players now have a 2 second grace period to keep their vision of targets within the area contained by the Soul Chains between the Soul Cages during the Mor'geth encounter.
  • Reduced the number of Prince Renathals in Sinfall. Press F to pay respects.

Dungeons and Raids
  • Sanctum of Domination
    • Defeating Sylvanas Windrunner on Mythic difficulty will now reward 2 Vengeance’s Reins.
    • Remnant of Ner’zhul
      • Players can no longer cause a second orb to become non-interactable while carrying an Orb of Torment.
  • Plaguefall
    • You must now defeat the first three bosses of the dungeon before the door to Margrave Stradama opens on all difficulties.
      • Developers’ note: The first two bosses of the dungeon were frequently being skipped in lower-difficulty dungeons, typically by groups who were trying to earn Renown much faster than intended. To improve players' Renown earnings, we've also added a chance for Renown to be earned by completing layers in Torghast (see hotfix below).

Items and Rewards
  • Teleporter Repair Kits should no longer have a Unique count and will now stack to 50.
  • Repaired Riftkeys will also now stack to 50.
    • Developers’ note: Early in development, Teleporter Repair Kits and Repaired Riftkeys were only available from the vendor. Based on player feedback of not knowing if they were worth purchasing, we decided to have them drop occasionally as well. Now that these items dropped and became out of player’s control, we should have removed the unique cap on the Teleporter Repair Kits then. Also, since you have access to purchasing the Teleporter Repair Kits or Repaired Rift Keys, we are disabling them from going to mail if you loot one with a full inventory so they will no longer fill up your mailbox.

  • The item levels of Conduits sold by the Rated PvP vendor have been corrected.
  • Fixed an issue where the Salvaged Fusion Amplifier was not dropping for Marksmanship and Beastmaster Hunters.

Quests
  • Fixed an issue during “Nal’ragas” that caused internal text to be visible to users of certain nameplate addons.

Torghast
  • Renown is now a possible reward from Torghast completions, with better chances at Renown coming from higher Torghast difficulties.

Activision Blizzard Sued By California
According to a Bloomberg law article, Activision Blizzard is being sued over 'frat boy' culture after a 2-year investigation by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. For more information, check out the article below, and read the full court filing.



Blizzard provided Polygon with a statement responding to the lawsuit:

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
We value diversity and strive to foster a workplace that offers inclusivity for everyone. There is no place in our company or industry, or any industry, for sexual misconduct or harassment of any kind. We take every allegation seriously and investigate all claims. In cases related to misconduct, action was taken to address the issue.

The DFEH includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past. We have been extremely cooperative with the DFEH throughout their investigation, including providing them with extensive data and ample documentation, but they refused to inform us what issues they perceived. They were required by law to adequately investigate and to have good faith discussions with us to better understand and to resolve any claims or concerns before going to litigation, but they failed to do so. Instead, they rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we will demonstrate in court. We are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family. While we find this behavior to be disgraceful and unprofessional, it is unfortunately an example of how they have conducted themselves throughout the course of their investigation. It is this type of irresponsible behavior from unaccountable State bureaucrats that are driving many of the State’s best businesses out of California.

The picture the DFEH paints is not the Blizzard workplace of today. Over the past several years and continuing since the initial investigation started, we’ve made significant changes to address company culture and reflect more diversity within our leadership teams. We’ve amplified internal programs and channels for employees to report violations, including the “ASK List” with a confidential integrity hotline, and introduced an Employee Relations team dedicated to investigating employee concerns. We have strengthened our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and combined our Employee Networks at a global level, to provide additional support. Employees must also undergo regular anti-harassment training and have done so for many years.

We put tremendous effort in creating fair and rewarding compensation packages and policies that reflect our culture and business, and we strive to pay all employees fairly for equal or substantially similar work. We take a variety of proactive steps to ensure that pay is driven by non-discriminatory factors. For example, we reward and compensate employees based on their performance, and we conduct extensive anti-discrimination trainings including for those who are part of the compensation process.

We are confident in our ability to demonstrate our practices as an equal opportunity employer that fosters a supportive, diverse, and inclusive workplace for our people, and we are committed to continuing this effort in the years to come. It is a shame that the DFEH did not want to engage with us on what they thought they were seeing in their investigation.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 9.1 Hotfixes - July 21, 2021, Activision Blizzard Sued By California started by Stoy View original post
Published on 2021-07-22 02:18 AM
356 Comments
Comments 355 Comments
  1. Amaterasu65's Avatar
    Terrible, but hardly surprising. And this starts from the wider layers and the higher you go the worse it becomes. I see it happening while I game, I'm sure rich entitled businessmen would do worse with their power. This kind of sexual harassment, degradation and inequality happens to all fields, but the way it happens in gaming communities makes it way more immature. Can't help but be reminded of that Rioter farting on co workers' faces.
  1. Kralljin's Avatar
    Imagine releasing shitty games and being a shitty company to boot.

    "You think you've hit the bottom, but you don't".
  1. Lorgar Aurelian's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Clbull View Post
    Well this would probably explain the serious decline in WoW game content. If the frat-boys within the Warcraft dev team were too busy playing CoD deathmatches, cube crawling around ladies' cubicles and engaging in all other kinds of degenerate behaviour instead of working on the game, it would easily explain why Blizz went from pushing out 8+ raids and 12+ dungeons during an expansion to a sliver of that in later releases.

    They also probably ran out of women to delegate their work to because word gets around that workplaces become toxic.

    Blizzard were once the games company that everybody looked up to and dreamed of working at. It's now a shell of what it once was and a mark of shame on everyone's resume.

    This news just makes me livid.
    It could also be likely the drop would be from firing people involved in stuff like this or having them “step down” before they could be properly replaced.

    We already know one person who silently sweped under the rug who knows how many others were to.
  1. Sentynel's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lorgar Aurelian View Post
    To make it easier to get further employment else where? That’s like asking why she kept the money she got from working there instead of throwing it away.
    You have LinkedIn to list your employment history.
    Not a single recruiter will look into your Twitter to verify your past employers.
  1. Kathranis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Maruka View Post
    Seems like a toxic place to work, might explain why the quality of the game has dropped.
    The investigation started more than two years ago, which means this behavior isn't (only) a recent phenomenon. This started before a lot of the recent high profile departures and had to have been going for quite a while.

    Alex Afrasiabi (one of the Blizzard "old guard") is the only defendant outright named in the lawsuit, which explains why he up and vanished without any explanation just over a year ago. Hard to say whether Afrasiabi's departure was part of them cleaning house, or if it was just trying to sweep things under the rug.

    Their former CTO (presumably Ben Kilgore) is also mentioned. Kilgore had been in the position since 2014 before leaving in 2018.

    The lawsuit also makes it abundantly clear that the executives knew about his behavior, and that Brack didn't do enough to curb it. Work culture like this only exists when seniors / supervisors allow or encourage it.

    It's kind of hard to imagine that the rest of the "old guard" wasn't aware of this. Afrasiabi was a lead since BC and was one of the faces of the game for years, alongside Brack, Metzen, Kaplan, and others.

    It makes you wonder about other recent departures, though his in particular was extremely suspicious.
  1. Encrow's Avatar
    If the legal report is to be believed then this is mostly about the older Blizzard crew. And if this is true then everyone should be directing their hate to Dreamhaven. Ever wonder why the OG crew has been dropping like flies? It's called a clansing. Don't let these monsters get away scott free by singling out Blizzard.
  1. uuuhname's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Encrow View Post
    If the legal report is to be believed then this is mostly about the older Blizzard crew. And if this is true then everyone should be directing their hate to Dreamhaven. Ever wonder why the OG crew has been dropping like flies? It's called a clansing. Don't let these monsters get away scott free by singling out Blizzard.
    no, this includes the people at the very top who allowed this behavior to go on in an entire department of their company.
  1. Varodoc's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Encrow View Post
    If the legal report is to be believed then this is mostly about the older Blizzard crew. And if this is true then everyone should be directing their hate to Dreamhaven. Ever wonder why the OG crew has been dropping like flies? It's called a clansing. Don't let these monsters get away scott free by singling out Blizzard.
    Did you miss the fact that the current CEO of Blizzard condoned these acts?
  1. FelPlague's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Moozart View Post
    connect the dots la la la la! connect the dots la la la la

    Lots of Blizz employees have bailed over the last few years while this investigation was going on... ironic?
    Trying to make sure they didnt get caught for what they did.-
  1. Kiivar86's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MrLachyG View Post
    typo or not the inference is pretty bloody clear
    Oh definitely! Not saying it wasn't. Like you said, you can tell what they meant by it.

    Just saying, there's copious amounts of typos in legal documents. You'd think there wouldn't but I've seen a lot.
  1. Lorgar Aurelian's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sentynel View Post
    You have LinkedIn to list your employment history.
    Not a single recruiter will look into your Twitter to verify your past employers.
    A recruiter might not but other employees can/do which can lead to suggestions gettin passed up the line.
  1. Voidwielder's Avatar
    People using PF skip is just an indication of a deeper problem. Glad they added Renown to Torghast but that does not really solve it. I see no reason why your alts shouldn't automatically be on the same Renown level as your main - you'll still have to grind out Anima for mogs and all that stuff.
  1. TidalConflux's Avatar
    A lot of what I have seen on Twitter and on forums is how its all on New Blizzard -- and quickly forget for Alex has been here since 2004, meaning his behavior and culture has been in the company since the beginning of WoW.
  1. Xilurm's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Wangming View Post
    You mean like how they waited when it came to Quinton Flynn?
    The good thing is that Quinton Flynn was proven innocent. And now it makes a lot of sense why they fired him. They were trying to save their own skin.

    Where the fuck are the people now saying "people change jobs all the time" or "they fired him cause they wanted someone better/for consistency"? Huh? Are you still gonna yap about how all these changes that have been happening in blizzard because "no one stays working in the same place for that long LULZ"? Isn't it funny how everyone who left, went to work in another GAMING company? Surely if they were tired of working on games, they wouldnt have immediatelly started working on more games.

    Do you still think people are conspiracy nuts?
  1. xpsync's Avatar
    So many morally sick people, you never know what side to believe anymore. At first i thought some special snowflake digging for some quick cash to like omg if true, that's so f'ing f'ed up.
  1. Cubster20038's Avatar
    I am surprised a lot of people defending Blizzard saying this is fake news
  1. Vasilisa's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cubster20038 View Post
    I am surprised a lot of people defending Blizzard saying this is fake news
    A lot of people want it to be false because if it's true then it means that they are paying money to the degenerates.
  1. Gadzooks's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Antherios View Post
    Now we know why Afrasiabi left Blizzard suddenly and deleted his social media, he is quoted on the lawsuit as basically being a creep and harassing young female Blizzard employees.
    Also that explains why J. Allen Brack just went live yesterday into the Game Maker's Notebook podcast for 1 hour to talk about female rights and the "inclusion" Blizzard is doing .. they are on active damage control.
    According to the filing, Blizzard was asked to participate with the state to reconcile the charges with them, and Blizzard walked from the table, starting on July 1st of this year. They met with the state 3 times, and failed to get a resolution. Yes, they knew this was coming for sure, they knew this suit was coming, and yes, there is going to be major damage control occurring over this. This is an ugly lawsuit, and by a state agency, who typically do not file a case unless they know they can win.

    A lot of attention is on the more salacious aspects of the filing, and focused on Afrasiabi and the woman who took her own life. Which is understandable, in our culture that wallows in such things. But the entire suit's goal is set out at the end of the filing, starting with compensatory and punitive damages. This specific case, even though it names names, is about paying out to those employees they've harmed (as alleged by the state), and opens the door for a flood of personal civil lawsuits. Them bringing up things like Afrasiabi, J Allen not doing enough to stop the behavior, and the poor woman who took her life, is to establish the nature of the workplace, and a systemic culture that allowed it to go that far. Afrasiabi is not on trial here, the company that allowed him to allegedly be a handsy drunk, is.

    Blizzard's response is...oof. "We don't condone that kind of behavior, all that never happened and you got the stories wrong anyway, and we totally changed our culture where that kind of stuff is totally not happening anyway and witch-hunt blah blah blah."

    Yeah.

    Lots to unpack here. It's going to be ugly, on all sides.

    As a side note, I'm not surprised at the damage control and white knighting and mealy mouthed defense of Blizzard by the usual suspects here and in other online forums - I've come to expect it from a larger-than-it should-be part of the "gamer" community, to be frank.
  1. Antherios's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Varodoc View Post
    Blizzard/Activision shills must be in despair right now, imagine shilling for such a company LOL!
    It's already happening. See all the previous comments saying "its just a lawsuit" or "innocent until proven guilty". Which I agree totally WHEN its coming from an individual or group of individuals. This is a California Court moving forward with a lawsuit after more than 2 years of investigations with hundreds of testimonies.

    I work in the public sector, no one is going to spend 2 years and countless resources on an investigation and then on a lawsuit if they didnt have air-tight evidence of wrongdoing. Unless they are on a god tier of incompetence, I dont see how ALL of the claims can be false .. and even if 50% of them are true, thats bad enough.
  1. mbit's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Antherios View Post
    It's already happening. See all the previous comments saying "its just a lawsuit" or "innocent until proven guilty". Which I agree totally WHEN its coming from an individual or group of individuals. This is a California Court moving forward with a lawsuit after more than 2 years of investigations with hundreds of testimonies.
    They are so competent they couldnt even write cosby right. Look at the original one -Repeatedly "Bill Crosby"
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