Mike Morhaime Response to Blizzard Lawsuit

[Alvito]

The investigation started while he was still in charge which means the behavior had been going on for a very long time under him. He is complicit and is lying if he says otherwise.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

Being a woman doesn't prevent you from having shitty takes, influenced by the culture of denigrating women you've been brought up in. Look around, do research, and stop blaming the victims, what you wrote is disgusting.

Mmhm, just go on Twitch you will get what I mean. I won’t be discussing this with you further if you think my comment is disgusting. Most of situations are indeed unfortunate and inevitable, but most of the time you are controlling your life from a driver seat.

[Xilurm]

To bad its just words like he himself says.

But i quess its good that after 28 he´s finally ready to use all he´s influence to help drive positive change and to combat misogyny and discrimination, to bad he didnt spend these past 28 years combating it, but better late then never right.

Well you usually don't go in game developement to battle misogyny and discrimination. And the fact is that after Blizzard became big, he most likely wasn't sitting around other employees in their cubicles or shit watching everyones moves like a hawk.

The reason he might not have know is actually very simple. It's because no one else did either.

[Raven]

I believe Mike, it feels genuine. JAB came off as corporate speak, especially since he is specifically mentioned in the lawsuit as the one covering for Afrisabi time and time again.

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This. it's why i believe Mike's genuine response, because it does seem genuine and people can see right through the BS *looks at JAB*

Please Mike has alot more guilt in this then JAB, JAB is by no means guilt free and i would say he needs to be replaced as President over Blizzard, not all but most of the stuff that has come out is stuff that happened years before JAB even took over and that is on Mike.

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Well you usually don't go in game developement to battle misogyny and discrimination. And the fact is that after Blizzard became big, he most likely wasn't sitting around other employees in their cubicles or shit watching everyones moves like a hawk.

The reason he might not have know is actually very simple. It's because no one else did either.

Only problem with that is people did actually know it was happening both people who vitnessed it and those that where victims who claimed they told Mike and nothing happened.

[WaltherLeopold]

Women were being harassed on a massive scale in Blizzard. This is what we are talking about currently. Stop trying to make everything about you/men. Once a huge systemic harassment in some company is found against men, we will then be discussing it. Until then, leave this incel-gamer stuff out of here please.

We should listen and believe all victims of harassment rather than stifle discussion. If someone is trying to broaden and open up the discussion of workplace harassment and oppression, then you should honestly just shut up and let them speak of their experiences.

[BreakerOfWills]

Well you usually don't go in game developement to battle misogyny and discrimination. And the fact is that after Blizzard became big, he most likely wasn't sitting around other employees in their cubicles or shit watching everyones moves like a hawk.

The reason he might not have know is actually very simple. It's because no one else did either.

No one outside the company knew, you dont get a company culture of harassment without any of the leadership knowing. That shit has to be accepted and encouraged because ground level folks take their cue from the existing culture they find when they get there.

All that shit about "we don't think you'd be a good fit" is real, it's just that "good fit" sometimes means "are you also a shitty dudebro"

He knew, and promoted assholes like Afrasiabi to senior positions, he's complicit in all this shit.

[justandulas]

Please Mike has alot more guilt in this then JAB, JAB is by no means guilt free and i would say he needs to be replaced as President over Blizzard, not all but most of the stuff that has come out is stuff that happened years before JAB even took over and that is on Mike.

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Only problem with that is people did actually know it was happening both people who vitnessed it and those that where victims who claimed they told Mike and nothing happened.

Mike is not named a single time in this suit. JAB is about half a dozen times

It’s more than likely JAB served as the management under man for Mike and kept it from getting up the ladder anymore out of loyalty to his good buddie afrisabi

Mike, mark cern, none of the old guard at Blizz are named. It’s the generation that followed them that is named

[Agent Smith]

Yet another Blizz old schooler using language to distance himself over something he should have DAMN put a stop to.

Ill say this once more:

Either Blizzard execs knew and did nothing or did not know and are incompetent: either way they are guilty.

[exsanguinate]

is lying if he says otherwise.

yall act like in this thread you know them well and be part of the family lol

[Orby]

Still waiting for Metzen to be shamed and outed. You know he is probably guilty too. I aint gonna try and hope he aint anymore because its sadly true.

Cannot play Blizzard games anymore knowing that all these people I looked up to have been involved in this. The name Blizzard is tainted, their games are tainted.

Steve Danuser and Terry Gregory seem to be in the clear though, they have spoken up about it and haven't received any blow back but have received thanks from employees. The lore team as a whole seem to be pretty much in the clear.

[RamGuy]

I don't know what to believe at this point. And I think it's important to not lose all sense of justice. Clearly, there is something awful at play here and it needs to be dealt with. But without any hard evidence about how this has transpired or any details on how it managed to develop into such a terrible culture people should be reluctant to claim that person X, Y and Z is a terrible human being.

People are jumping to conclusions and making this far simpler than it really is. Hopefully, the investigation will provide the information required to make things right. Sadly I doubt it will.


But one has to remember that the word of one individual should not be worth more than the word of another individual. Topics and issues like these needs proper investigations. Having person A claim X, and person B claim Y shouldn't be enough to ruin peoples lives. Doesn't really matter what side of the topic you are on. A society where accusations and claims by themselves are enough to completely destroy people lives is a society that will never work. Those being taken advantage of need to be heard, but those being accused also has the right to be heard and defend themselves. Otherwise, we suddenly have a world where anyone can claim anything and that won't work. And there is a reason why our civilized society is built around the notion "you are innocent until proven guilty", and by proven guilty it means proven guilty by a court of law.

Doesn't really matter if you are male, female, black, white or whatever. Everyone should be treated equally and everyone should have the right to face justice and a fair trial. I fully agree that it seems really suspicious that the CEO of Blizzard for so many years have not noticed any of this bullshit. But depending on the corporal structure and where the awful people might be in the structure a lot of these things might never reach the top level of the company. Lets not jump to conclusions and start branding people as terrible human beings without proper knowledge of what's been going on and how this all has traspired over the years.

The most important thing is to make it abundantly clear that corporal culture and behaviour like this is not to be accepted at all. So if and when issues like these will occur in the future (because they will. nobody is perfect, and there will always be scenarios where one person crosses the line, again it doesn't matter if this person is male, female, black or white or whatever) people will actually do something about it and make sure that these people crossing the line are put in their place and this behaviour is getting stopped from the start.


But one thing this is showing is the fact that there are too much harassment going on in the world. At this point, proper investigations should be put in place in pretty much every company in the world. I know it's impossible to make this happen. But it should clearly become a priority when even workplaces like Activision-Blizzard is incapable of keeping a minimum level of human rights and decency at place in their company. This in not the world we want to live in.

[TyrianFC]

Mike Morhaime Response to Blizzard Lawsuit
Mike Morhaime posted a response to the Blizzard lawsuit. He stepped down from his position at Blizzard in 2018.

I have read the full complaint against Activision Blizzard and many of the other stories. It is all very disturbing and difficult to read. I am ashamed. It feels like everything I thought I stood for has been washed away. What’s worse but even more important, real people have been harmed, and some women had terrible experiences.

I was at Blizzard for 28 years. During that time, I tried very hard to create an environment that was safe and welcoming for people of all genders and backgrounds. I knew that it was not perfect, but clearly we were far from that goal. The fact that so many women were mistreated and were not supported means we let them down. In addition, we did not succeed in making it feel safe for people to tell their truth. It is no consolation that other companies have faced similar challenges. I wanted us to be different, better.

Harassment and discrimination exist. They are prevalent in our industry. It is the responsibility of leadership to keep all employees feeling safe, supported, and treated equitably, regardless of gender and background. It is the responsibility of leadership to stamp out toxicity and harassment in any form, across all levels of the company. To the Blizzard women who experienced any of these things, I am extremely sorry that I failed you.

I realize that these are just words, but I wanted to acknowledge the women who had awful experiences. I hear you, I believe you, and I am so sorry to have let you down. I want to hear your stories, if you are willing to share them. As a leader in our industry, I can and will use my influence to help drive positive change and to combat misogyny, discrimination, and harassment wherever I can. I believe we can do better, and I believe the gaming industry can be a place where women and minorities are welcomed, included, supported, recognized, rewarded, and ultimately unimpeded from the opportunity to make the types of contributions that all of us join this industry to make. I want the mark I leave on this industry to be something that we can all be proud of.

-Mike

What bullshit.

Allow me to translate Mr Morhaime's bullshit response: "I've started a new publishing company and dont want any bad PR/publicity from my name-association with Blizzard coming over. So please allow me to quickly wipe my hands clean, stick my head in the sand , distance what happened under my leadership - and effectively imply I 'didnt know' - all while condeming the behaviour as abhorrant and unacceptable from a comfortable arms length."

[Gaidax]

Innocent until proven guilty. Benefit of the doubt... Apparently these are the privileges you lose when you're rich.

It's ok, they can wipe their tears with $$.

You might be "losing" that privilege, but guess what ActiBlizz and the executives and ex-executives in question have the privilege of being well protected by a wall of well-paid lawyers that will ensure they get out of it with minimum actual damage possible.

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Finally a real fucking reponse, no its not perfect, but its the first one that is not pretending it didn't happen.

Ye, the guy is like literally implying he did not know. I mean, cmon bruh.

[Aggressive]

https://twitter.com/cherthedev/statu...407635457?s=20

Uh oh, just as I thought.

O damn. Shit just gets better and better. Wondering if I should get my popcorn for this shit show that Blizzard is throwing.

[Gaidax]

I believe Mike, it feels genuine. JAB came off as corporate speak, especially since he is specifically mentioned in the lawsuit as the one covering for Afrisabi time and time again.

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This. it's why i believe Mike's genuine response, because it does seem genuine and people can see right through the BS *looks at JAB*

Do you realize that the whole lawsuit is about what was happening when Mike Morehaime was at helm of the company? A guy heading the company for 28 years did not know what was going on? Really? You believe that?

Even Lore called out his bullshit straight out.

https://twitter.com/devolore


I know some here would slurp Mike's bath water, because apparently he's representing "the good 'ol" Blizzard, our big holy martyr that died fighting the evil Activision. Well guess what apparently the "good 'ol" Blizzard was not so good after all and he's the one responsible for enabling it.

His "if I would have known it would not happen" is pathetic. He should have not opened his mouth at, would be better than this.

[Jester Joe]

It's always about women ain't it? Even in generalized situations where both are affected (this is one of them), it's always about the women in that situation. Not that i don't feel sympathy, but this egotism must end.

PS: Don't tell me what to talk about. Focus on yourself and don't mind me

How do you even honestly say something like this with such a straight face in this kind of context?

We have a situation that was so awful a woman literally killed herself over it, and all you can do is go "UGH, WOMEN!"? Wow.

[Aggressive]

Brandy Camel has talked about Morhaime's open door policy where anyone could go and talk to him. If people weren't telling him what was going on that says something about the retaliation issue in the lawsuit.

It doesn't bear belief that there was an open-door policy to Mike Morhaime's office and that he was being shielded from what was going on.

It's curious to me that I've seen posts from the same accounts in the last few hours that 1) say that Brack failed as CEO because he didn't know and 2) that Morhaime gets a pass because as CEO, how could he have ever known.

It would be great to see users here put aside their agendas for 10 minutes and just consider things logically. The problems at Blizzard go back to the mid-2000's. Are we really going to imagine that Mike somehow didn't know how women were being treated with respect to harassment, pay, advancement and the rest? Please. It doesn't make any sense.

I believe you as well. Upper management in Blizzard is just pathetic.

J. Allen needs to be fired. Seems to me he only came to work and went straight to office. Didn't pay attention to his employees and the surroundings they worked in. And am I missing something ?? But doesn't the president of a company not have a weekly meeting with HR about issues of the workplace ?? I highly doubt he was not aware of all the silliness and immature behavior of the men there.

I think WoW players just want to hold this "Blizzard is a angel" attitude cause the game was King of MMO's for so long. Well was. Not anymore.

[lazypeon100]

Except the entire response is a lie. https://twitter.com/cherthedev/statu...407635457?s=20

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Feel free ,but don't believe his statement, and don't fool yourself that his statement is true when it's literally not.

Your free to believe whatever you want, but if you believe he's innocent we are gunna tell ya to sodd off.

https://twitter.com/cherthedev/statu...296239105?s=19

The person you're linking to posted an update. Not sure if it was mentioned yet in this thread, though felt it was relevant to share as well, that she's choosing to believe him.

Personally, I don't really know whether he's bring honest here or not. There's not much he logistically could say. It's better than some of the other statements at least. Regardless, it's clear there is a problem at Blizz that has been happening for a long time now.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I am just glad the normal singing of the usual people that come to these threads being like "its a business" and "this is normal" are fewer than normal. Maybe the line has finally been crossed for most of them too. Don't get me wrong I suspect the worse that will happen to Blizzard is a PR hit and the need to write a big check to someone eventually but still.. this company is not moral, it is not looking out for anyone, it does not care about you or anyone else you know unless they hold large amounts of stock in the company. No reason to bow to them or defend them in much of anything. Sadly it took this absolutely terrible situation for a few eyes to be opened.

[FelPlague]

So Blizzard has always been this way? From the very beginning? And all their games were made by harassers and rapists? I feel disgusted and betrayed. Not only I can't play wow anymore, I can't even play their old games now.

Harrasers yes, rapists no, atleast that did not happen from what we can tell, hopefully...