A Letter From CEO Bobby Kotick to All Employees

[Nimin]

It's not discrimination to make sure minorities are getting hired unless you think somehow straight white males haven't had it easier than others in North America and Europe than basically everyone else in the past 200 years. If you think this is the case then go read a history book and stop posting until you've done so and taken proper exams.

Aaahh, and there we have it: "The remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination".
I see what kind of.... books you've been reading here.

Sorry, no.
Racial discrimination is never okay, I don't care what sort of holy reasoning about "empowering minorities" you give yourself to justify racist practices against the colors you don't like.
The guy of your example deserved a fair shot at getting hired equal to anybody else, not a tie-breaker based on skincolor. That's heinously wrong.

[Sluvs]

Not even close. Maybe the Bioware desaster of them failing repeatably with Anthem or Bethesda's FO76, at least in terms of magnitude, but neither were about a subject as hotly debated as A-B right now. Riot and Ubisoft managed to keep a surprisingly low profile about their misdeeds, but they also didn't have the state sue them with alot of detail. Not to mention some of the stuff here was supposedly not even the WoW team, the suicide some say was in one of the activision studios. So these are sprinkled throughout the company.

I thought so. The sheer size and repersussion that this is having is immense.

[Cosmic Janitor]

IKR? but the company losing around 10% in stock price in one afternoon might have something to do with that

Which also only happened after employees escalated all this to the next level and stopped working after one 1 week of failed statement after failed statment. I'm actually surprised that the market only started to react after the bottom line started to be affected, but also kinda shocked that systemic issues and a lawsuit didn't bother them in their ivory towers made of the carcasses of soulless lawyers...

[Yarathir]

Only if you're racist enough to assume that only white males can be qualified as developers, while anyone else is an obviously unqualified "diversity hire".

Well, congrats on that position. Not sure it's great one to champion.

Nice thought-terminating cliché.

[Darth Vowrawn]

Only if you're racist enough to assume that only white males can be qualified as developers, while anyone else is an obviously unqualified "diversity hire".

How is that line of thought any different from you only thinking of "POCs" as poor little victims that can only succeed if you help them? I was unaware the "white man's burden" was back in style, are trophy hunting safaris back in style yet? I need a new rhino head for my wall.

[Kathranis]

Anyway...

Bobby Kotick can jump off a cliff, but this statement is about the best I could hope for, given the circumstances.

I don't for one minute believe he cares about anything but the bottom line, but he laid out the correct strategy, I think. In particular the bit about personnel changes is good news.

Assuming they follow through on the promises and don't backslide, that is.

[Souflikar]

"In-game Changes. We have heard the input from employee and player communities that some of our in-game content is inappropriate. We are removing that content."
So...they are going to heavily censor all women in the game and make them wear burqas, while the men can still be free and mostly nude at all times?

I think he may be talking about removing all references to Alex A. as soon as possible

[Shinagami091]

Wait so Blizzard is paying it’s employees to participate in the walk out? So it’s being sanctioned by the company the ? Smells more like a publicity stunt than an actual walk out meant to spark change within the company

[NoiseTank13]

Taking bets on whether Bobby even knows what the peons are complaining about.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

He is just pretending. In reality he doesnt give a single brownie.

He definitely cares, about the money. ATVI stock nearly a 7% hit over this today, which goes to show that money is the only way to get Kotick to pretend to give a shit about anything.

[FelPlague]

I have never seen such shitstorm in a videogame company. Was there any tof this magnitude?

Maybe Riot?

Riot, ubisoft, and guess what ,both of them got outted years later as having done bassicly nothing about their problems, and yet somehow that is not even news to this aparently.

[Souflikar]

Not a fan of any CEO but from every statement thus far, this seems more on point. This should have happened days ago and all other managers, designers, etc should have kept their mouths shut instead of fanning the flames and insulting customers and their intelligence

[Sluvs]

How is that line of thought any different from you only thinking of "POCs" as poor little victims that can only succeed if you help them? I was unaware the "white man's burden" was back in style, are trophy hunting safaris back in style yet? I need a new rhino head for my wall.

I don't get involved any longer in discussions about race, mainly because I learned it to be pointless, no one is going to change anyone's mind, nothing will change and I am pretty sure that is against forum rules. It is pretty clear that the previous poster meant to say that the person in said example would be qualified.

[Mentaldemise]

Who the fuck cares about diversity hires and [race] [sexuality] [gender] the problem is that a shit load of people in your company were sexual predators, I'm sure when it all comes out we'll find that the "diverse" crowd were doing it aswell, the problem is your company is filled with predators of all shapes and sizes, how does just randomly hiring more black people or gay people remedy that? why the fuck are companies so quick to jump to the "WE'LL HIRE BLACK PEOPLE THAT'LL FIX IT" when something comes up, it's actually insulting as fuck.

[Sluvs]

Riot, ubisoft, and guess what ,both of them got outted years later as having done bassicly nothing about their problems, and yet somehow that is not even news to this aparently.

Didn't ubisoft got some news about this last week too?

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Who the fuck cares about diversity hires and [race] [sexuality] [gender] the problem is that a shit load of people in your company were sexual predators, I'm sure when it all comes out we'll find that the "diverse" crowd were doing it aswell, the problem is your company is filled with predators of all shapes and sizes, how does just randomly hiring more black people or gay people remedy that? why the fuck are companies so quick to jump to the "WE'LL HIRE BLACK PEOPLE THAT'LL FIX IT" when something comes up, it's actually insulting as fuck.

To be fair, the lawsuits also talks about unequal treatment to women and people of different ethinicities aswell.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Riot, ubisoft, and guess what ,both of them got outted years later as having done bassicly nothing about their problems, and yet somehow that is not even news to this aparently.

Again, this only continues to be in the news because Blizzard keeps putting their foot in their mouth, breeding hostility towards Blizzard and constantly giving people something to talk about. Ubisoft and Riot had an incident and then didn't have anymore, so people forgot about them.

[Mentaldemise]

Didn't ubisoft got some news about this last week too?

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To be fair, the lawsuits also talks about unequal treatment to women and people of different ethinicities aswell.

That's what I mean, it seems like everyone was abused in the company, how exactly does hiring more [race] [gender] magically fix that, moreso pissed off at that's what companies try to do as a magic wand for problems.

[SinR]

Well its begun

https://www.wowhead.com/news/referen...arcraft-323588

[whywhatwhowhenhow]

Personnel Changes. We are immediately evaluating managers and leaders across the Company. Anyone found to have impeded the integrity of our processes for evaluating claims and imposing appropriate consequences will be terminated.

What, like actually terminated? or just their jobs/contracts terminated?

Scary stuff lol!

I can just see bobby dressed as the terminator.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Well its begun

https://www.wowhead.com/news/referen...arcraft-323588

Very sad.