Mike Ybarra - Blizzard Trust and Culture Efforts Update

[Lumy]

Mike Ybarra - Blizzard Trust and Culture Efforts Update

I’m humbled to be part of Blizzard Entertainment–the rich history, the incredible talent, the best player communities, and of course, the amazing games we’re so fortunate to create. I’ve been leading Blizzard for a couple of months now, and in addition to the exciting news this week, I want to share some initial thoughts as we strive to put our team and players at the forefront of everything we do.

2021 was challenging for all of us. As individuals, we care about treating everyone around us with respect and dignity. As professionals, we care deeply about our crafts, and we want to work in the most supportive and safe environment possible.

Our top priority—now and into the future—is the work we are doing to rebuild your trust in Blizzard.

Watching Blizzard work as creatively and diligently as we have throughout this challenging time (on top of an ongoing pandemic) has been inspiring. Navigating these challenges, evolving our development processes, and being introspective and looking at how we can improve our culture shows incredible strength and commitment to one another, our work, and to the player communities.

I also was encouraged in reading forums, social posts, and emails from people within and outside of Blizzard, standing up for what is right and lending us your guidance. I want you all to know we are listening, and we are committed to change. As a first step toward improving communication with the community, I wanted to highlight some of the initial actions we are taking to improve our culture:

• We’re measuring our executive and management teams directly against culture improvement. This means their (and my own) success and compensation will directly depend on our overall success in creating a safe, inclusive, and creative work environment at Blizzard.
  
• We’re dedicating more full-time roles and resources to improving our culture. All too often, this important effort falls to employee resource groups, filled with people who already have full-time jobs. A few of the leadership positions we’ve established for this new team include:
  
  • a Culture leader who will help us maintain the best aspects of what we have today, and change and evolve where needed to ensure everyone brings their best self to Blizzard
    
  • a new organizational leader for Human Resources who will build trust, empower our teams, and help foster a safe, positive work environment for everyone
    
  • a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) leader solely focused on our progress across multiple efforts in this area
    
  We are committed to staffing these teams as a priority.
  
• We tripled the size of our compliance and investigation teams and have articulated clear accountability for unacceptable behavior. This applies to all employees at Blizzard, including leadership and management.
  
• We have shared representation data internally with our teams and have set goals around improvement across thesemetrics.
  
• We’ve put in place an upward feedback program so that employees have confidence in evaluating management, and we will use this to measure the quality and effectiveness of our managers.

These actions are just the beginning of the work that lies ahead for Blizzard. I’m motivated and excited to work directly on building the best environment for our teams, to allow them to bring their visions to life.

We also know we need to deliver content to our players on a more regular basis and innovate both in and beyond our existing games. We have some exciting things to announce, and I’ll be sharing more next week.

I want to thank our communities and our incredible teams for your dedication and guidance, which will always be our north star.

Here’s to an incredible 2022 and beyond.

- Mike "Qwik" Ybarra

[exsanguinate]

Liar, liar, liar. He somehow proved unworthy for his position.

[Bigcountry11782]

My concern is the games. Yes i want them to have a safe work space but my concern is the games. Why was none of this focused on Making better games. If you want our trust back that is where you earn it. not by lecturing us about equality and diversity when Blizzard is the one that was under investigation for years lol How about for once listen to us the people that player your games and take some advice for once. The fact that people are bailing on Blizzard games isn't just the horrible things that have been going on in that company that was just the tipping point. This just proves to me though that nothing is going to change at blizzard from a creative design.

[Asrialol]

Liar, liar, liar. He somehow proved unworthy for his position.

Where did he lie?

[Tiev]

You don't just have to deliver on a more regular basis, you have to deliver `better` content. Shadowlands had so much promise and failed so hard to deliver on that promise.

[Julmara]

as long as abusers and enablers like bobby kotick arent removed there is no real progress
also didnt the new co leader leave cause she was underpaid in comparison to mike even so they where literary covering the same spot ?

[Mardux]

Where did he lie?

Anywhere he said anything Ex didn't like.

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as long as abusers and enablers like bobby kotick arent removed there is no real progress
also didnt the new co leader leave cause she was underpaid in comparison to mike even so they where literary covering the same spot ?

Why would you expect them to be removed when the head people at Microsoft are just as bad?

And Oneal quit because she didn't sign a new contract for a pay increase that reflected the new "position" and Blizzard didn't breach the current contract with her to pay her more. She made sure to leave that bit of pertinent information out of her social media complaints though.

[xdunpealx]

Dont bitch when people start getting let go.

[netherflame]

The only thing about his post that I question, and be careful how you read into my statement, is this line.
"We have shared representation data internally with our teams and have set goals around improvement across these metrics."

For example I don't want the best gay African-American trans game developer, I want the best game developer whether they are Caucasian, African-American, Korean, Portuguese, Chillian, Straight, Gay, or Trans.

That whole diversity initiative is a slippary slope but it is what it is, take what you want from my statement I just want good developers because good developers will do good work.

[Mardux]

The only thing about his post that I question, and be careful how you read into my statement, is this line.
"We have shared representation data internally with our teams and have set goals around improvement across these metrics."

For example I don't want the best gay African-American trans game developer, I want the best game developer whether they are Caucasian, African-American, Korean, Portuguese, Chillian, Straight, Gay, or Trans.

That whole diversity initiative is a slippary slope but it is what it is, take what you want from my statement I just want good developers because good developers will do good work.

That's not how workplace diversity works. If the best in the field happen to be of varying protected classes, cool. If the best aren't, your choices are don't have the best or face discrimination suits.

[Kralljin]

The title says "PUTTING OUR TEAMS AND PLAYERS AT THE FOREFRONT OF EVERYTHING WE DO", yet nothing in there suggests to provide anything for the players aside from lofty promises about delivering more content - not like i heard that one before.

You wanna win back my trust?
Okay, there you go: Fix Warcraft 3: Reforged

Let's not forget that you had Blizzard spokesperson literally admit that they should've delayed the game further and taken the hit of having to refund pre orders, but they didn't want to do that, so they game was shat out in this terrible state.

But hey, i'm surprised that he passed on saying "actions speak louder than words".

[ZZhan]

What a bunch of woke bs "safe, inclusive, and creative work environment at Blizzard." how i hate this phrase like thats the important stuff when looking for employees?, man, is so easy to just look how competent and professional someone is without taking into account the race, their gender or sex or w8ever or even his ideology, just focus ond his competence, we wan competence, not ppl in potitions of power just to fill the spots required for "diversity", developers and lore writers that KNOW the playerbase and KNOW they are making content for THE PLAYERS, not for them or their friends, a game that his focus should be on good content without tons of GREEDY timegating (im ok with timegating like the legendaries in cata or pandaria), or that "borrowed power" that make some ppl insta unsub when it gets boring to grind (delete covenant powers and conduits pls).

But before all of that, a big apology, some post saying "oh dear playerbase we, as blizzard, are sorry we've been blinded by some upper ppl and their ambitions and greed for your money, making some of the most talented workers ignore all of your feedback and good ideas for the game, but we will fix that, and fire all the ppl that screw you".

Is ez to reach to the player base when the ppl in power decides to not just hear their toughts but the opinions of the ppl USING YOUR PRODUCT FOR YEARS!!!!!!!

Just my thoughts....

[kranur]

Same old talk talk talk, nothing being actually done. Well my bad, there is something ... turning women to fruit and cats in the cash store, problems solved.

[Jester Joe]

as long as abusers and enablers like bobby kotick arent removed there is no real progress
also didnt the new co leader leave cause she was underpaid in comparison to mike even so they where literary covering the same spot ?

She also said that Mike was one of her supporters in pushing for equal pay for both of them. So he's at least shown to care to that degree.

[Every Pwny]

Honestly don't care about PR emails, if you are going to announce something make it about this game, this has nothing to do with the players or community, this is just something that probably was meant to be a company wide email to employees.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

This post just further adds to me not returning anytime soon.

[Daedius]

Useless mouthpiece "leader" roles to be paid a lot to be so... Good luck attracting me back with that nonsense.

[Alanar]

The only thing about his post that I question, and be careful how you read into my statement, is this line.
"We have shared representation data internally with our teams and have set goals around improvement across these metrics."

For example I don't want the best gay African-American trans game developer, I want the best game developer whether they are Caucasian, African-American, Korean, Portuguese, Chillian, Straight, Gay, or Trans.

That whole diversity initiative is a slippary slope but it is what it is, take what you want from my statement I just want good developers because good developers will do good work.

This is what is going on in the world in alot of workfields, it's bad.

Please set aside the tunnelvision diversity crap and actually look at what qualities you need from some one and the goal is like you said the best of the best.

[vincink]

That's not how workplace diversity works. If the best in the field happen to be of varying protected classes, cool. If the best aren't, your choices are don't have the best or face discrimination suits.

I wish you were right. Unfortunately, that is not how it works. Quite to the contrary. Workplace diversity looks like this:

- If you recommend a person for hire, you get $2500 kickback. If that person is a "diversity" hire, you get a $8500 kickback. The kickback scales with the position.
- If you have a corporate board and you're headquartered in California, you must have a certain percentage of diversity representation on your board. Or you face fines. Other cities and states are following suit.
- Complete diversity training, or face a pay cut. Or termination.
- Use inclusive language. Or face a pay cut or termination if you don't.
- Use prefered pronouns. Or face a pay cut or termination if you don't.

How do I know this? Because I work at a large, global tech company where these very policies are in effect. I would happily take a job at place that holds the policies you describe as workplace diversity. In a heartbeat.

[Polybius]

Anywhere he said anything Ex didn't like.

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Why would you expect them to be removed when the head people at Microsoft are just as bad?

And Oneal quit because she didn't sign a new contract for a pay increase that reflected the new "position" and Blizzard didn't breach the current contract with her to pay her more. She made sure to leave that bit of pertinent information out of her social media complaints though.

Her pay increase came too late, and she was put in that role without sincerity at a time when the cat was out of the bag. But you made sure to leave that bit out.