Mike Morhaime Response to Blizzard Lawsuit

[Mojo03]

Sounds like gaslighting 101. She feels he enabled it so then he contacts her and pretends he was in the dark and she buys it.

Given that another victim said there hair was falling out because of being gaslight by higher ups I’m not gonna put much stock into “oh I talked to them and they mustn’t have known because they were so nice”.

Sounds more like you've already determined what you want the truth to be and decided to ignore everything that conflicts with it.

Seems more like you're the one with the bias big guy.

[HansOlo]

Hey Mike - your old friends are a group of gropers - and you did allow that.

[Forogil]

I mean he clearly states that he failed them. Even if he knew or not, it was his job to know. Either he was a bad person or a bad president. Not good.

This response is better than others I’ve seen

I agree that it's far better, as it's hard to improve if you don't admit that you failed - although it's not guarantee (and I don't know how much he knew or what he did).

[Magical Mudcrab]

Sounds like gaslighting 101. She feels he enabled it so then he contacts her and pretends he was in the dark and she buys it.

Given that another victim said there hair was falling out because of being gaslight by higher ups I’m not gonna put much stock into “oh I talked to them and they mustn’t have known because they were so nice”.

You've constructed a situation where Mike cannot make public comment without it being fake, anyone putting forward a plausible reason how he could have been kept out of discussions has a bias in favor of Mike (as you accused @Mojo03 of), and any instance where a victim states that they believe Mike must be a victim of gaslighting because people who weren't Mike gaslit people. Mike is damned if he's guilty and damned if he's not so far as you are concerned.

[Kathranis]

Ya, I mean that's what I was thinking. He literally could very easily just not of seen it. It was a fucking CC...

Sounds like it was her supervisor, not Mike...

Not sure how her responding that on his tweet equates to undeniable proof he's lying, but I'm also not surprised people on her think it is.

Yeah, it seems like upper management may have kept him out of the loop. Cher was pretty high up herself, being a leader on the software end, so it's unlikely that it was a "low level chump" that intercepted her message, but, yeah.

Still not a great look that this was going on under his nose, involving people high up in leadership, many of whom he likely considered close friends, given how closely they worked on various projects.

[WaltherLeopold]

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.

I mean statistically just about everything from the car you drive or games you play have had the influence of pedophiles, rapists and other horrible people. It's not like it's just Blizzard that has a shitty workplace environment, but predators are taught early to fit in.

[Kathranis]

Mike is damned if he's guilty and damned if he's not so far as you are concerned.

At best he's guilty of not knowing what was going on in his own company, so, yeah, this is pretty much a damned if he did or damned if he didn't situation. I know at that level there gets to be abstraction of the day-to-day workings, but these are senior leads and VPs he was working closely with for years, even before WoW was the juggernaut it eventually became.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

You've constructed a situation where Mike cannot make public comment without it being fake, anyone putting forward a plausible reason how he could have been kept out of discussions has a bias in favor of Mike (as you accused @Mojo03 of), and any instance where a victim states that they believe Mike must be a victim of gaslighting because people who weren't Mike gaslit people. Mike is damned if he's guilty and damned if he's not so far as you are concerned.

Sure he could make a public statement without it being fake just not one where he acts unaware.

Rather he heard about it and didn’t take it seriously or heard about it and actively covered it up the chances he was unaware are so astronomically low as to be dismissed as an impossibly.

Because there is no plausible reason how he could have been kept out of the loop. We’d have to believe not only did he never hear about HR complaints, not only did he never hear and Rumours or gossip, not only did some one kill there self on a business trip and he never looked into it, not only did his friends not share any thing with him, not only did no one ever come to him in person, but also that he left the same year the investigations started and never heard of a peep of any of it.

If you believe it’s likely all of those could have fallen into place then you should go buy some lottery tickets or look up into the sky to name a new comet.

[Magical Mudcrab]

At best he's guilty of not knowing what was going on in his own company, so, yeah, this is pretty much a damned if he did or damned if he didn't situation. I know at that level there gets to be abstraction of the day-to-day workings, but these are senior leads and VPs he was working closely with for years, even before WoW was the juggernaut it eventually became.

When I say guilt I mean as a cognizant contributor to the situation. In my eyes even if we look through the most charitable view, it screams incompetence, but incompetence isn't malice and malice cuts to the core of what people are asserting. If Mike is intentionally gaslighting people or knowingly defended people with the intent of protecting his friends, those are explicitly malicious actions. Incompetence can be trained away with experience and mentorship, which I'm sure Mike has gained over the years, but malice isn't something that simply goes away.

[DesoPL]

Mike should be sued as well, because he knew this was happening and did nothing. So he is as well responsible for that.

[Delaccountab]

I worked in the gaming industry and I am quite sure I will not going back. It was smaller level than a Blizz one, but the toxicity is rampant everywhere.

Don't get so high up with devs being evil now. You, the gamerbase has as much toxicity and harm as them. I knew a girl who was driven to suicide by another guy's action. We even have to hide our gender just to not get harassed, insulted, threatened with harm or rape, followed irl, and all those shit. Not only eggplant pics, but I got selfharm pics and such, just because I helped someone out in a quest and he got to know from a guildie that I'm a woman and he got obsessed. Could go on multiple experiences over the years.

Regardless the immense amount of poison both layers, we are here for the dev situation atm. I had guys not doing what I asked them as a higher up, bc my gender, harassment, accusing being emotional when I called them out on their bullcrap. Rape jokes, subtle threats, touching, insults, everything.

But here's the thing. A lot of times these harrassers:

1. They will say they didn't do anything, bc in their eyes their rape jokes, touching, hugging woman (only the ones they are attracted to though...), asking more than one times for a date, getting around to talk to them, ignoring their discomfort, all of this and more is nothing to them. So they will tell their friends and family, that they were fired for nothing, and sjws, cancel culture, me too. Bring up the trendy words what ruined your career, never you.

2. They will act normal and friendly with other guys or higher ups. They will never know how scummy is he, and if they are friends and "Jeff is always nice to me, bros before...", you will never get the support, no one will believe you. Just read the comments about women coming forward in a harassment case. The names they are called, they get threats, etc. False accusations are pulled up although it's so little in percentage, especially would be little if every single case would have been reported. Yes it's bad but good gods, really have to mention and trying to dismiss every case? Do you sleep better if you dismiss everything? Nevermind, tangent. The thing is that, yes a lot of others are oblivious to this. Morhaime got one letter about it, as a boss, I'm not sure how many he reads. My company had an assistant to the boss who did weeding out in the mails, but a lot of mails got ignored too.

The harassers hide their shit well, and good actors. It's not just Blizzard, the entire industry is this shit. Oh girls don't go to stem and "man" jobs? My gods, what do you think why is that? I got denied of joining a chess club as a kid, bc "boys would be distracted", if I failed at math it was because I'm a girl, I excelled at physics, a guy must have been tutoring me, pats on the shoulder, hid my gaming hobby, I hid everything what could be taken feminine online, just to have peace.

Do freaking better BOTH sides. You, the gamerbase, ignore everything and we need to suck it up, block them, oh you get harassment too? Haha, CoD lobby amirite. Man, you have no idea how harsher girls get, irl and online. Get a grip. I block them, they will come back with new accounts. They are not shunned or punished, not excluded, they always find groups to do this with. Report systems are horsepoop, no harsh punishment. I see the comments over girls being harassed, like we are fragile and too sensitive. Overreacting. It's dismissed everywhere.

So get down from your high horse. You don't do better either. There's no industry where you don't find this, unless it's conventionally "feminine" job.

Bleed out the bad blood, there are good people with them too, with genuinely no clue about it. Not an excuse, but this is now an opportunity to bleed them out and start anew.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Sounds more like you've already determined what you want the truth to be and decided to ignore everything that conflicts with it.

Seems more like you're the one with the bias big guy.

I won’t lie and say I don’t I have the bias of probability and the numbers don’t at all point to him being in the dark, sure it’s possible but the chances of it being the case are so unlikely as to be discarded as there are so many veritable’S that would have to fall into place as to be functionally impossible.

[Mojo03]

Yeah, it seems like upper management may have kept him out of the loop. Cher was pretty high up herself, being a leader on the software end, so it's unlikely that it was a "low level chump" that intercepted her message, but, yeah.

Still not a great look that this was going on under his nose, involving people high up in leadership, many of whom he likely considered close friends, given how closely they worked on various projects.

For sure, it's 100% not a great look.

In fairness though, I buy it being likely they were hiding the harassment stuff from him, if it's true. They were either doing it, hiding it for a friend, or not wanting him to know it was happening on their watch.

The equal pay and promotion stuff, if true, I find far less likely he was in the dark about.

[Makabreska]

Well, dude is about to start new game studios, so ofc he tries to do a panic evasion before he gets specifically targetted by allegations. Guess that's it when it comes to Good Mikey, who left the Blizz run by Evul Corpos to start his own project "for the gamers".

[ClassicPeon]

I worked in the gaming industry and I am quite sure I will not going back. It was smaller level than a Blizz one, but the toxicity is rampant everywhere.

Don't get so high up with devs being evil now. You, the gamerbase has as much toxicity and harm as them. I knew a girl who was driven to suicide by another guy's action. We even have to hide our gender just to not get harassed, insulted, threatened with harm or rape, followed irl, and all those shit. Not only eggplant pics, but I got selfharm pics and such, just because I helped someone out in a quest and he got to know from a guildie that I'm a woman and he got obsessed. Could go on multiple experiences over the years.

Regardless the immense amount of poison both layers, we are here for the dev situation atm. I had guys not doing what I asked them as a higher up, bc my gender, harassment, accusing being emotional when I called them out on their bullcrap. Rape jokes, subtle threats, touching, insults, everything.

But here's the thing. A lot of times these harrassers:

1. They will say they didn't do anything, bc in their eyes their rape jokes, touching, hugging woman (only the ones they are attracted to though...), asking more than one times for a date, getting around to talk to them, ignoring their discomfort, all of this and more is nothing to them. So they will tell their friends and family, that they were fired for nothing, and sjws, cancel culture, me too. Bring up the trendy words what ruined your career, never you.

2. They will act normal and friendly with other guys or higher ups. They will never know how scummy is he, and if they are friends and "Jeff is always nice to me, bros before...", you will never get the support, no one will believe you. Just read the comments about women coming forward in a harassment case. The names they are called, they get threats, etc. False accusations are pulled up although it's so little in percentage, especially would be little if every single case would have been reported. Yes it's bad but good gods, really have to mention and trying to dismiss every case? Do you sleep better if you dismiss everything? Nevermind, tangent. The thing is that, yes a lot of others are oblivious to this. Morhaime got one letter about it, as a boss, I'm not sure how many he reads. My company had an assistant to the boss who did weeding out in the mails, but a lot of mails got ignored too.

The harassers hide their shit well, and good actors. It's not just Blizzard, the entire industry is this shit. Oh girls don't go to stem and "man" jobs? My gods, what do you think why is that? I got denied of joining a chess club as a kid, bc "boys would be distracted", if I failed at math it was because I'm a girl, I excelled at physics, a guy must have been tutoring me, pats on the shoulder, hid my gaming hobby, I hid everything what could be taken feminine online, just to have peace.

Do freaking better BOTH sides. You, the gamerbase, ignore everything and we need to suck it up, block them, oh you get harassment too? Haha, CoD lobby amirite. Man, you have no idea how harsher girls get, irl and online. Get a grip. I block them, they will come back with new accounts. They are not shunned or punished, not excluded, they always find groups to do this with. Report systems are horsepoop, no harsh punishment. I see the comments over girls being harassed, like we are fragile and too sensitive. Overreacting. It's dismissed everywhere.

So get down from your high horse. You don't do better either. There's no industry where you don't find this, unless it's conventionally "feminine" job.

Bleed out the bad blood, there are good people with them too, with genuinely no clue about it. Not an excuse, but this is now an opportunity to bleed them out and start anew.

I'm all for doing this but i've seen the other side of the coin aswell - and its ugly aswell.

People being angry about not getting promotions they think they deserve will go to great lengths.

IF there is a problem at Blizzard atm, it needs to get sorted out. But the problem isnt solved by hiring a bunch of SJW's and firing all the "dudes".

[RavenRoken]

"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's response is awful, at best. He talks about how he tried to make a better enviroment for all genders, and then he says "Not perfect". Seems to me like he did a small things here and there for women, but they were not impactful.

The last paragraph had me, who in the right mind, would go to him for support. Afraisabi was there for many years when Mike was CEO that can tell you many things about Mike.

[Kathranis]

He was 1000% aware of what was going on.

Yeah, it's just hard to imagine that all of the other team leads couldn't have known what was going on. These guys were working together literally making Battle.net, WC3, WoW, side-by-side. Bridenbecker in particular was there from 1995. They had to have been interacting on a damn near daily basis.

Morhaime seems to have moved into a purely producorial role by the time development on WoW was underway so I could understand how he might have become distanced from the rest of the guys over time.

And there may have also been different cliques. But then, Kaplan and Afrasiabi seem like they were really close, given the shared items dedicated to them. And Afrasiabi and Metzen worked closely together since they were basically the two guys in charge of the story. Damn near any story panel or interview at Blizzcon you can expect them to be sitting side by side.

[Makabreska]

For sure, it's 100% not a great look.

In fairness though, I buy it being likely they were hiding the harassment stuff from him, if it's true. They were either doing it, hiding it for a friend, or not wanting him to know it was happening on their watch.

The equal pay and promotion stuff, if true, I find far less likely he was in the dark about.

Ye, sure. One of the top guys that run the company since the beginning and mysteriously left it with some other old guard by the time investigation started didn't know nothing. Are we also supposed to believe Ubi CEO was kept in the dark?

[Mojo03]

Ye, sure. One of the top guys that run the company since the start and mysteriously left it with some other old guard by the time investigation started didn't know nothing. Are we also supposed to believe Ubi CEO was kept in the dark?

Another way to see it is Mike Morhaime leaves and an investigation gets started into the work climate at Blizzard shortly after.

What makes you so sure he's not the one that tipped them off?

[Kevyne-Shandris]

Like I've always said going back to even 2010: Leadership comes top/down.

Mike Morhaime KNEW the EQ players from the "Fires of Heaven" guild were AHoles.

ALL of the management who continued to ignore or look the other way are complicit in breeding the culture that resulted in a Blizzard developer committing suicide over EXTREME sexual harassment BY Blizzard developers.

Company profits were more important than the life of a woman developer who had a leaked VAGINA photo passed around at an Blizzard "OUTTING".

That was all on Mike Morhaime's watch he was the CEO of Blizzard Entertainment.

The buck stops at the executive's desk.

The SWATting incident years ago that killed a totally innocent man was caused by a lost bet in Activision-Blizzard's "Call of Duty" game.

The suicide that was caused by a leaked photo of a Blizzard dev's vagina caused the death of her (she couldn't work in any business after that).

Forget a lawsuit. Any manager/supervisor/executive involved with that incident needs to face prison time, just like that guy who made the phone call to SWAT that innocent man to death is serving now.

Corporations don't learn from lawsuits. They learn by serving prison time.

There's not dollar value on human life anyway.