Mike Morhaime Response to Blizzard Lawsuit

[Elim Garak]

I tried very hard to create an environment that was safe and welcoming for people of all genders and backgrounds.

Oh, the irony. He basically admitted to creating this environment where the pluralism of backgrounds clashed real hard. Diversity is eating itself up.

[Kathranis]

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?

The timeline indicates that the investigation has been going on for over two years and Morhaime was still with Blizzard until April 2019 as an advisor.

And he claims in this very statement that he didn't know this was going on, so how could he have tipped them off about it? If he tipped them off about it, why not say so?

[Makabreska]

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?

Because we already have workers/ex-workers challenging his Tweet. And please, he tips officials off and then bails, instead of cooperating and trying to clean company he created?

[BossManRoth]

This is just Mike throwing Blizz under the bus in an attempt to avoid the wokescold twitter mob. What he doesn't know is that by acknowledging their existence you summon them. People need to tell wokescolds to piss off and they will.

[Magical Mudcrab]

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.

** EDIT **

At the current point in the thread the following was just posted from Lore, which outright states that Morhaime knew.

I've refrained from giving my own comments on the situation at Actiblizz because frankly, there are more important people you should be listening to right now.

But that statement from a certain former leader was 100% bullshit and I'm furious about it. He knew. He did nothing.

- Source

I'm leaving what was below (albeit stricken out to show that is no longer my belief) because I believe it's important to own your past positions.

** END **

You seem to think that I would be shocked if it came to light that Morhaime knew about these issues. It would not, we've seen corruption throughout their hierarchy. Though it makes sense that a CEO, which in case you weren't aware is fairly abstracted from the day-to-day operations of a business, would not know about low-level problems if members of staff that worked with him for 20+ years were intentionally working to protect their friends, almost like what we saw with Alex Afrasiabi being protected by intimidating lower level staff. Frankly, that's the point of frat boy tech culture, to normalize behaviors so they aren't seen as a problem and cast people who see them as a problem as being the problem.

[tikcol]

Damned if he did damned if he didn't situation.

To be honest I think he should have done it but to me it comes across as more virtue signalling marketing bullshit just as all the stuff Blizzard has been doing lately.

I wonder if he'll be called to testify on any capacity

[HansOlo]

The king is naked situation.

[Mojo03]

The timeline indicates that the investigation has been going on for over two years and Morhaime was still with Blizzard until April 2019 as an advisor.

And he claims in this very statement that he didn't know this was going on, so how could he have tipped them off about it? If he tipped them off about it, why not say so?

I obviously have no idea if it happened or not, but the timing does seem to fit.

April 2019 was 27 months ago, which would mean over two years ago... meaning it's accurate to say that.

It's also not impossible he could still been working there when it was first getting started. It was announced he was leaving like 6 months earlier.

I'm not putting all my cards into this theory, but I'm also not putting none of them into it.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

This is just Mike throwing Blizz under the bus in an attempt to avoid the wokescold twitter mob. What he doesn't know is that by acknowledging their existence you summon them. People need to tell wokescolds to piss off and they will.

Oh, the toxicity existed BEFORE social media ever existed.

Don't blame social media on this issue this time ... it didn't exist when "Fires of Heaven" that the "creative" team of Alex "Furor Planedefiler" Afrasiabi and Rob Pardo and Jeff Chilton and the rest ALL came from bringing that TOXIC culture with them.

Mark Kern advocated for Gamergate too, with the Hentai Twitter banner (who now is trying to "save face" too).

So many Blizzard devs ignored that toxicity, because the toxicity was in the boardrooms and dev offices.

A Blizzard woman developer is dead now BY that CORPORATE extreme sexual harassment.

That has nothing to do with "wokescold". That has everything to do with ignoring a serious HR disaster on their hands that killed an employee.

ADDED: And like the Susan Fowler incident with Uber years ago with the ex-Google executive that sexually harassed women and quietly "let go", the same PATTERN of behavior Blizzard Entertainment did with Afrasiabi. His office was nicknamed after Bill Cosby. THAT was known by Mike and Crew.

Video gaming can't exist like this as it KILLS people. Both the SWATting death and game developer now are directly involved with Activision-Blizzard due to harboring that toxicity.

[Voto]

All of these PR statements are cute and all, but a fish rots from the head down, and there ain't a thing words can do to change that fact.

[Nize]

A lot of the employees that came out about this are defending Mike actually (including the woman that people are linking tweets about). Had it not been for that, I would have questioned it, but honestly, he might have been in the dark after all. Blizzard is pretty fucking big, so a lot of this could definitely be kept from the higher ups, much less the highest of them. It's probably why J Allen Brack, in particular, is being targeted the most here. Prior to moving up, he was the main man overseeing WoW, thus the most hands-on with the team there. He was noted as the one that dealt with Alex, in particular.

[Mojo03]

A Blizzard woman developer is dead now BY that CORPORATE extreme sexual harassment.

Actually this has been pretty much been proven to be a lie by the Bloomberg article.

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post53297144

In the court documents it says she was with her supervisor, whom she was also in a relationship with, on a company trip and took her life because of him (doesn't say why).

The photo part was also greatly exaggerated and lied about. It was one photo, one person thinks "may" have gotten passed around at a party.

Just read the post.

[DesoPL]

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.

Well said actually, because i think that half of problems what are now, is also gamers fault as well.

[XDurionX]

He's a liar, everyone can see that. Very poor response, sometimes it's better to just shut the fuck up.

[Lady Atia]

Oh, the toxicity existed BEFORE social media ever existed.

Don't blame social media on this issue this time ... it didn't exist when "Fires of Heaven" that the "creative" team of Alex "Furor Planedefiler" Afrasiabi and Rob Pardo and Jeff Chilton and the rest ALL came from bringing that TOXIC culture with them.

Mark Kern advocated for Gamergate too, with the Hentai Twitter banner (who now is trying to "save face" too).

So many Blizzard devs ignored that toxicity, because the toxicity was in the boardrooms and dev offices.

A Blizzard woman developer is dead now BY that CORPORATE extreme sexual harassment.

That has nothing to do with "wokescold". That has everything to do with ignoring a serious HR disaster on their hands that killed an employee.

ADDED: And like the Susan Fowler incident with Uber years ago with the ex-Google executive that sexually harassed women and quietly "let go", the same PATTERN of behavior Blizzard Entertainment did with Afrasiabi. His office was nicknamed after Bill Cosby. THAT was known by Mike and Crew.

Video gaming can't exist like this as it KILLS people. Both the SWATting death and game developer now are directly involved with Activision-Blizzard due to harboring that toxicity.

What swating death? Please share your sources before stating stuff that prolly never happened?

[RavenRoken]

Anyone here unsubbed, because of this??

[EliWallach]

The guy's worth half a billion dollars. Make it more than "just words" to the tune of say 100 million to women's groups and then we'll talk.

[MoanaLisa]

Not quite sure what you guys are expecting to hear.

He could talk about how pay equity and advancement opportunities for women ended up the way they are. I'm pretty sure that's something that he was a part of. The harassment stuff is all very spectacular but over the long run the questions about pay, promotions, and retaliation are a deeper part of the corporate culture.

[Vorkreist]

I have chosen to believe this statement overall, and hope that he means it.
.

He must have heard about them for absolute sure but it is possible he wasn't that involved. It seems other lower positions were handling and covering up the complaints like Brack.

[MoanaLisa]

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.

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.