Originally Posted by
Jamais
I've read many of the tweets from this list, and the other tweets from the posters on this subject. Many of the posts mentioned that overall they were content working at Blizzard, and in particular to read that from an ex developer who, as evident from her profile, is something many posters on MMO would angrily call ''super woke''. She worked there for 10+ years.
I was never a Blizzard fan, I was always a WoW fan, and never quite considered the 'Old Blizzard' as a construct. Granted, I never really gave it much thought, but I always separated the developers and community managers (back in the day, even game masters) as the true working class in the company. From the part of the lawsuit about frat boy culture and cubicle visits, I can't get the right picture on how much of this was happening among the workers who I've described above as a true working class. IMHO, I think the brunt of this was occurring in the ''upper echelons'', firstly because of the timeframe, the general attitude and awareness before metoo and situations like those and also, because harassment in big companies almost always comes from top to below, no matter it's nature.
I was always disgusted about the upper management, across all companies. But I sympathized with the 'so called 'lower workers'', who actually do the majority of the intended work. The same situation is with Blizzard and it's developers. I think the majority is good people, tho I do suspect there has been inappropriate behavior there as well. I work for a public, city owned company, and the uppers are notoriously infamous for their greed, corruption, nepotism and lack of actual skills for the job they were heavily paid for. But majority of my coworkers and me, we were on the ''front line'' for the citizens, trying to do our best job, helping and advising people. And we were the ones who took most of the hate and resentment for the actions of our superiors. In reality, we were just ''regular'' citizens, trying to earn for a living and being honest. We have a big chain of supermarkets, who's boss was the richest man in the country, but corrupted as well, he is now in exile to avoid prosecution. The amount of time I've seen people yelling and being rude to cashiers (almost 100% woman) was staggering - as if the action of that man were in any way their fault, those cashiers live on a small salary and often fall of their feet from the overwork and the amount of stuff they need to do other then just keeping till check.
My point is, while I am contemplating leaving WoW for time being, part of me feels like ''punishing'' them will just go on the backs of the ''average worker'' in Blizzard, as is the case in my, and I suspect many more countries when boycotts are included. Since I still like the game, a part of me also thinks I am giving myself excuses to keep playing. But too many companies have issues like this, and I am not seeing Amazon taking a dip in their business.
So what do you think would be the best course of action?