Mike Morhaime Response to Blizzard Lawsuit

[DingDongKing]

And the vultures emerges in throves.

Its like people have been waiting dormantly for something like this for ages

What the fuck are you on about? I've always thought highly of Metzen, but I'm also aware that lasting cultural change in an organisation can be really tricky. I'm not asking for Metzen's head on a pike. Far from it. I'm hoping he'll be aware of how important it is to take workplace culture seriously. That's about it. The only people who deserve 'comeuppance' are the ones who did the harassing and/or tried to slide it under the rug.

The people who didn't know better just ought to learn from their mistakes. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Tumile]

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

And after the way the "good guys" have been treating the VICTIMS of these people on social media, I want nothing to do with them. Use your energy to spread positivity to the victims, don't waste it on the victimizers. It will do nothing except give them ammunition in court to explain why THEY are suddenly the victim. And for the love of god, if you can't say anything polite or kind to the people who work at/with blizzard, but are VERY OBVIOUSLY not part of this culture, keep your mouth shut.

Do not start replying to me with hate comment's, ill just report and block you without reading it.

but how will you know its a hate comment if you don't read it? :thinking:

[ClassicPeon]

What the fuck are you on about? I've always thought highly of Metzen, but I'm also aware that lasting cultural change in an organisation can be really tricky. I'm not asking for Metzen's head on a pike. Far from it. I'm hoping he'll be aware of how important it is to take workplace culture seriously. That's about it. The only people who deserve 'comeuppance' are the ones who did the harassing and/or tried to slide it under the rug.

The people who didn't know better just ought to learn from their mistakes. Nothing more, nothing less.

I'm talking about this: "Metzen's probably culpable from a perspective of sheer inaction and ignorance"

[Tumile]

"real people and some women"

jesus christ

Great way to show the world that you are illiterate! talk about grasping at straws, KEKW, pathetic.

[DingDongKing]

I'm talking about this: "Metzen's probably culpable from a perspective of sheer inaction and ignorance"

Yeah, he himself has said he didn't act and was ignorant of what was going on. Sort yourself out.

Guilt and culpability doesn't need to involve actual wrongdoing but also just straight up not paying attention to a problem.

It's a personal sense of responsibility at that point, and he himself has expressed that quite clearly.

[ClassicPeon]

Yeah, he himself has said he didn't act and was ignorant of what was going on. Sort yourself out.

Guilt and culpability doesn't need to involve actual wrongdoing but also just straight up not paying attention to a problem.

It's a personal sense of responsibility at that point, and he himself has expressed that quite clearly.

"sort yourself out"

Metzen has always been a reflective guy and he has always been very open hearted even on social media platforms.

Its 100% impossible for you, from your pedistal, to judge how culpaple he is - fairly that is.v

I've continously tried reminding people that standing from where we are, with little to no prestented factual data but only emotional witness statements is not a solid foundation to judge someone on,

[DingDongKing]

"sort yourself out"

Metzen has always been a reflective guy and he has always been very open hearted even on social media platforms.

Its 100% impossible for you, from your pedistal, to judge how culpaple he is - fairly that is.v

I've continously tried reminding people that standing from where we are, with little to no prestented factual data but only emotional witness statements is not a solid foundation to judge someone on,

1. He himself has said he's culpable for not seeing the forest for the trees. He's owning it. I respect that.

2. You can make that claim as much as you want, but people aren't asking for 'judgment', they're asking to be treated well.

I'm not interested in a witch-hunt. For all I care, everyone 'guilty' whether in the court of public opinion or law, can go free. But the people who've been mistreated have to be given their dues. THAT is the most important thing. Vengeance isn't on the menu, the right treatment of people is.

[ClassicPeon]

1. He himself has said he's culpable for not seeing the forest for the trees. He's owning it. I respect that.

2. You can make that claim as much as you want, but people aren't asking for 'judgment', they're asking to be treated well.

I'm not interested in a witch-hunt. For all I care, everyone 'guilty' whether in the court of public opinion or law, can go free. But the people who've been mistreated have to be given their dues. THAT is the most important thing. Vengeance isn't on the menu, the right treatment of people is.

Yeah i am not berrating the people who are asking to be treated well mate. I am berrating all the people in this thread who are most certainly "´judging".

I fully expect there to have been things going on that are simply not ok and have to be dealt with. But gamers doing what gamers do and make being a twitter mob isnt helping anything.

See people raging and swearing off wow forever on the first day without a single schred of evidence is whats ticking me off. I am not from the US - so this whole guilty til proven innocent is rubbing me the wrong way

[DingDongKing]

Yeah i am not berrating the people who are asking to be treated well mate. I am berrating all the people in this thread who are most certainly "´judging".

I fully expect there to have been things going on that are simply not ok and have to be dealt with. But gamers doing what gamers do and make being a twitter mob isnt helping anything.

See people raging and swearing off wow forever on the first day without a single schred of evidence is whats ticking me off. I am not from the US - so this whole guilty til proven innocent is rubbing me the wrong way

Twitter is a shithole. I don't care about it. It actually rankles me that people who have a worthy message to share are doing it in long threads on Twitter. Start a blog or sub stack to share experiences, the valid ones obviously. Twitter/Insta etc is just a fucking dung heap.

[Mataleo]

"It feels like everything I thought I stood for has been washed away."

Good point even in general. It started after Legion, right? Being rich and sorry is not that bad tho.

[Disxx]

.....yea because segregation, in general, has worked very well in the past.... do you honestly think the issue would magickly be "fixed" if blizzard separated their workers based on sex? Do you honestly believe that this situation came about just because a bunch of people just got "hurt feelings"?

If the answer in your mind to either of those questions is yes... then you clearly haven't been paying attention.

It might have worked in 2004 but now it's way too late to even consider this. Management failed at stopping this at the beginning. And Blizzard is not the only one, pretty much every IT company management has the same problems. IT / Gaming consists of many so-called Weirdos but they are excellent in their field. Companies would let them go a long time ago, but it's very hard or almost impossible to find a replacement. I am working in IT for 10 years and have encountered few such people. Management is doing everything to contain them and not let them impact other departments, they even try to create only male departments and with people those people more or less respect, else that would end in disaster. They tend to be loners, sexists, racists... Same for Blizzard, the old team was great at making games, yet they were not fit for multi-cultural, gender, race company. Management should have looked better and made adjustments so these things didn't happen as they did now. Once I talked to HR about one such guy, why we are keeping him. As HR said me, we are ready to fire him right away, but we can't find a replacement. When a client is encountering a problem, other guys need more than a week to resolve that issue, he needs about an hour. Another problem is what Blizzard I see did wrong, they let them rise in ranks and have people work under him. If you give those people power, it very likely will cause problems. Same about parties, from my experience management, always should look to control usage of alcohol and overlook employees better so "Accidents" don't happen. It's hard and Blizzard failed at that. Currently, they can try to fix it. But it will be very hard. Even with game quality, sadly that old team was very good at keeping this game running, current team is trying but not as good as those guys. They didn't do their job to control their employees better.

[Traveler Voltin]

isnt segregation considered racist/sexist these days?

[Inoculate]

I dont know about everyone else here but I wont be touching anything Creephaven will put out.

[DingDongKing]

I dont know about everyone else here but I wont be touching anything Creephaven will put out.

Will you also stop playing Blizzard games though?

[Katchii]

It is possible but there are a number of things that need to be pointed out here: Where were the team leaders and supervisors during the cubicle crawls? Were they reporting up to their bosses? If so, why were they largely ignored? How does an office environment descend to "frat-house" level with management not knowing?

There's a lot of "it depends" here.

But as someone who works in a corporate office cubicle farm, it's not THAT hard for it to fly under the radar. The team, their team leaders, supervisors, managers and the higher up executives don't all sit together, or even close together, most of the time, cubicles take up space so teams can be spread out across entire floors, or between floors and/or buildings, where some folks don't even see or hear each other all day. And even if they did, offices are a thing, so if the higher ups are in their office with the door closed while something stupid is going on outside, they wouldn't even be remotely aware of it unless someone specifically told them about it and even then unless someone explicitly said that what happened was offensive, not OK, etc... they wouldn't necessarily do anything about it.

I know it seems like all of this stuff could and should have bee caught by many people, but in a cubicle farm, it's VERY easy to get immersed in the work you're doing on the job. There have been several videos of developer offices showing people with headphones on, I know I wear some at work to drown out all the office banter and bullshit when I have something I really need to work on.

It doesn't pass the smell test that you can have that sort of stuff going on in an office environment, never mind the tales of drug use and the rest that we're all familiar with (Hi Chris Metzen...), and the management team is completely ignorant about it. A management team I might add that are all pretty much gamers themselves and often claimed that they were close to the artists, developers and the rest who are on the ground. "We're close but didn't know about this." Hard to swallow.

I will agree with this, but also say it's possible that they knew about some of this stuff happening but never truly understood just how bad it was and thought that it was being dealt with by the appropriate people. High up executives don't tend to get involved in HR issues like this unless they absolutely have to, that's what HR is for. It's obvious it was egregious enough that they SHOULD have gotten involved, but obviously something kept them from doing so. Whether that's incompetence on their part or something else is yet to be seen.

I'm not excusing them, they failed, period. Just saying I understand that there's a lot of things and reasons why they could have failed, though really, none of those reason are excusable, but identifying why and how something failed is one of the first steps in correcting the problem.

[Makabreska]

Apparently stock value wasn't affected at all:

"If you work on the understanding that the market value of a company is found through discovery of all information and data, the current price is arguably the effect the market has decided this law suit has on the company. That’s to say until more data is found or discovered.

Blizzard is only a portion of the whole business, but it’s clear the markets aren’t overly worried of any massive loss of subs / revenue at least in the medium term. Unfortunately for everyone here blizzard and activision are large enough to pay and make this go away under NDA."

[Magical Mudcrab]

I have this dark feeling that metzen and samwise are actually one of the worst of them all. They really stress this overly manly man behaviour of dwarfs and orcs in some of their fantasies. But yeah. Just a feeling

Dwarves and Orcs in Warcraft are actually kinda tuned down from other fantasy universes, like D&D and Pathfinder.

[User517849]

Apparently stock value wasn't affected at all:

"If you work on the understanding that the market value of a company is found through discovery of all information and data, the current price is arguably the effect the market has decided this law suit has on the company. That’s to say until more data is found or discovered.

Blizzard is only a portion of the whole business, but it’s clear the markets aren’t overly worried of any massive loss of subs / revenue at least in the medium term. Unfortunately for everyone here blizzard and activision are large enough to pay and make this go away under NDA."

Realistically, why would it be? Most players aren't going to care about the underlying issues, they're going to play the game if it's fun. If the game isn't fun or enjoyable, then they won't play it.

[uuuhname]

Dwarves and Orcs in Warcraft are actually kinda tuned down from other fantasy universes, like D&D and Pathfinder.

well to be fair they toned down the ripping off Games Workshop.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Apparently stock value wasn't affected at all:

"If you work on the understanding that the market value of a company is found through discovery of all information and data, the current price is arguably the effect the market has decided this law suit has on the company. That’s to say until more data is found or discovered.

Blizzard is only a portion of the whole business, but it’s clear the markets aren’t overly worried of any massive loss of subs / revenue at least in the medium term. Unfortunately for everyone here blizzard and activision are large enough to pay and make this go away under NDA."

They know Bobby will just throw another lootbox somewhere into his machine and make up any loss such a thing will cost. His only concern right now is probably that he doesn't want this stuff to make it up towards him, because having his fucking disgusting devil face right next so sexual harassment claims would make the devil horns look like nothing .

ALOT of players are also locked into subs etc, so if they can weather the storm they might barely lose anything.