A Letter From CEO Bobby Kotick Regarding Progress and Commitments Made at Acti-Blizz

[dope_danny]

If Bobby is willing to give up his money the situation behind closed doors at Blizzard must be fucking dire.

[Greyvax]

how about we hire the most talented individuals, regardless of gender.

this is why blizzard will suck in the future. all for the sake of being woke.

[Kallisto]

If you wanna see how absolutely sickening this ideology is, go watch this video by Ben Shapiro. It has some really really good points on how forced diversity does nothing but put the civil rights movement for black people back 70 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWgnX84KD7A Diversity is the only institutional racism that exists in America.

Hahaha thinking Shapiro is correct in anything is funny.

[Super Kami Dende]

We will increase the percentage of women and non-binary people in our workforce by 50% and will invest $250 million to accelerate opportunities for diverse talent

So basically if you are a Dude, not only will you be overlooked simply for having a Dick, but you will also be at a disadvantage from not having a large amount of money put towards any Opportunities.

Boy I really love this new Society where Merit is replaced by quotas and discrimination.

[tromage2]

Go woke go broke, this statement shows that blizzard is dead within the next 5-10 years.

[Super Kami Dende]

A diverse workplace is better than a non diverse one. It’s not like there aren’t talented female/NB developers out there

You could put 20 White guys in a room and still have it be more Diverse than 20 Woman of random races.

People that think Race includes a hivemind mindset are racist themselves.

[deenman]

Your comment shows the problem at its base.

No one is implying that women or non-binary don't have the skills. But if the pool of available candidates consists of 20% of women/non-binary, and you are trying to hire the best people for the job, then you should end up with 20% of women/non-binary assuming everyone is of equal skills.

This is the problem with trying to reach 50% equality, in an environment where the workforce is not equally distributed. You have to lower your standards and hire people with lower skills to reach that 50%, instead of hiring the bests for the given job.

And the problem is amplified by the fact that every companies is now aiming at that 50% equality, when there is just not enough people to fill the jobs. Mathematically, it is not possible.

It is one thing to have an environment where everyone feels welcome and safe, but this whole 50% equality is beyond stupid and unreachable.

they will just hire from every group,instead of white dudes getting 99% of the spots,do you REALLY think those guys were always hired because of their superior skils?or maybe because of their gender and skin color?i mean cmon,there are tons of studies out there,black telemarketers getting less sales,or black sounding names/voices getting less calls back for jobs

[exochaft]

No, discrimination is only illegal if it targets certain groups. If it targets the right people, it's not only legal, it's the RIGHT and FAIR thing to do! As others on this thread have said, the hiring process should be a blind process, where the person is hired on their merits and their sex and race and everything else that isn't pertinent to the job whatsoever isn't revealed. Unfortunately, checking those boxes and making the SJW's and progressives happy is far more important than rewarding hard work, skill and talent. Surprise, surprise.

Unfortunately, as the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. A lot of what we're seeing in this regard (at least in the US) can be traced back to things like Affirmative Action and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took less than a year under Lyndon B. Johnson to go from the idea being "don't discriminate, equality of opportunity" to "legally discriminate, equality of outcome (aka equity)", which are two veeeery different things.

For the uninitiated, you may have seen the language change from "equality" to "equity" when it comes to social justice movements... and that's very deliberate, as they do not mean the same thing at all. Equity in this sense means there is no meritocracy, and the only thing that matters is the color of your skin, what your sex is, how you indentify, etc. It's basically a return to a broader forms of racism and sexism... and it's considered legally-allowed discrimination at this point. Heck, we're even seeing movements in this day and age to return to "separate, but equal", with all the negatives that come with such a policy.

While I'm certain most people don't need need to be told, men and women have very different needs, wants, and motivations in life. All the focus of trying to push women into STEM or the gaming industry or <pick any profession that typically doesn't have many/any women> may seem motivated with good intentions, but the reality is that more often than not it has zero to do with 'the patriarchy is suppressing the womenz!' and everything to do with men and women being fundamentally different in many aspects. It's not necessarily that women can't or aren't allowed to do jobs where you don't see many women, but it's almost always because they don't want to do a job like that. Men tend to be more physical and willing to take on risks, which is why they tend towards jobs that have such tendencies. Women are quite different in this regard, but they generally have the capacity to be more nurturing and empathetic than men, which is why you seem them gravitate towards jobs like that. Not all men and women are exactly the same, which is why you'll see spill-over outside of the gender norms in this regard. However, I can't emphasize enough that this isn't necessarily the result of 'the patriarchy!!1!', it's just how Nature works... people will gravitate towards things they want to do, there doesn't have to be some conspiracy behind it.

All that being said, it's insanely obvious that Blizz is not going to learn the lessons it needs to. From the post by Kotich, they may have success if they get really lucky, but they're willingly setting themselves up for failure... or at the very least they aren't setting themselves up in the best possible position that they could. Maybe they're trying to pander for the ESG score system?

[Ielenia]

If Bobby is willing to give up his money the situation behind closed doors at Blizzard must be fucking dire.

Nah. He's giving up money right now to earn boat-loads more in the immediate future.

[desu45]

Finally someone with Common Sense at Blizzard who isn't pushing some agenda to destroy anything that goes against their view point.

[exsanguinate]

bla bla bla. he dont give a flying f

[panda040]

lol this thread is full of hitlers and trumps but no moderator in sight, proves my thoughts about who mmo champion is run by

wanting to hire people based on their abilities and being blind to their skin/color/gender or sexual orientation means your hitler/trump lmao people who think like you are truly off the deep end

[vincink]

A diverse workplace is better than a non diverse one. It’s not like there aren’t talented female/NB developers out there

"A diverse workplace is better than a non diverse one." That cannot be falsified because the terms "diverse" and "better" lack clear definition. Therefore, the claim must be tossed.

[Laytnor]

We will increase the percentage of women and non-binary people in our workforce by 50% and will invest $250 million to accelerate opportunities for diverse talent –Today, approximately 23% of our global employee population identifies as women or non-binary. Building on the success that King and other business units have achieved, we will seek to increase our percentage of women and non-binary professionals by approximately 50% – to more than one-third across the entire company – within the next five years and hopefully faster. Each franchise team, business unit, and functional area will be expected to have plans to help fulfill this ambition.

lol
lmao
Haha
AHAHAHAHAHA
OH GOD MY SIDES

[Machismo]

Dear Blizzard,

The problem was not that you were not hiring enough women. The problem was that the women you were hiring, were being treated like shit.

Sincerely,
Society

[Kralljin]

,thats not even legal,they have a fiduciary duty to do things in the best financial interest of the company

Oh please.

This entire "best financial interest of the company" is just a silly argument.
Unless one can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an Executive chose knowningly an option that makes less money, it holds no value.

By that logic, an investor could sue Activions Blizzard because selling halfbaked WoW Expansions generates less revenue than properly developed ones.

Point is, incompetence is a legitimate excuse, in which case the investors have to remove the executives but they can't sue them unless they can prove Kotick knew diversity hires makes them less money but chose to implement that policy regardless.
(And frankly, such a ruling would be a political nuke in the current enviroment)

But even disregarding that, the investors would have proof in a court that Activision Blizzard systemically hired less skilled people in favour of more skilled people solely based on their identity - something that is damn difficult to prove as you need to access to the applications for a ton of position and highlight how in each case, there were clearly more competent people within the pool and that the critical factor was the identity.

You will not get a hand on that many applications without a court forcing Activision Blizzard to reveal them, which would then also likely run into issues because applications naturally contain personal data, which just cannot be shared with anyone.

It's like when you hire an utterly incompetent person for a job who by accident causes serious financial damage to your company, unless you can highlight that they knowingly caused that damage, you will not be able to sue them, you're at fault for hiring incompetent people.

[Loveliest]

The limited understanding of people about equal opportunity is astounding. Oh no, "this means that women and nb will be shit and it's not based on merit! )" Guys, read a bit, do some research before digging for your hate. But hate and finding fault is so much easier and requires nothing. Stop reaching for false and misunderstood racism and sexism against the poor privilleged white male groups.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

If Bobby is willing to give up his money the situation behind closed doors at Blizzard must be fucking dire.

That’s not how any of this works he runs three company’s two of which make far more then blizzard he would never take a pay cut just because blizzard was doing poorly.

[Soikona]

A diverse workplace is better than a non diverse one. It’s not like there aren’t talented female/NB developers out there

A work place where everyone pulls their weight, doing the job they are hired to do, based on experience and qualifications is better imo. Rewarding people based on their performance and not a skin colour etc.

[LetsGoBrandon]

I’m all up for diversity in work places but PLEASE make it so those who are employed/future employees have the talent in the business to go with being non binary/transgender/ciswomen. Because nothing pisses me off more than forced employment because they are of a certain gender/race and extremely lack the talent needed for said job position.

I work directly on WoW and I've already been part of hiring teams, which at the end of reviewing 30 applicants and identifying the best 2-3 of said applicants responded with "Man, all we have is f'ing white guys" and "I hate that it's just white guys".

In the same said meeting, I asked why some decently qualified applicants were passed over in the first round of filtering, but someone who had no relevant experience and was missing any demo material - but identified themselves as non-binary in their cover letter - made it to the second filtering round. I was told "we specifically asked for a more diverse pool of candidates this time."

So much for hiring the best nerds for the job. Screw content of character - skin color and what's in your pants now equals "best".

Imagine substituting the word "White" with any other color - it is the *actual* definition of racism