How Activision Blizzard Besmirched Its Name Kim Harrison CW: workplace harassment, suicide, sexual harassment
resign last year after accusations of sexual misconduct and mishandling of complaints.
Few industries generate the kind of employee horror stories that come out of the game development industry. In an environment where keeping up with tight deadlines and astronomical expectations is the norm, game studios often become (barely) metaphorical pressure cookers for designers and developers. Games are becoming more complex and ambitious every year, and the major studios make bigger and bigger profits from initial releases and the inevitable in-game purchases.
Even with this background in mind, the recent revelations coming from Activision Blizzard, the large US-based maker of titles such as World of Warcraft and Candy Crush, remain shocking and beyond belief. A lawsuit brought on by the California department of fair employment has shed light on a work culture that has left even seasoned industry insiders shocked. A rampant misogynistic work culture would see female employees routinely subjected to demeaning comments about their bodies, with jokes about rape normalised. Meanwhile, a practice known as ‘cube crawl’ would apparently involve drunk male staff members crawling under desks and sexually harassing women while working. The suit also alleges that privacy of mothers’ rooms would be routinely violated, with men coming in either to leer or kick out women to hold private meetings in the rooms.
Rather than these two factors leading to more investment in expanding employee numbers and capabilities, the studios instead went in the other direction. Relatively low levels of pay persist, but only now with absurd expectations, and the dreaded ‘crunch’ periods, where employees are expected to work for days on end with virtually no breaks and little sleep. As you may expect, such environments tend to be rife with toxic cultural problems. While these environments affect all employees, women often bear most of the brunt. In recent years, whistle-blowers have come forward from a range of studios, describing patriarchal work cultures where women are harassed, demeaned, and made to feel othered and excluded. In 2018, a journalistic investigation into League of Legends maker Riot Games uncovered a culture of systemic sexism and harassment. In another recent scandal, Ubisoft (of Assassin’s Creed fame) saw three executives 52
Such behaviour was not only ignored by the company’s executives, they also actively participated in it. Former World of Warcraft senior creative director Alex Afrasabi regularly referred to his hotel rooms while on conferences as the ‘(Bill) Cosby Suite’, where he would pressure female staff members to join him. A former chief technology officer of the company was also known for groping female colleagues while drunk. In an especially tragic event, a female employee committed suicide on a company trip after
Asked the Apple store for a big mac - got no apples and no burgers #scammed
