Name - Kim Harrison

How Activision Blizzard Besmirched Its Name

kim harrison

CW: workplace harassment, suicide, sexual harassment

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.

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 resign last year after accusations of sexual misconduct and mishandling of complaints.

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.

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

her relationship with a male supervisor led to her nude photos being shared around by male employees at a Blizzard staff event.

The sexism also included immovable ceilings placed on the progress of women within the company. A quite low proportion of Activision Blizzard’s staff, around a fifth, are women. Those 20% of staff are overwhelmingly underrepresented in the company’s executive ranks. Promotions are allegedly routinely denied to women, with one female employee testifying that she was told that she was a risk for promotion because she “might get pregnant and like being a mum too much”. It was also common knowledge that women were paid significantly less than men in the same roles, with the trend of lower pay starting in entry-level positions and continuing across the organisation. Female employees have also reported being laid off at levels far higher than male employees.

Aside from the shocking allegations that have been raised in the lawsuit as well as the subsequent media coverage, another astounding element to this scandal has been the reaction of Activision Blizzard’s senior management to it. In its initial press release in response to the lawsuit, Blizzard described legal action against it as “irresponsible behaviour from unaccountable State bureaucrats that are driving many of the State’s best businesses out of California”. It doubled down on defending its work culture with an executive claiming that the allegations “presented a distorted and untrue picture of our company”.

You couldn’t script a more tone-deaf response to such serious allegations if you tried.

But then the voices grew louder in solidarity. A petition consisting of over 2000 current and former employees of the company denounced Blizzard’s response as “abhorrent and insulting”. Hundreds of them posted their personal harrowing stories on social media, and the tide began to turn. Blizzard president J. Allen Brack changed his tune in internal correspondence with staff, accepting that the allegations in the lawsuit were “extremely troubling”. He soon stepped down, with a number of other executives following him.

On reflection, I believe there are three important lessons that emerged from this terrible situation. The first is the importance of solidarity in the workplace, and standing up to abusers and silencers. It was only when thousands of Blizzard employees, both men and women, stood up to defend their colleagues did we see a material change in the way that the scandal was dealt with by management.

The second lesson is that the gaming industry finally appears to have reached a moment of reckoning. The events described in the lawsuit, more so than previous scandals, have set off a wave of outrage and calls to action that could hopefully be the start of real change. That momentum must continue, until all of the industry’s inadequate HR practices and cultural problems are dealt with.

Finally, it’s a lesson for students and young professionals to always research their options and know what they’re getting into. Too many young people dream about joining a particular company or industry without getting a clear idea of what problems are rife within it. This is exploited by cynical management within those industries to use and abuse idealistic young employees. Don’t be next.