by bdz on 8/3/21, 1:31 PM with 207 comments
by cletus on 8/3/21, 2:08 PM
Firstly, Brack was only president for 2 years and a lot of these incidents happened prior BUT if you're in charge you're responsible. That's part of the deal that comes with that giant pay check. You don't get to say "it's not my fault". So Brack absolutely should go because he's seemingly failed to correct the toxic culture.
You'll note the email talks about "Blizzard", not "Activision Blizzard". This is how you can tell Kotick is distancing himself from this. It's "Activision Blizzard" when things are going well and "Blizzard" when it's not. Kotick is I'm sure busy selling this narrative that Blizzard is an autonomous unit. It's not. It's fully Activision at this point.
Activision Blizzard has squandered their most valuable properties. The only thing propping up WoW is a 15 year old version of the game that's quickly being ruined with the exact micro-transactions that ruined the game to begin with. Does anyone still care about Overwatch? Prediction: Diablo 4 is going to disappoint. This is the same company that brought you Diablo 3 after all.
As for the new co-leaders, ugh... this just screams PR. One of them is a woman of course. I'm not saying she's unqualified (although both of them are relatively recent hires, interestingly). But you know given the lawsuit that this was going to happen. But the main issue is that there's two leaders. We all know countries need two presidents, armies need two commanders, etc.
So what this suggests is that Ibarra had the confidence of Kotick and the board, she would now be president. So she's co-president because of the lawsuit. It may not be true but that's how people are going to interpret it.
To get out this rot it can't stop at changing the executives. Blizzard honestly needs someone to come in and clean house. This goes beyond the lawsuit, which is no doubt a relatively small minority. This is about half the company probably being useless.
by moksly on 8/3/21, 2:05 PM
Of course it’s something they’ve likely prepared to do as a contingency since January.
I don’t agree with people calling J. Allen Brack a scapegoat considering his role in this. There are YouTube clips of Blizcon WoW panels being lead by him where the named director that I can’t recall the name or is making misogynistic jokes that the panel continues with. He’s also worked so close to these people that he must have known and failed to act, unlike the head of Activision. Bobby Kotick may be disliked, I don’t know much about him other than that, but anyone that’s worked at the higher levels of an Enterprise organisation knows that the key decision makers are so far detached from reality that it’s sometimes painful to work with them. Not that they are delusional or incompetent, but they simply operate on a whole other plane than the rest of the organisation and that means you have to trust your governing body.
Maybe Kotick needs to go as well, but I don’t see any reason Blizzard shouldn’t be making this move and they should frankly be replacing every single manager and middle manager that has been anywhere near the disgusting bullshit if their goal is to alter the culture.
by techpression on 8/3/21, 1:47 PM
by hannasanarion on 8/3/21, 1:50 PM
They're not even being called "president", now, just "co-leaders": he's taking the opportunity to consolidate more power too.
by mkl95 on 8/3/21, 2:18 PM
EA is like MongoDB, you know you are getting a flawed product that's nevertheless fun to use. Blizzard is like Oracle's MySQL, they try very hard to be taken seriously only to eventually stab you in the back.
by claaams on 8/3/21, 1:53 PM
by flerovium on 8/3/21, 2:12 PM
I miss the days when they produced a solid game, charged a single fee, and let a community grow organically around it. SC was a league of its own. WoW was originally created. Let the community tell you what it wants.
It's sad to see institutions decay like this.
by kar1181 on 8/3/21, 2:10 PM
There's some debate to be had if that's a bad thing, but it's now a brand and IP holding company with some in-house development.
by dmix on 8/3/21, 3:43 PM
When these big companies start to get older they always seem to prioritize the organization itself instead of the value they provide to customers.
by obmelvin on 8/3/21, 3:34 PM
I wish the new leaders well, assuming they sincerely wish to make positive change, but the soul of the company is gone
by VikingCoder on 8/3/21, 2:16 PM
I can't even tell you how many times I typed YMCA on my Apple IIc, playing Bard's Tale. It was a lot, though.
[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Ybarra [2] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Ybarra
by mabbo on 8/3/21, 1:53 PM
They need to differentiate between "We screwed up, something is wrong, and it's time for real change" vs "We have applied lipstick to the pig, now please go away".
by andrewzah on 8/3/21, 2:11 PM
by Clubber on 8/3/21, 1:49 PM
by keymone on 8/3/21, 3:52 PM
what a load of bullshit. all that trust was lost when those two were already in leadership positions.
by Cypher on 8/3/21, 1:55 PM
by HelloNurse on 8/3/21, 5:26 PM
- Both candidates had such strong claims on the #1 spot, and so much influence, that the company was forced to promote both to avoid losing one of them. Hiring an outsider, like a sensible and earnest company would have done, would have alienated both rather than only one. Is Activision known as a fractious organization?
- They really wanted Oneal, but they added Ybarra to avoid looking like they had undergone a feminist coup. Because they care about what their users think of them, and this is what they think of their users.
- They really wanted Ybarra, but they added Oneal to give an impression of greater change, just because she is a woman.
- Both candidates weren't considered really qualified as a sole "leader", but there was hope that they could handle the crisis together instead. Which implies personal conflicts, poor personnel quality (not necessarily Oneal and Ybarra, of course) or both.
Even worse theories would be easy to think of, but since Blizzard executives can be expected to read HN discussions about them speculation about what they are doing would be pointlessly cruel.
by afrocious on 8/3/21, 1:50 PM
by dmead on 8/3/21, 3:02 PM
what am i supposed to replace it with?
by peterthehacker on 8/3/21, 5:30 PM
> Look, it doesn’t take a genius to know that any organization thrives when it has two leaders. Go ahead, name a country that doesn’t have two presidents, a boat that sets sail without two captains. Where would Catholicism be without the popes?
by mdip on 8/3/21, 2:51 PM
I worked in various lead/senior roles in IT Infrastructure, security, support and development at a 5,000-20,000 (depending on the time) employee telecom. I know of one incident in the 17 years I was there that was serious related to sexual harassment. In that case, the "victimized employee" remained with the company, the harasser handled by suspension during a (hours long) investigation where they were fired with cause (also the only case in the US that I'm aware of). I was asked to collect his computer; yeah, firing him was a good call.
Women and minorities in IT -- both technical and management (VP was and currently still is the same woman) were represented well above the average[2] and promoted at no different rate. On our team and among our larger team -- 17 years -- all of the staff acted like adults (some had quirks, but nothing more). I don't ever recall a frat-boy like attitude and I know none of my co-workers would tolerate it. I don't even recall an incident of inappropriate humor. The only thing that came close was one colleague who dropped an F-Bomb casually about every 3 words (usually a "Fckin'" or "Fcked Up" -- despite the word, I don't recall him using the word sexually). He lasted a year or so and didn't get fired for the F-Bombs -- everyone talked about it but nobody really cared[3].
[0] In fairness, I've not followed this story closely, so that may be my perception.
[1] The tempting explanation of "I didn't experience it, myself, therefore I was blind to it" isn't something I can prove I wasn't affected by, but my unusual set of jobs/position in the company allowed for few places to hide this kind of behavior from me at times.
[2] I'm always uncomfortable mentioning this -- we had higher than average because we actively recruited from places that would increase the number of minority candidates. We did not in any way apply hiring practices that favored under-represented races/genders -- and ended up having a very diverse team.
[3] I'm not suggesting harassing/racist behavior be ignored, however, another part of being an adult is tolerating things that we feel are "moral faults" in others without being uptight about it. "It takes a lot of people to make a world" ... My casually-swearing colleague never swore at people or about people -- he swore about things sometimes, and swore casually, even though he chose a word that many in the US feel to be among the most offensive profanities, co-workers used to just comment about "how strange it is to hear so much profanity out of one guy when nobody else is swearing at all".
by jrockway on 8/3/21, 2:21 PM
I hold on to a scrap of hope that somehow they will turn it around. But I can't think of a Fortune 500 that ever turned it around, so I can't be too optimistic.
by njharman on 8/3/21, 2:26 PM
by kesor on 8/3/21, 3:50 PM
by seanp2k2 on 8/4/21, 12:29 AM
by serverholic on 8/3/21, 1:41 PM
by emptyfile on 8/3/21, 2:36 PM
by sudhirj on 8/3/21, 1:44 PM
by _RPL5_ on 8/3/21, 3:53 PM
Health of their games aside, here is to hoping that they at least take care of their employees moving forward. The thing that's most disheartening about the harassment allegations is how many former female employees (50+) came out on twitter to collaborate the claims of run-away toxicity. Not something I expected from a company that positions itself as the "wholesome gaming company of your childhood."
Whatever it takes for them to clean up their workplace, they need to do it. The games, too, will be better for it. Workplace toxicity doesn't just lead to harassment, it kills collaboration and creativity.
by NonContro on 8/3/21, 2:31 PM
Blizzard has its own launcher, which means they can sell directly to customers, at 0% commissions.
Any new Indies have to go through the monopolist Steam, which means a 30% commission and no direct access to their fanbase.
If we want better conditions in game development, it needs to be easier for disgruntled employees to leave and start their own companies. That means, explicitly, that Steam (holding the monopoly position on PC) needs to be pressured to lower its commission (the 15% level Apple and Google are moving towards seems reasonable) and offer the same terms to Indies as they do to AAA.