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Fans of Activision Blizzard’s WoW Are Lashing Out

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Image: Blizzard

World of Warcraft has been bleeding players since the start of the year. Add to that the drama swirling around a big-time streamer and the general toxicity that festers in just about every online gaming community and you have a recipe for bad stuff to happen. Simply put: It’s tough to look at certain corners of WoW and not feel like Community’s Donald Glover carrying pizzas into a room that’s on fire.

Even before Activision Blizzard became the center of a California lawsuit alleging widespread sexual harassment and discrimination, the active player population of Blizzard’s flagship MMO had been falling year after year. A lot of players have been unhappy with recent expansions, and some have even tried to piggyback general complaints about the state of the game onto larger discussion of what’s wrong with Blizzard’s work culture.

The exodus appeared to fly into overdrive in early July, however, when the massively popular WoW streamer Asmongold decided to start streaming Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn instead. If community frustration over a lackluster Chains of Domination update and generous free trials for the competing MMO supplied the tinder, Asmongold was the match, and recently he and his fans have been taking direct aim at WoW’s developers.

It began when someone on the Asmongold subreddit posted an image of a WoW developer liking a tweet that suggested Asmongold himself was in part responsible for making the WoW community so “trash.” While some content creators foster a collaborative relationship with the developers who make the game they cover, Asmongold has a reputation for being combative and hyperbolic in his criticism of WoW. The streamer, who regularly tours the r/Asmongold subreddit in his streams, went on to lambast the lone WoW developer for insinuating he was a symbol of what was wrong with the community.

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“I have to read this bullshit, right, I have to read this bullshit that gets the seal of approval from the people that work at the game, who make the game this way,” he said. “Before you call me toxic, deal with your own fucking game.”

Events only escalated from there. A bunch of other posts targeting the specific WoW developer started appearing on the subreddit, many of which have now been deleted by the moderators because of failing to remain civil or encouraging harassment. One person even sent the developer a message over LinkedIn telling him to “get fucked.” The developer screenshotted this, including his harasser’s LinkedIn name, job role, and city, and shared it on Twitter. Asmongold’s fans then accused the developer of doxxing, despite the fact that no private info had been released.

“The moderation team of /r/Asmongold is made up of volunteers that act independently and our actions and comments do not necessarily reflect those of Asmongold himself,” a Asmongold subreddit moderator told Kotaku in an email. “We do not condone any sort of harassment or brigading, no matter who it’s targeted towards.”

Today, Asmongold followed up on the controversy, writing on Twitter, “Recently more than ever I’ve been accused of harassment when I’ve had the audacity to defend myself and my community. The idea that I should allow myself to be attacked is driven by narcissism and entitlement. I don’t punch down, I don’t punch up, I punch back.”

You could try to disentangle potential legitimate grievances from the shitty mob dynamics. Asmongold infamously encouraged players to spit on those in-game who spent money on fancy mounts as an act of protest against WoW’s current updates and monetization model. Blizzard then removed the spitting emote from the game. At the same time, there’s clearly plenty of ambiently toxic behavior in the game that has nothing to do with Asmongold. Blizzard has historically been criticized for failing to aggressively moderate hateful speech in WoW and other games. It only began finally blocking some racial slurs altogether earlier this year.

But beyond the competing counter-claims of who’s more responsible for WoW’s toxicity problem, the fact that some players have taken to doubling down on harassing developers over the latest flashpoints is just further evidence of what a bad spot the game’s in at the moment. Blizzard recently set about purging in-game references to a past developer accused of sexual harassment as part of an ongoing effort to “re-build trust” in the wake of the California lawsuit. Even so, some fans and content creators are still debating boycotting the game and other Activision Blizzard products until the company agrees to employee demands for more equal and inclusive working conditions.

There’s clearly a lot of soul-searching going on in the larger WoW community, and this latest shitstorm will likely only add to it.



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Business

Activision Blizzard Assures Investors Lawsuit Won’t Hurt CoD

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Image: Activision Blizzard

Every few months big game companies hold investor calls in which one set of rich people reassures another set of rich people that they are both still rich and will, over the coming months, likely get even richer. Sometimes one of the rich people hints at a new game that’s in development. Other times they announce an upcoming game will be delayed. More often than not, they are soul-crushing rituals where there’s not a care in the world for anything that can’t be reduced to a number. Even by these standards, though, the latest Activision Blizzard investor call was particularly grim.

The company is currently at the center of a big California lawsuit alleging widespread sexual harassment and discrimination going back years. Since news of the lawsuit broke, many current and former Activision Blizzard employees have shared their own experiences of being mistreated at the company and held back by its male-dominated culture. The company’s initial response was to circle the wagons, calling the lawsuit “inaccurate” and the “irresponsible” work of “unaccountable State bureaucrats.”

It’s since taken a more contrite approach, but not before employees formed a worker group called the ABK Workers Alliance to demand things like an end to mandatory arbitration, greater pay transparency, and more diverse hiring. A week later, the group says management still hasn’t even acknowledged these demands. All the while, stories continue pouring out about the pain of what some current and former employees went through while working at the company.

That was the context in which CEO Bobby Kotick and his lieutenants went into the company’s most recent earnings call on Tuesday. During the call, there was the nauseating two-step of “we care, we’re listening,” yet at the same time “Call of Duty money machine go brrr.” We’re already seeing the Call of Duty hype machine ratchet back up to tease the announcement of the series’ fall 2021 release. Kotick and others repeatedly acknowledged how serious the allegations are, how behavior like that has no place at Activision Blizzard, and how maintaining a safe and inclusive workplace is their top priority—despite again, the company meeting zero of the biggest worker demands. Also Diablo Immortals is delayed, he said, but don’t worry, the rest of the games are coming along great. Overwatch 2 just passed an “important internal milestone.”

“We’ve seen a lot of headlines about the lawsuit and employee concern,” said Morgan Stanely’s Matthew Cost as he opened up the meeting’s Q&A session. “Can you talk more about what you’ve been doing and will do to address those issues? And then just secondly, can you expand on any expected impact to productivity as you work through the situation, and do you expect any impact on the pipeline?”

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“Thank you for the powerful question,” responded chief operating officer Daniel Alegre, who noted that “our employees are truly our greatest asset” and pointed out the company recently hired a law firm accused of union-busting, WilmerHale, to lead an outside investigation. He maintained that the company remains committed to diverse hiring and equal pay for men and women. Also the “pipeline is progressing well” with a “strong lineup planned for the second-half of the year” and “several new titles across PC, console, and mobile from Blizzard, alongside more great experiences from Call of Duty, Candy [Crush], and Warcraft” coming in 2022.

“First off, there’s nothing more important to me than our people, and I know Mike Ybarra who is partnering with me to lead Blizzard feels exactly the same,” Jen Oneal, the new co-head of Blizzard following president J. Allen Brack’s sudden departure, said during the call. These were her first public remarks since taking on the role. “Since I joined the studio at the beginning of the year, I’ve had the privilege of working closer with the Diablo and Overwatch teams. I’m seeing great progress on Overwatch 2 and the multiple games in the Diablo universe.”

This was how the entire meeting went. Activision Blizzard investors and leadership posed the explosive lawsuit as something like, oh, people said some things, and they’re not good, but we’re actually doing everything we can to make this company the best place to work ever. And also, don’t worry, none of it will hurt our bottom line. There was no word on how continuing to employ an ex-Bush administration torture apologist in a top company role works toward creating a nice working environment. As GameIndustry.biz news editor Danielle Partis perfectly summed it up, “We’ve got mountains of lawsuits, comeuppance is due, but Call of Duty had a really fruitful Q2.”

Capitalism has trained us to expect the absolute minimum from companies and the mind-bogglingly wealthy people who run them. It’s infuriating and heartbreaking that a reportedly toxic and abusive culture at one of the world’s biggest gaming companies is only being reckoned with years too-late, and only then because of arm-twisting by public opinion, employee protests, and the threat of litigation by the biggest state in the country. And still, Activision Blizzard’s song and dance with investors managed to be even bleaker than I could have imagined.

When Assassin’s Creed publisher Ubisoft faced a similar reckoning over harassment and misconduct last summer (one which persists despite attempts by leadership to brush it aside), an investor asked CEO Yves Guillemot whether he was just oblivious or knew and did nothing. Guillemot rejected both options. While no single question by an investor or anyone else has the capacity to fix the systemic issues plaguing the games industry, the exchange provided a brief moment of catharsis in an otherwise hellish onslaught of secrecy and denials. Nobody was as similarly blunt with Kotick.

PR spin, propaganda, hypernormalisation—whatever you want to call it, we’re collectively told over and over by people in power that what we witness and experience is bullshit and the bullshit they serve us back is what’s actually true. That’s in part how a company with an increasingly documented history of not treating people right—be it Activision Blizzard or Amazon.com, Inc.—can say with a straight face that it really does care without being immediately laughed out of the room. It’s what we’ve come to expect but that doesn’t make it any less exhausting. And it doesn’t mean anyone else has to play along.



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Technology

Everything That’s Happened So Far

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The ongoing lawsuit against Activision Blizzard has made public some truly terrible and horrendous behavior that occurred across multiple studios and offices. Many women were allegedly sexually harassed, assaulted, and psychologically traumatized while the folks in power at the companies involved seemingly did little to stop or limit this behavior.

The lawsuit was filed on July 20 by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing after a years-long investigation turned up stories of multiple women suffering daily harassment and abuse while working at Activision Blizzard.

Since it was filed the fallout has been widespread, with former and current employees stepping forward to share more stories of abuse, offer apologies to those who were hurt, or attempt to distance themselves from the whole thing. Devs and workers at other studios have also begun to speak up and share their thoughts and pain too. It’s been an awful, disturbing, and eye-opening past few weeks and to help you get caught up with what has happened since the lawsuit we’ve rounded up all our coverage in one place.

As this is an ongoing situation, we expect more stories about this lawsuit and its fallout will come in the near future so we plan on updating this post with new stories as we move forward.

Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku

Afrasiabi worked for Blizzard as recently as June 2020, when he apparently left the company with seemingly minimal mention, to the confusion of the few fans who noticed his departure. And though Afrasiabi is gone, his presence still lingers in World of Warcraft. Kotaku was able to confirm the existence of at least two NPCs that continue to bear his name, in addition to a number of items that directly reference him.

Image: Bungie

The studio behind Halo and now Destiny issued a statement on Twitter yesterday, addressing the allegations of widespread sexual harrasssment and discrimination alleged in a new lawsuit brought by California regulators against Activision Blizzard. “We have a responsibility to acknowledge, reflect, and do what we can to push back on a persistent culture of harassment, abuse, and inequality that exists in our industry,” the company wrote.

Image: Blizzard

The case against Activision Blizzard is proving what many women already knew—misogyny in the industry doesn’t come down to just a few bad apples at a few companies. It’s deeply ingrained in the culture at the heart of how the games business has operated for decades.

Screenshot: Blizzard

The head of Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind Overwatch and World of Warcraft, sent an email to staff last night calling the recent allegations of widespread sexual harassment and discrimation “extremely troubling” and promised to meet with them to answer questions and discuss “how we can move forward.”

Screenshot: Blizzard

Some of the most popular World of Warcraft streamers explained how disappointed and sad they were to hear the news. Top WoW Twitch streamer Asmongold, in a public statement shared on Twitter, said he was “hurt” by the news as a longtime fan of the publisher.

Image: Blizzard / Activision / Kotaku

Social media accounts related to Activision Blizzard and its various properties have stopped posting following California’s lawsuit against the major video game conglomerate going public.

Photo: Mark Davis (Getty Images)

Blizzard co-founder and longtime boss Mike Morhaime took to Twitter just after midnight Friday to comment on the widespread allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination at the game company he led for so long. “To the Blizzard women who experienced any of these things, I am extremely sorry that I failed you,” he wrote. “I hear you, I believe you, and I am so sorry to have let you down.”

Photo: Activision Blizzard

“We failed, and I’m sorry,” he begins. “To all of you at Blizzard – those of you I know and those of you whom I’ve never met – I offer you my very deepest apologies for the part I played in a culture that fostered harassment, inequality, and indifference.”

Screenshot: Blizzard

Following troubling allegations regarding the work environments at Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard, several gaming outlets have opted to halt coverage of any games released by the mega-publishers.

Image: Blizzard

On July 23, former World of Warcraft lead designer Greg Street—who was at the original panel— responded to the controversy. In it, he tries to explain what happened while also admitting he made a mistake in a long series of tweets that eventually led to an apology. Street left Blizzard in 2013 and joined Riot Games the following year.

Photo: Rich Polk (Getty Images)

Hundreds of current and former employees from across Activision Blizzard have signed a letter to the company’s management calling its response to a recent lawsuit alleging widespread sexual harassment and discrimination at some of its offices “abhorrent and insulting.”

Reports included unwanted shoulder rubs, being propositioned for sex, sexual harassment within their first day, and even a “game” around the office where men would try to grope one another’s genitals. These allegations haven’t been as widely reported as the litany of testimonials from harassed women, but they also point to how systemic the issues were at the company.

Image: Activision Blizzard

The announcement of the walkout is accompanied by a statement of intent letter addressed to Activision Blizzard management. The letter states that employees believe their values are not being reflected by management and issues a series of demands meant to improve working conditions for those subjected to harassment and discrimination. These demands include an end to mandatory arbitration, which forces complaining employees into extra-legal mediation rather than public court cases, revised recruiting, hiring, and promotion policies, pay rate transparency, and the hiring of a third-party organization to review the company’s reporting policy, HR department, and executive staff.

Image: Blizzard

Blizzard has promised to remove content “not appropriate for” World of Warcraft, likely in response to in-game references to creative director Alex Afrasiabi. This announcement comes after a short period of silence following the publication of a California state lawsuit against the company, which alleges Activision Blizzard fostered a pervasive environment of harassment against its female employees.

Photo: Scott Olson (Getty Images)

“I want to recognize and thank all those who have come forward in the past and in recent days. I so appreciate your courage. Every voice matters – and we will do a better job of listening now, and in the future.

Our initial responses to the issues we face together, and to your concerns, were, quite frankly, tone deaf.”

Screenshot: Kotaku

The “Cosby Suite” was more than just a nickname or a joke. Based on images and comments Afrasiabi posted on his Facebook supplied to Kotaku by a former developer at Blizzard, it was reportedly a booze-filled meeting place where many, including Afrasiabi, would pose with an actual portrait of Bill Cosby while smiling. It was also a hot spot for informal networking at BlizzCon, three sources told Kotaku, where people looking to make inroads at the company would go to meet and hang out with some of its top designers.

Image: Blizzard

While not everyone can attend the Activision Blizzard Walkout for Equality, there are other ways to show support for the employees of the company as they demand improved working conditions for women and other marginalized groups in the wake of their employer’s inadequate response to California’s sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit.

Photo: Eric Thomas (Getty Images)

A new open letter signed by almost 500 current and former Ubisoft employees announces their solidarity with the workers at Activision Blizzard, demands movement from their own leadership, and calls for systemic change across the entire video game industry, Axios reports.

Screenshot: Blizzard

When Activision Blizzard, a company currently under fire for its discriminatory practices and rampant sexual harassment issues, hires WilmerHale, a law firm with a reputation for union-busting, heads turn and brows furrow.

Screenshot: Blizzard

A cybersecurity company whose security researcher had once been harassed by Blizzard employees at a hacking conference charged the game developer a 50 percent “misogyny tax” when it sought a quote for security services, according to a new report from Waypoint.



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Technology

Activision Blizzard Was Charged With A ‘Misogyny Tax’ In 2017

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Screenshot: Activision Blizzard

A cybersecurity company whose security researcher had once been harassed by Blizzard employees at a hacking conference charged the game developer a 50 percent “misogyny tax” when it sought a quote for security services, according to a new report from Waypoint.

The researcher, Emily Mitchell, told Waypoint that she approached the Blizzard booth during the annual Black Hat USA cybersecurity conference in 2015 to see if the major video game company had any open positions. Her shirt, which referenced a security process known as “penetration testing,” prompted two unnamed Blizzard employees to ask her questions laced with misogyny and sexual double entendre.

“One of them asked me when was the last time I was personally penetrated, if I liked being penetrated, and how often I got penetrated,” Mitchell said. “I was furious and felt humiliated, so I took the free swag and left.”

Two years later, Blizzard approached cybersecurity firm Sagitta HPC (now known as Terahash) to request a quote on one of Sagitta HPC’s password-cracking boxes. Mitchell, who was Sagitta HPC’s chief operating officer at the time, saw Blizzard’s request and immediately remembered what occured at Black Hat USA 2015. After learning of the incident from Mitchell, Sagitta HPC founder and chief executive officer Jeremi M. Gosney responded to Blizzard’s inquiry with a lengthy message decrying her treatment at the hands of Blizzard’s employees.

“[R]ather than dismiss you and tell you that we will not do business with you, we’d like to give Blizzard the opportunity to redeem themselves,” Gosney wrote. (He eventually shared the email on Twitter with Blizzard’s name redacted.) “We are committed to combating inequality, and I am calling on Blizzard to do the same. As you may or may not know, today is International Women’s Day. And in honor of this day, we are attaching a few conditions if Blizzard wishes to do business with us.”

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These conditions included a 50 percent “misogyny tax” on any business Sagitta HPC did with Blizzard (to be used as a donation to three different organizations devoted to support girls and women in the tech industry), Blizzard becoming a Gold-level sponsor of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference, and a formal letter of apology from Blizzard executives to Mitchell in which they’d further dedicate themselves to supporting equality for women and sexual harassment training.

The list of sponsors from that year’s the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference indicates that while Blizzard itself didn’t support the event, parent company Activision came in as a Silver-level corporate partner. Kotaku contacted Gosney for more information on the events surrounding his email to Blizzard, but didn’t hear back before publication.

“[Blizzard] made it clear that they were not interested in agreeing to any of our terms, just a lot of empty promises that they were taking the report ‘seriously,’ that it would be investigated internally, and assured me that they do conduct sexual harassment training,” Mitchell told Waypoint. “Ultimately it felt like they were more interested in gauging their own legal exposure and placating me.”

In 2017, the organizers of Black Hat USA, the Las Vegas hacking conference at which Mitchell was originally accosted, promised her that they would not allow Blizzard back as a sponsor for future events. As far as Kotaku can tell from historical information, neither Blizzard nor Activision have had a presence at the cybersecurity event since the year Blizzard staff harassed Mitchell.

Read More: Inside Blizzard Developers’ Infamous Bill “Cosby Suite”

Activision Blizzard is already in the gaming community’s crosshairs since last week’s bombshell revelation that the state of California is suing the company for a workplace culture that fostered years of abuse, harassment, and violence against female employees. The lawsuit specifically mentions the actions of former World of Warcraft creative director Alex Afrasiabi, references to whom Blizzard plans to remove from the MMO, and events that took place in Afrasiabi’s hotel room at BlizzCon 2013, known colloquially among a group of male employees as the “Cosby Suite.”

In the wake of this publicity, Waypoint also learned of a 2018 incident in which an Activision IT worker set up a camera in one of the Eden Prairie, Minnesota campus’ unisex bathrooms and recorded employees using the toilet. That worker, Tony Ray Nixon, was fired by Activision and ultimately pled guilty to an “Interference with Privacy” charge.

“Once this incident was reported to us, the Company began an investigation, promptly removed all unauthorized cameras, and notified the authorities,” Activision Blizzard told Waypoint. “The authorities conducted a thorough investigation, with the full cooperation of the Company. As soon as the authorities and Company identified the perpetrator, he was terminated for his abhorrent conduct. The Company provided crisis counselors to employees, onsite and virtually, and increased security.”

A large group of Activision Blizzard employees participated in an organized walkout earlier this week in protest of the company’s history of inaction in the face of intolerable harassment against women and minorities. The group’s demands included an end to forced arbitration for Activision Blizzard staff and a more diverse, worker-oriented approach to interviewing, recruiting, and hiring processes within the massive corporation.

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick eventually addressed these concerns, calling earlier responses to the incidents in question “tone deaf,” but failing to impress the employees already planning the day-long work stoppage. The company has also hired a law firm known for previous union-busting efforts to help investigate the damning allegations, which doesn’t inspire much confidence in Activision Blizzard’s good intentions.

“This is the beginning of an enduring movement in favor of better labor conditions for all employees, especially women, in particular women of color and transgender women, nonbinary people, and other marginalized groups,” the employee coalition wrote in a follow-up statement. “We expect a prompt response and a commitment to action from leadership on the points enumerated above, and look forward to maintaining a constructive dialogue on how to build a better Activision Blizzard for all employees.”



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Ex Blizzard Boss Mike Morhaime Responds To Activision Lawsuit

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Photo: Mark Davis (Getty Images)

Blizzard co-founder and longtime boss Mike Morhaime took to Twitter just after midnight Friday to comment on the widespread allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination at the game company he led for so long. “To the Blizzard women who experienced any of these things, I am extremely sorry that I failed you,” he wrote. “I hear you, I believe you, and I am so sorry to have let you down.”

Morhaime helped found the World of Warcraft and Diablo developer right out of college in 1991. Since then, it’s gone on to become one of the most prominent studios in the world, producing hits in every genre like StarCraft, Hearthstone, and Overwatch. For much of that history, Morhaime was its leader, and his departure in 2018 to go on and form the new game company called Dreamhaven was widely regarded as a major blow to Blizzard’s longstanding legacy.

But according to a complaint filed in California court earlier this week by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing following a two-year investigation, a “frat boy” workplace culture was rife at the company during Morhaime’s time as CEO there.

Here is Morhaime’s statement in full:

I have read the full complaint against Activision Blizzard and many of the other stories. It is all very disturbing and difficult to read. I am ashamed. It feels like everything I thought I stood for has been washed away. What’s worse but even more important, real people have been harmed, and some women had terrible experiences.

I was at Blizzard for 28 years. During that time, I tried very hard to create an environment that was safe and welcoming for people of all genders and backgrounds. I knew that it was not perfect, but clearly we were far from that goal. The fact that so many women were mistreated and were not supported means we let them down. In addition, we did not succeed in making it feel safe for people to tell their truth. It is no consolation that other companies have faced similar challenges. I wanted us to be different, better.

Harassment and discrimination exist. They are prevalent in our industry. It is the responsibility of leadership to keep all employees feeling safe, supported, and treated equitably, regardless of gender and background. It is the responsibility of leadership to stamp out toxicity and harassment in any form, across all levels of the company. To the Blizzard women who experienced any of these things, I am extremely sorry that I failed you.

I realize that these are just words, but I wanted to acknowledge the women who had awful experiences. I hear you, I believe you, and I am so sorry to have let you down. I want to hear your stories, if you are willing to share them. As a leader in our industry, I can and will use my influence to help drive positive change and to combat misogyny, discrimination, and harassment wherever I can. I believe we can do better, and I believe the gaming industry can be a place where women and minorities are welcomed, included, supported, recognized, rewarded, and ultimately unimpeded from the opportunity to make the types of contributions that all of us join this industry to make. I want the mark I leave on this industry to be something that we can all be proud of.

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Since news of the allegations broke on July 21, former Blizzard developers have been speaking out on social media about the harassment and abuse they experienced or witnessed. Current developers have been distancing themselves from the company’s public and internal statements and calling on it to make changes.

Activision Blizzard’s response so far has been to challenge the accuracy of the accusations by implying that they only reflect things from the past. “The DFEH includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past,” a spokesperson for the company told Kotaku. “The picture the DFEH paints is not the Blizzard workplace of today.”

Activision Blizzard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack sent an email to staff earlier this week calling the allegations “extremely troubling.” In this message, he failed to mention that he was personally named in the suit as someone who failed to stop another developer from serially sexually harassing female coworkers. That developer, Alex Afrasiabi, contributed World of Warcraft as recently as 2020, and many NPCs and items in the game still reference him. A video recording of both Brack and Afrasiabi making sexist and condescending remarks about a female fan’s question at a 2010 BlizzCon panel has also been making the rounds online, following a seemingly industry-wide reevaluation of Blizzard’s history.

Call of Duty maker Activision acquired Blizzard in 2008, and following the merger formed a new parent company called Activision Blizzard. While both subsidiaries have largely functioned separately, Activision’s role in Blizzard’s day-to-day business reportedly grew following Morhaime’s departure in 2018.

Last year, Blizzard released a remaster of WarCraft 3 called WarCraft 3: Reforged that was so unpopular the company almost immediately started offering refunds for it. According to a recentreport by Bloomberg, increased financial pressure from Activision is partly responsible for recent uncharacteristic flops like this. Some of the new changes have reportedly included meetings suddenly being attended by finance people who wouldn’t normally been there prior to the company’s cultural shift. Several longtime Blizzard developers, including former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan, have begun exiting the company in recent years.

Dreamhaven, Morhaime’s latest venture, has a mission statement begins by stating wants to highlight a wider variety of voices and “provide a safe space where developers, creators, and players can connect in meaningful ways.”



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Technology

Activision Blizzard CEO To Get Even Bigger Bonuses While Others Get Laid Off

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Photo: Scott Olson (Getty Images)

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick routinely gets millions in stock bonuses every year based on how the company is doing. Now he’s set to get even more, for a total payout of nearly $200 million according to CtW Investment Group, a union pension fund advocacy organization. And it’s all thanks to a clause in his contract that was recently triggered by the company’s strong stock performance throughout the pandemic.

As the Call of Duty maker’s CEO, Kotick gets bonuses based on helping the company hit profit targets and other milestones. And because 2020 saw Activision Blizzard’s stock price jump dramatically as millions turned to games to distract themselves during the pandemic, he’s on track to collect all of the incentive bonuses he missed in recent years, in addition to the tens of millions he already earns annually, due to a “shareholder value creation incentive” clause in his contract.

In March of 2016, the company’s stock price was around $32 a share. By last March it had climbed to $56, and in the year since the pandemic began, it only climbed higher, peaking at over $100 at one point last month before settling back down at just under $92. Because the stock has remained over double what it was when Kotick’s 2016 employment agreement went into effect for over 90 days, the “shareholder value creation incentive” provision was triggered earlier this month. “On March 1, 2021, the performance conditions for the four-year performance period from 1/1/17 through 12/31/20 underlying these performance stock unit awards were achieved at the maximum level,” reads Activision Blizzard’s most recent SEC filing.

“While the increase in Activision’s stock price is somewhat commendable, as we stated last year and continue to assert, this achievement alone does not justify such a substantial pay outcome for the CEO,” CtW Investment Group researcher Michael Varner said in a statement. In a phone call with Kotaku, Varner called a “maximum level” payout the c-suite equivalent of running a six minute mile, and said Activision Blizzard is basically retroactively awarding Kotick gold medals for his past performance based on the latest stock price.

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CtW Investment Group has been criticizing CEO pay at a lot of companies, including one of gaming’s biggest. It called out pay inequity and Kotick’s significant bonuses at last year’s annual meeting of Activision Blizzard shareholders, and has been pushing the company’s board of directors to dial back just how rich it makes the company’s decade-long boss. As Activision Blizzard was boasting record sales last summer, Bloomberg reported that some of its employees started sharing their personal pay information with one another internally to protest a lack of raises in proportion to the company’s ongoing success.

While the pandemic has made Kotick even richer, it hasn’t put an end to layoffs at Activision Blizzard. The company laid off roughly 800 people in early 2019, followed by hundreds more in the subsequent months, the closing of its French office, and just yesterday it confirmed that somewhere between 50 and 190 more people would be let go, including in its esports division, which has struggled over the last year during the ban on in-person gaming events.

Bloomberg reported that the most recently laid off employees would receive healthcare benefits throughout the year as part of their severance package. They would also get $200 gift cards to Battle.net, I guess so that they can still buy the latest Overwatch skins even while being out of a job, and even while their former boss is about to rake in millions in additional bonuses.

Activision Blizzard did not respond to a request for comment.

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Technology

Rock N’ Roll Racing Music Might Get Twitch Streamers In Trouble

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Yesterday, Blizzard released a collection of the studio’s classic games. But the studio also gave a warning to those looking to stream one of the games, Rock n’ Roll Racing on Twitch: Turn off the music. All of it.

Announced and released yesterday, the Blizzard Arcade Collection contains three classic games: The Lost Vikings, Rock n’ Roll Racing, and Blackthorne. If you plan on streaming this collection, be careful when playing Rock n’ Roll Racing as the music contained in this arcade racer isn’t cleared for streaming. As spotted by PCGamesN, this PSA came via a tweet from Adam Fletcher, a community development lead at Blizzard. “If you choose to stream, please do so with the music turned off,” warned Fletcher.

The new version of the game included in the Blizzard Arcade Collection contains not just the midi classic rock covers found in the original release, but newly added full versions of these same songs. This is a cool bonus, but it also means this game contains a bunch of licensed music that might get you a DMCA strike on Twitch.

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However, it’s not just the new complete versions of the songs that you need to avoid while on Twitch. Fletcher also added that, for now, the old school midi track covers could also get you in trouble too. Considering one of the best parts of Rock n’ Roll Racing is the classic rock soundtrack, this isn’t a great solution.

Back in November, with little warning, Twitch began purging clips and streams from the site that contained any licensed music or sound effects. The situation hasn’t improved much since then.

In fact, during last night’s BlizzCon opening ceremony a pre-recorded performance of Metallica had its music removed and replaced with generic audio by Twitch. This is a good system we have. Everything is working perfectly…

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