Blizzard’s president reacted, Warcraft III: Reforged’s devs have shared their stories, and multiple publications decided to boycott Activision Blizzard’s products until there’s internal change…

 

Earlier this week, we already discussed in detail what has happened within Activision Blizzard that led to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing lawsuit alleging harassment and discrimination of women. Now, J. Allen Brack has sent a memo to his staff, and Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has shared Brack’s words.

„I have a lot of emotions coming out of yesterday, and I know you do, too. The allegations and the hurt of current and former employees are extremely troubling. While I can’t comment on the specifics of the case as it’s an open investigation, what I can say is that the behaviour detailed in the allegations is completely unacceptable,” Brack said, saying that nobody should face discrimination or harassment within the company, and everyone should feel safe working there.

Brack also said that it takes courage for people to come forward with their stories, and insisted the company and leadership take such stories seriously and investigate them appropriately. „People with different backgrounds, views, and experiences are essential for Blizzard, our teams, and our player community. I disdain ‘bro culture,’ and have spent my career fighting against it.

A company is more than a legal construct that exists as a piece of paper in a filing cabinet in Delaware. The people that work at the company make it what it is, through their actions and creations. Each of us plays a role in maintaining a place of safety for one other. And it is also up to each of us to continue to craft the Blizzard we want — and commit to doing our part in keeping Blizzard great but always aspiring for more,” Brack added. His tone is far different than what the company’s statement said (they were quite critical about the lawsuit)…

On Bloomberg, we can also read about Warcraft III: Reforged. The site talked with eleven people with knowledge of the game’s development. In short, they mentioned the following issues: a reduced project budget, mismanagement, and a small development team. In other words, Activision Blizzard did not handle the remake of the 2002 RTS appropriately, even though it announced the project in 2018, promising that it would get new content as well.

That, however, didn’t happen, as „the project was never a priority for the company,” all because of the publisher thinking that Warcraft II: Reforged would not sell as many copies as expected. Instead, it focused on its bigger franchises, such as Call of Duty or Overwatch, and the documents provided post-launch revealed that the remake was changed due to budgets cuts and disagreements over the direction. The team was small, and they faced more work than previously expected, leading to employees having multiple roles, and they had to work at night and even during the weekends…

The mass layoffs in 2019 did not help either, leading to an additional loss of support, meaning „the team structure didn’t set up the project for success.” A few weeks after Warcraft III: Reforged launched, there were promises to fix the bugs and include the missing content, but even eighteen months after the promise, these are still not addressed.

An Activision Blizzard spokesman responded saying they offered „no question-asked refunds” for the game, adding that „the central issue with Warcraft 3: Reforged was an early, unclear vision and misalignment about whether the game was a remaster or a remake. This led to other challenges with the scope and features of the game, and communication on the team, with leadership and beyond, which all snowballed closer to launch. Developers across Blizzard pitched in to help, but ultimately bug fixing and other tasks related to the end of development couldn’t correct the more fundamental issues.”

Meanwhile, several outlets have announced that they are going to halt coverage of Activision Blizzard’s products altogether. „We’re going to stop covering Activision and Blizzard games until there’s some real change and this gaslighting bollocks ends. We’ll cover the ongoing news regarding the current story, but we won’t be covering the games,” Kirk McKeand, the editor-in-chief of The Gamer, wrote on Twitter. The gaslighting bollocks is a reference to what Fran Townsend (who joined Activision Blizzard in March), the executive vice president of corporate affairs, wrote in an internal email.

„A recently filed lawsuit presented a distorted and untrue picture of our company, including factually incorrect, old, and out of context stories — some from more than a decade ago. We cannot let egregious actions of others, and a truly meritless and irresponsible lawsuit, damage our culture of respect and equal opportunity for all employees,” Townsend wrote.

Prima Games joined in shortly after, but they are not only using an „ActiBlizz-stop,” they also stop covering Ubisoft, who also had similar issues revealed last year: „In light of recent reports regarding allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination at Activision, Blizzard, and Ubisoft, Prima Games is putting a hard pause on coverage of all Activision, Blizzard, and Ubisoft content until further notice.”

And finally, GameXplain also put a stop to the company’s coverage: „In light of the horrific sexual harassment allegations brought against Activision Blizzard, we are suspending all coverage of Activision Blizzard games for the remainder of the year, and perhaps indefinitely, until the work culture has been demonstrably improved.”

This is shaping up nicely…

Source: Gamesindustry, Gamesindustry, Gamesindustry