"Frat boy culture" cited as serious factor for pay disparity, sexual harassment.

On Wednesday, a California State agency filed a lawsuit against the game publisher Activision Blizzard over allegations of rampant sexual discrimination and sexual harassment. The nature of this harassment is so widespread, the lawsuit says, that women who have worked for the game maker "almost universally confirmed that working for Defendants was akin to working in a frat house"—which, according to this lawsuit, means a workplace full of inebriated men who sexually harassed their female colleagues without being punished for it.

The 29-page lawsuit claims that across the entire corporation, pay disparity led to women receiving "less total compensation than their male counterparts while performing substantially similar work." It includes multiple alleged examples of Activision Blizzard slowing promotions for women in favor of male counterparts, even when those women had longer tenures and a superior review record at the company, and added that women of color were "particularly targets of Defendants' discriminatory practices."

A direct report to Blizzard’s president
The full lawsuit includes a lengthy list of violations of both sexual discrimination and sexual harassment statutes, including many that single out unnamed Activision Blizzard staffers, and they range from explicit to repugnant. The lawsuit describes one particularly extreme example of alleged harassment—and says the sufferer eventually took her own life.

Multiple company executives are mentioned by name in the filing. Blizzard Entertainment President J. Allen Brack allegedly received a direct report from an employee in "early 2019" that staffers were quitting the company over "sexual harassment and sexism." The report pointed directly to the company's battle.net online service team, where "women who were not 'huge gamers' or 'core gamers' and not into the party scene were excluded and treated like outsiders."

A former senior creative director at the company's World of Warcraft division allegedly had a reputation at Blizzard's annual BlizzCon event for hitting on female colleagues; he was so aggressive that "supervisors had to intervene and pull him off female employees." Brack is named in these allegations for giving the director nothing more than a "slap on the wrist" after each incident.

And one Activision CTO, not identified by name, was allegedly seen "groping inebriated female employees at company events" and allegedly hired women based on their looks.

The lawsuit alleges a long and detailed history of Activision Blizzard not responding to official complaints filed by affected staffers. Those complaints were allegedly not kept confidential, and the lawsuit claims those complainants were subject to subsequent retaliation, which came in the form of layoffs, unwanted department transfers, and denied career advancements.

Company response: “Unaccountable State bureaucrats”
Activision Blizzard issued a statement following the lawsuit, going so far as to accuse California State's Department of Fair Employment and Housing of "distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past." After claiming that the DFEH didn't engage in "good faith discussions" prior to filing its suit, it then called the suit "irresponsible behavior from unaccountable State bureaucrats that [is] driving many of the State’s best businesses out of California."

The damages sought by the DFEH include those based on women's pay disparity, and while Activision Blizzard's statement includes claims that it "strive[s] to pay all employees fairly for equal or substantially similar work," it doesn't acknowledge any possible issue of pay disparity in the company's past, nor how the company might have rectified prior violations of California state law.

Activision Blizzard is far from alone in terms of sexual harassment allegations in the video games industry—as seen in recent examples at Ubisoft, EA, and Riot Games."

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/ca-state-agency-sues-activision-blizzard-alleges-discrimination-against-women/

2 years ago

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Blizzards' reaction.

2 years ago
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Drive them out of the United States.

2 years ago
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"irresponsible behavior"

Riiiight

View attached image.
2 years ago
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Game industry employees in the San Francisco Bay area have reported their wages being to low to afford eating in their companies' cafeterias.
Here's a little more info on the case:
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-blizzard-sued-by-california-over-frat-boy-culture

2 years ago
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The suit also points to a female Activision employee who took her own life while on a company trip with her male supervisor. The employee had been subjected to intense sexual harassment prior to her death, including having nude photos passed around at a company holiday party, the complaint says

WHAT. THE. FUCK?!

2 years ago
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2 years ago
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some other articles also noted that the male supervisor bought lube and anal beads with him to the company trip :(
genuinely such disgusting behaviour, the whole thing makes me want to vomit.

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2 years ago
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Good, fuck Activion-Blizzard and fuck companies in general

2 years ago
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The suit also points to a female Activision employee who took her own life while on a company trip with her male supervisor. The employee had been subjected to intense sexual harassment prior to her death, including having nude photos passed around at a company holiday party, the complaint says.

Diminishing this by using a "frat-boy culture" term is pretty tame, to say the least

2 years ago
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horrible not gonna lie, but I never understand why anyone gives out nude pictures if they then hate stuff like this. Just dont give out stuff you dont want to go public to anyone

2 years ago
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"horrible not gonna lie, but I'm just gonna victim blame a little bit."

2 years ago
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i did not. I am just saying in general. I dont understand why so many send nude pictures to anyone. You just create a risk that is just unnecessary. But looks like u are one of those that thinks everyone is bad

2 years ago
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You could just as easily say instead that people shouldn't be pieces of shit and leak someone's nudes. Your view is definitely blaming the victim for giving them out in the first place. I'm not starting an argument, just stating what you did-- this is what victim blaming looks like and how it works its way into the social subconscious.

i did not. I am just saying in general. I dont understand why so many send nude pictures to anyone.

Things don't require your personal understanding for validation. Do you need to understand how an internal combustion engine works before you decide to drive a car?

2 years ago*
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Just because the nude pictures exist, doesn't mean she took them, or shared them with her supervisor. Also, your inability to understand why anyone would send nudes, or consider that the employee might previously have been been a model, or the victim of blackmail, or any one of a hundred other things, doesn't change the situation in any way, or make her supervisor's behaviour in any way acceptable.
You may think otherwise, but doctorofjournalism is correct: you are victim blaming.

2 years ago
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I understand what she's saying. As a woman, I would never share nude images of myself. Now you can put it down to immaturity or naivety on the woman's part. But I do think that there needs to be some education around this. Young men being taught that this behaviour is more than not okay, and young women being taught to protect themselves and not feel pressured into giving ANYONE nude images.

There will always be bad people in the world. I say this as a victim of a very scary incident myself. I was followed from work by 4 men in a car at 6pm when it was dark in winter. I caught onto them in time and went to a nearby house. So, there is no way I would put any blame on a victim. I know exactly how that could have turned out for me. We just need to be vigilant and aware that the world can be a really shitty and sometimes scary place.

2 years ago
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Right, vigilance is important as is teaching people not to do nefarious acts (such as posting someone else's nudes). But language is also important, and it is phrasing such as that which allows victim blaming behaviors and attitudes to persist.

"This situation is horrible, but they shouldn't have put themselves in that position to begin with."

It's a slippery slope.

2 years ago
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Yeah, I get what you're saying now that I reread her words.

It really needs to start with school age people. There was an incident about 10 years ago where an Irish girl was bullied in an American high school and took her own life. She was pressured into sending a nude pic to a boy and he shared it. She moved schools and they made sure it would follow her there. It was really awful.

We really need to push it home among young people, that it's not okay. It's not going to make everyone behave, but if most people stood up against that behavior instead of joining in, or standing back and saying nothing then the bullies doing shit like this wouldn't have an audience, or a reason for doing it.

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I never said that's what happened. This wasn't even focused on this specific case. I am just saying in general i don't get the entire nude picture thing unless u don't care if everyone sees

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Well... I highly doubt that she just sent it to anyone. And I definitely think she cared if it was shared. Obviously someone she was dating from the workplace may have asked her for one, or took him himself during an intimate moment. Some people can be kinda scummy, and he probably made her feel like it was just for him and she may have felt like a prude if she said no. No, you shouldn't do that for someone you're just dating, but when people are young and silly, they do silly things. They feel pressure to please someone else that they like, and in the moment, they don't see the potential for what could happen.

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2 years ago
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The serial sexual assaulter named in the complaint is an acclaimed WoW designer, responsible for some of the most successful WoW content. This goes back 20+ years, before Blizzard even got acquired.

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2 years ago
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Ubisoft, now Activision, EA is next probably, TBH all companies that treat gamers like shit are obviously doing the same to their employees.
I am 99999999% sure that Take 2 will be on the radar too, starting from their CEO Zelnick who is definition of a dickhead!

2 years ago
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Not sure about EA or Take2, but Activision's CEO already lost a sexual harassment law suit 11 years ago.

2 years ago
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What a sad state of affairs...
Ubisoft: We have the most widespread employee abuse!
Blizzard: Hold my beer.
Gamers: SHUT-UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!
They didn't even have the courtesy of releasing one of those phony "We promise to try to do better" blanket statements this time. I sure hope change is coming soon.

2 years ago
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