How much Activision does it take to change a Blizzard?

That isn’t what Blizzard’s statement said at all. They said there were problems in the past, they took real steps to address them, and CA didn’t engage with them at all to validate that they had fixed the problems. Also that the suicide they referenced was not related to abuse at work.

Now is all that true? Who knows? That will assumedly come out in court. But lets not misconstrue what they said.

@stusser the response literally says:

Activision is absolutely whining that they’re being waah waah driven out of California by BIG GOVERNMENT. Fuck 'em.

Indeed it does, and if the rest of the statement is accurate that is a defensible statement for them.

But the lawsuit isn’t about whether Activision/Blizzard is running a good clean show right now. It’s that they didn’t in the past. A/B hypothetically getting their shit together and not being a toxic cesspool anymore isn’t relevant.

Ubisoft coming in with a strong slopping of scummery as well!

I’m not a lawyer, but the complaint says its an enforcement action, which I read as saying “You’re breaking the law now and we’re going to force you to fix that.” If I got that wrong, then well, I guess I got it wrong!

Reading the whole thing they do ask for both compensatory and punitive damages, so maybe “we’re all good now” isn’t a defense. Really need an attorney to comment.

Afrasiabi was so known to engage in harassment of females that his suite was nicknamed the “Cosby Suite” after alleged rapist Bill Cosby.

jfc

You missed the misspelling, they called him Crosby. Bill Crosby is a delightful children’s musician who doesn’t seem rapey at all and likely thought long and hard about changing his name.

https://www.billcrosbymusic.com/

Yeah I fixed it when I cut/paste

It wasn’t the same woman where they passed around nudes of her at a company party?

People are still trying to excuse Blizzard and Activision being separate companies when the merger occurred over a decade ago.

The discovery for this is going to be brutal. People don’t realize that deleting your email doesn’t really delete it. They are going to hoover up a ton of damning evidence.

This is also not likely to just end in a fine. I’ve been involved in a situation the AG’s office came down on someone for. Now, the AG isn’t involved, but you can expect a court-ordered independent audit and documentation of sustained business process change if they lose.

It was.

I thought so. Trying to claim her suicide had no relation to work abuse is utter BS.

Several news stories said it was, but if you read the complaint it does not say nor imply it. The women who killed herself was on a business trip with a male supervisor who brought a buttplug and lube. I’m not sure why that was pertinent, that he was planning to take a roadtrip down the Hershey highway, and they don’t actually say the executive harassed her either, which read really weird. Maybe he liked to put a plug in when pleasuring himself, who knows?

https://aboutblaw.com/YJw

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Doesn’t sound remotely like a “thing in the past”.
Especially that last part that says they’re still doing it.

Edit:
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It says

Specifically, at a holiday party before her death, male co-workers were alleged to be passing around a picture of the deceased’s vagina.

Specifically. Blizzard culture specifically contributed to this woman’s death.

Where is that? Annoyingly the “PDF” is just a bunch of pictures so you can’t search the damn thing.

Paragraph 48

Ahh thank you. So it was the same person, and the supervisor did intend to sodomize her on vacay. It doesn’t say that was non-consensual, but it’s inappropriate to date your subordinates due to inequal power etc.