Thursday, July 22, 2021

My Life As A Gamer: Blizzard Sued By California Over Harassment

As reported by Bloomberg Law yesterday, the State of California has sued Blizzard Entertainment over sexual harassment and a hostile work environment.

Video game giant Activision Blizzard Inc., maker of games including World of Warcraft and Diablo, fosters a “frat boy” culture in which female employees are subjected to constant sexual harassment, unequal pay, and retaliation, according to a lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

A two-year investigation by the state agency found that the company discriminated against female employees in terms and conditions of employment, including compensation, assignment, promotion, and termination. Company leadership consistently failed to take steps to prevent discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, the agency said.

According to the complaint, filed Tuesday in the Los Angeles Superior Court, female employees make up around 20% of the Activision workforce, and are subjected to a “pervasive frat boy workplace culture,” including “cube crawls,” in which male employees “drink copious amounts of alcohol as they crawl their way through various cubicles in the office and often engage in inappropriate behavior toward female employees.”

Which immediately brought to mind all of the virtue signalling Blizzard has done in recent years, along with the high-profile senior employees getting out of there, and how guillible some (those that are not Death Cultists) have been regarding it.

The legal documents on file are linked to in the linked article, but I think they may be paywalled one way or another. I have sent word of them to Nick Rekieta, who is aware of the suit and will likely cover it on his channel tonight or tomorrow.

This is not your usual he-said/she-said. This is a suit brought by a government agency after a lengthy undercover investigation. That means that there will be covert recordings enterted as evidence demonstrating alledged behaviors. That means that people now no longer with the company will be served, deposed, and called to testify. That means that people who thought they dodged a bullet will begin to scramble to cover their asses. Meanwhile, the dogpiling of accusations has begun now that the news broke.

II is unsurprising that we've seen previously with overly-performative virtue signallers again proves to be true: it's all one big DARVO gaslighting scam, and Blizzard's own PR statement isn't refuting that framing one bit.

As much as I am willing to let Due Process play out, I am reminded that every previous example of Performative Wokeness has been revealed as camoflage for predatory behavior.

Not that this lawsuit, even if successful, will actually solve the problem; that requires a solution that the West is unwilling to accept. The corporation--all institutions--sees this as a Public Relations problem, an optics problem, and nothing more. They will do nothing other than yet more performative pretending in order to sucker the population back to sleep and compliance- just like the recent performative purging in the Hellmouth didn't do anything of substance. At the very least, however, you can stop giving them your money.

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