Main point: I am going to be exiting my position in ATVI after reading some of the updates and leaked internal e-mails from both Activision executives and Blizzard Entertainment president J. Allen Brack (named in the lawsuit for giving Alex Afrasiabi a “slap on the wrist” regarding some of his behavior). It’s impossible to invoke change via the shareholder route since the vast majority of outstanding shares are held by institutional investors and fund managers (these groups normally do not deal with shareholder activism). And given how out of touch Activision’s “4-month into the job” Chief Compliance Officer Fran Townsend is (effectively doubling down on the defensive position they also issued in their PR), I can no longer in good faith conscious, remain invested in this company.
Brack himself sends out what I consider a gaslighting e-mail to staff the other day, making himself out to be one of the “non-bro” types while the reality is him being part of the problem by letting toxic colleagues (and likely a good friend) like Afrasiabi get away with his BS. What’s been happening at Blizzard Entertainment started a long time ago under what one can consider as under the original veterans watch (a lot of those folks came from the same era that I did; where it was originally very male dominated and bro-culture like). That includes co-founder and prior CEO Mike Morhaime, co-founder Frank Pearce, former executive Chris Metzen, and a host of other former Blizzard executives and senior management folks who have departed over the past decade.
Mike Morhaime himself posted an open letter regarding the lawsuit. To his credit, he apologizes for letting people down even though he tried to foster a better work environment (understanding that he knew it was not perfect). This is what corporate bureaucracy is like though when you get big enough that there are way too many layers in the executive and senior management ranks, resulting in this buffer zone between the CEO and the lower level employees. That still doesn’t excuse not having at least one ear on the corporate grapevine though (because there is literally no way folks like Morhaime could not have heard about some of these issues considering how long it has been going on prior to this 2 year long investigation). Additionally, HR at most major corporations aren’t really there for personnel (except the most standard stuff); they are there to protect corporate. Blizzard’s HR obviously failed many of their employees in this area but the blame also goes to long time veterans who let things slide.
The gaming industry needs a huge day of reckoning on so many different levels besides this; their disregard for customers (exemplified by poor business practices when it comes to how games are monetized and how customer service and support is stretched to their limits) has its roots in this toxic behavior and culture. They only remain in business because way too many players (the customers) put up with it rather than voting with their wallet. I’m not sure if this will be a seminal moment (I doubt it will because I don’t see many calling for Bobby Kotick to step down). As for Blizzard Entertainment, the once pristine brand and the facade it had (even if it was just an illusion in recent years), is now completely broken. Brack is NOT the right person to lead Blizzard out of this morass. He came from where a lot of this toxicity was brewing (the core World of Warcraft team). The company needs to clean house at the senior management and executive level else the root of the problem will remain (this applies to other companies in the game industry).
UPDATE: MOP has comprehensive coverage about this with people calling out Morhaime (and Pearce). So yes, as stated above, the folks who came from that early era, are in fact responsible for some of these long running issues (and they all turned a blind eye to it internally, while putting on this faux facade during events like BlizzCon). These guys when they were younger, came from that early male dominated gorilla cage called the 8-bit PC and geeks who wrote the games they wanted to play culture. They grew up into adults still harboring that internally where it manifested itself in the real world.
This sheds a completely new light on Morhaime’s new company, Dreamhaven. All this is doing is moving the same toxic bro-culture from a megacorp to something smaller (representing Blizzard when it was smaller). There needs to be accountability; not a bunch of now very well off people trying to salvage their reputations. Folks like Morhaime and Pearce (two of the three original founders) can go screw themselves.
UPDATE 2: The issue of boycotting everything Activision and everything Blizzard, is naturally a personal one. Some say that completely innocent people (like the ones lower in the organizational hierarchy) would be impacted by wide ranging boycotts that end up having an actual material impact. Let me put it this way first; even when the company is raking in record profits, company execs still find ways to lop off their workforce at the low end (they are considered expendable from their lofty executive suite). Additionally, I will say that despite the extremely bad look and high potential for actual fall out from the lawsuit, I also have doubts that these boycotts will actually having that large of an impact (too many players will not give up on their favorite IP’s while other players do not even keep track of this type of news).
That (the higher level management and execs skating) is what I do not want to personally support going forward (to be part of the continual funding of their paychecks which is afforded to them by paying everyone else chump change). I know folks like myself fall in the minority when looking at it that way (versus the other part of the boycott crowd).
