Xbox Chief Says He's Evaluating Relationship With Activision (bloomberg.com) 34
Microsoft's head of Xbox said he's "evaluating all aspects of our relationship with Activision Blizzard and making ongoing proactive adjustments," in light of the recent revelations at the video game publisher. From a report: In an email to staff seen by Bloomberg News, Phil Spencer said he and the gaming leadership team are "disturbed and deeply troubled by the horrific events and actions" at Activision Blizzard. He referred to the Wall Street Journal story earlier this week that said Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick knew of sexual harassment at the company for years and that he mistreated women.
"This type of behavior has no place in our industry," Spencer wrote. He joins a swell of outcry from employees to investors and shareholders in demanding a stronger response from the U.S.'s second-biggest gaming publisher. On Wednesday, Sony Group's PlayStation Chief Jim Ryan sent a similar note to staff, writing that he and his leadership were "disheartened and frankly stunned to read" that Activision "has not done enough to address a deep-seated culture of discrimination and harassment."
"This type of behavior has no place in our industry," Spencer wrote. He joins a swell of outcry from employees to investors and shareholders in demanding a stronger response from the U.S.'s second-biggest gaming publisher. On Wednesday, Sony Group's PlayStation Chief Jim Ryan sent a similar note to staff, writing that he and his leadership were "disheartened and frankly stunned to read" that Activision "has not done enough to address a deep-seated culture of discrimination and harassment."
That's rich (Score:1, Troll)
Re:That's rich (Score:4, Informative)
No, they are acting like a capitalist enterprise that doesn't want to offend their customers. Morality has nothing to do with it, this is about profit.
Re: (Score:2)
They are probably having trouble hiring good people now too.
Re: (Score:1)
I agree! This business of recognizing and promoting the fact that people are different from each other, the "woke bullshit" to which you are referring, needs to go. Workers should be nothing more than cogs in a machine, and any expression of individualism that threatens the masculinity of that machine should be promptly rectified. We need to get back to when men can be men at work.
And in case anyone's sarcasm detector is defective, yes, the prior comments are 100% facetious.
Re: (Score:1)
you say that sarcastically, but i much prefer acting like a cog in the machine, i prefer people at work who do the same, i give 0 fucks about your individuality and i dont want to hear about it, or have to act like i care about it, i want to do my shitty job, to get my shitty pay cheque, that's it.
I hate having all the various trainings and meetings about inclusiveness, various pronoun changes etc.
I dont care about any of it, you tell me to call you Senior Poopy Pants and thast what i'll call you, if you w
Re: Woketards (Score:4, Insightful)
I prefer working with people without HR weirdos feeling the need to draw attention to race, sex, or sexuality. I miss the days when a black colleague was simply a colleague or a friend - not a representative of a collective based on arbitrary characteristics.
Re: (Score:2)
I miss the days when a black colleague was simply a colleague or a friend
I wish the previous generations hadn't been such assholes when it came to people that were "different" too, and maybe the pendulum wouldn't be swinging as far the other way as it is. But here we are. You can either roll with it, ignore it, or fight it. I, personally, am finding that "just roll with it" seems to be working for me. If I have to "suffer" through two hours of diversity training a year I chalk it up in the same column as the mandatory safety training I have to do. If you don't want to parti
Re:Woke Retards (Score:2)
I thought this was a parody at first:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Pascoea, can you point to which attendee you were:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
First video. Yeah, over the top, but I get it, whatever. I'm genuinely curious, what is is your interpretation of WHY they are doing what they are doing? (Referring to the people describing themselves.) And why you have a problem with that? Or is your issue with them acknowledging the indigenous?
Second video, none. Sorry to disappoint you, but you wouldn't have found me within 1000 yards of that room.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Who would have guessed a company named Blizzard would be full of snowflakes.
Dancing on the grave of Kotick's career (Score:2)
talk about screwing up (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you realize how badly you have to screw up for Microsoft to get involved in this? It means that Activision has generated so much negative press that Microsoft considers it a danger to the Xbox platform reputation.
What Activision has done is truly horrific and the culture in some of these game companies is worse than what I have seen in a construction site. This kind of behavior is not remotely okay. Ubisoft is guilty of the same things and should be getting this much negative press also.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok ... yet you admit that this behavior has been / still is pretty typically found in such places as construction sites. And nobody's seriously talking about refusing to purchase a new office building or home because of the desire not to support those behaviors, right?
I mean, this "double standard" is accepted for only two reasons I can think of. First? There's the fact that people really need construction. A "roof over your head" is considered a pretty basic human need, and nobody sane is going to stay hom
Re: (Score:2)
I said this was worse than what you find in construction sites. You tend to have a lot of catcalling, you have some level of abuse but not to the level shown in Activision and Ubisoft and you rarely see rape, especially a this kind of scale.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: talk about screwing up (Score:2)
Activision is a shitty publisher in a lot of ways, but you can't really hang this around their neck entirely. It appears as though most of the problems exist at Blizzard specifically, and that the problems may date back to before the Activision days.
You will notice that dev shops responsible for a lot of Activision's products are not involved - Infinity Ward, Raven, Treyarch, Sledgehammer, etc.
Translation into truthese: (Score:4, Funny)
we've determined that the time is right to jump on the bandwagon for pretending to have morality; so we're first attempting to register our 'discontent' to buy more time to see how this plays out
since A/B makes us a bundle of money, we have to give the appearance of being 'good' while adhering to our stockholder mandate to make money over all other concerns; we feel that a token response now might be enough to show the public that there's no need to take their money elsewhere and that we're one of the good guys
of course it goes w/out saying that we at MS also have a long history of dirtbaggery but with a distraction like this, not many will notice the hypocrysy
please go along with it so we can get everything we want
- Chief Shitting Bull
Posturing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Posturing (Score:2)
5 companies have successfully brought video game systems to market in the last 40 years. 1 of them now makes software only. Another was gutted. 3 remain.
You vastly overestimate Activision or underestimate how hard it is to break into the console market.
Re: Posturing (Score:1)
Re: Posturing (Score:2)
Um.
Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Raven, etc. are not caught up in this mess. What makes you think CoD has anything to do with this story?
This is Blizzard's problem. Worst thing Activision has done is ignore it from on high.
Re: (Score:2)
They won't stop Activision publishing stuff, but they might stop promoting their games. It will hardly affect Microsoft, they know everyone is going to buy the latest Call of Duty no matter how bad it is, and no matter how little they promote it.
It might be time for Activision to go away and a new brand take over. I won't be pressing F to pay respects.
Thing is that everyone already knew (Score:3)
Re: Thing is that everyone already knew (Score:2)
Whatever the case may be, nobody is invincible, and more often than not they learn this the hard way.
Re: (Score:3)
What happened was that until recently, Kotick was playing innocent - it was the actions of a few deranged people who are no longer with Activision. Except the truth was, he knew all along it was happening. And not just th
Brogrammer culture (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like the Brogrammer/Techbros culture is coming back to haunt Activision.
Did they seriously think in today's day and age that they were going to keep skating by engaging in this behavior?
It's amazing how people can set up such a reality distortion field for themselves that they don't see the speeding freight train coming tward them and they still think it's safe to stand on the tracks.
We see this everywhere; People feeling that they are invincible because nobody spoke up against them for a long time, until reality sneaks up and knocks them hard on their ass, harder than they would ever have expected. Many a big criminal empire boss went down this way.
Re: First Sony, now Microsoft. Is Nintendo next? (Score:2)
He lied to his investors. He might end up prison. It's very unlikely he'll remain as CEO of Activision.
But ... (Score:2)
that said Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick knew of sexual harassment at the company for years and that he mistreated women.
But ... how can women be mistreated if they don't exist as a separate group of persons?
I mean ... what about "men who menstruate"? What about "women with penises"? Did they get mistreated? I thought everyone was just whatever they woke up wanting to be today.
So, which is it? Are women a real group of people, who need special protection? Or is a dude in a dress a woman because he wants to be, and the women in the locker room don't need any protection from him, er, her, er, zhe? Because it can't be both.
Re: But ... (Score:2)
An absence of objective truth is a selling point of postmodernism. Itâ(TM)s why to normal people its output resembles the disjointed ramblings of a schizophrenic. These people have a worldview entirely divorced from reality.