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XBox (Games)

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."

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Xbox Chief Says He's Evaluating Relationship With Activision

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  • Microsoft acting like some kind of arbiter of morality.
  • Bobby "Packaged Goods" Kotick own this mess and I am thoroughly enjoying the demise of one of the key bad guys of the gaming industry.
  • by Ambassador Kosh ( 18352 ) on Thursday November 18, 2021 @04:15PM (#62000185)

    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)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 )

      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

      • 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.

      • Two points that mostly agree with you. Abuse of authority on a large scale with greater power disparity *is* different than abuse of authority on a small scale (especially with the conspiracy and coverup). And second, most people aren't empowered to do anything to stop this behavior in construction (being a rich-people service), but they are able to stop buying and playing Activision Blizzard games.
    • 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.

  • by jm007 ( 746228 ) on Thursday November 18, 2021 @04:42PM (#62000241)

    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)

    by RegistrationIsDumb83 ( 6517138 ) on Thursday November 18, 2021 @04:46PM (#62000257)
    I am no supporter of Kotick but no way is Microsoft going to leave all that Call of Duty money on the table. I'm no fan of it, but that thing sells systems and they know it. Activision could make their own console and it'd be a viable existential threat to Xbox.
    • Activision could not make a new console anytime before 2024.
    • 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.

      • And one of them sells systems at a loss just to keep their operating system software relevant for the game development industry and to be able to set standards for said game environments.
    • 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.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday November 18, 2021 @04:56PM (#62000277)
    That Bobby was a psychopath. And not just because he was a CEO. He was famous in the game industry for being an absolutely horrible person. I'm not sure what triggered everyone that finally start giving a damn about that. My guess is they were in danger of losing staff they actually needed.
    • Whatever the case may be, nobody is invincible, and more often than not they learn this the hard way.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      That Bobby was a psychopath. And not just because he was a CEO. He was famous in the game industry for being an absolutely horrible person. I'm not sure what triggered everyone that finally start giving a damn about that. My guess is they were in danger of losing staff they actually needed.

      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)

    by Malays2 bowman ( 6656916 ) on Thursday November 18, 2021 @05:38PM (#62000379)

    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.

  • 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.

    • 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.

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

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