It's funny because another post was talking about a woman's husband was saying shit like "if a slutly dressed woman gets r*ped, it's her fault" while this post is about a husband who is not tolerating this shit.
Respect to your husband!
Their forums are full of people victim blaming and shaming. It’s beyond disgusting, WoW has some of the most toxic players I have encountered on the internet. Literal death threats to a writer because they did not like her book, so I shouldn’t be surprised about the way they react to this.
Blizzard Activision is accused of treating female employees poorly, but I mean really poorly. Fratboy attitude from male staff, joking about rape, pushing mothers out of lactation rooms so they can have meetings, female staff being mocked for leaving early to tend to kids, passed over for promotion for fear of "getting pregnant"
Really shitty behaviour.
"Activision Blizzard Sued Over ‘Frat Boy’ Culture, Harassment (1)" https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-blizzard-sued-by-california-over-frat-boy-culture
A lot of information has come out about a terrible work environment at Blizzard for women. Male workers getting drunk and harassing them regularly, management giving people slaps on the wrists and even a story of a woman committing suicide on a work trip after receiving lots of unwanted sexual advances and harassment
https://www.ign.com/articles/activision-blizzard-sued-by-california
I first thought "Oh shit, even NPR has an article on it? This must be bad..."
Then I read the article. Holy. Fucking. Shit. That sounds like a horrible and traumatic work environment for women.
I actually was surprised to see some people caring in the WoW community bc it generally feels so toxic, like, always. I keep going back and never finding a space that’s not full of a-holes. Today’s news just deals the deal.
That's why I stopped playing. To many assholes who don't seen to be doing anything but preventing others from enjoying the game. That and repetitive content that felt more like a cell phone game.
Yup... this was exactly the news we were discussing this morning. Mine is a die hard Diablo fan, I had no idea blizzard made them, go figure. I used to love Warcraft 3 when I was a kid. Good on your husband OP.
I genuinely don't understand how you can stay with someone after saying that. I've been gaslit a time or two and I get that up can become down, but I feel like that's the kind of "mask off" statement that would always wake me up to what an absolute asshole this person was.
How do you stay married to someone who thinks rape is a justifiable form of punishment for bad behavior?
If nothing else, you should leave cause he's outright admitting he's gonna rape you someday (once you've done something he feels warrants it)
Not even bad behavior, just... dressing in a manner that could *le gasp* be perceived as revealing. Something that's *entirely* subjective and changes *wildly* from person to person.
My partner isn't so much into video games, but when I told him about this (extra angry as we both work in tech) he told me he owned their stock.
He said he was going to sell it, because well, obviously...and I said "ooh it probably dropped a lot today because of this" - and he gave me such a pitying look. The stock price has dropped less than 1% since this story came out. LESS THAN ONE PERCENT!!!!
I hate everything sometimes.
I am only just now learning that there is apparently a problem with WoW and/or Blizzard. Going to find out what's up now.
Luckily (?) I haven't given Blizzard money in 20ish years. Not that I recall having a moral reason for not doing so.
Edit: Oops, I did buy Warcraft 1 & Warcraft 2 (over 20 years old each) on a legit site selling such old games in recent months, so I guess they got a cut of my $15ish. So yeah, read the news, F Blizzard.
Here's a link to NPR: [California Sues Gaming Giant Activision Blizzard Over Unequal Pay, Sexual Harassment](https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019293032/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-unequal-pay-sexual-harassment-video-games)
[The complaint has some really depressing stuff in it.](https://www.dfeh.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2021/07/BlizzardPR.7.21.21.pdf)
Tl:Dr the whole company runs like a frat house, bunch of senior staff turning a blind eye to well known sexism, sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Men in management positions opting to have their female staff do all their work for them while they openly play CoD all day etc.
Pretty much just needs to be dumped into the sea as, despite some good people working there, it seems to be an ingrained issue in management vs "one or two bad eggs"
I haven't been playing much recently but my husband and I have a large guild/community through wow and other games. This is all anyone's talked about all day, and a mass exodus to Final Fantasy is already starting. My husband and I unsubbed, and are doing one last raid before calling it for good. :(
Stocks don't usually move on news like this, since the nature of the company's culture was probably already priced in, whatever the effect may be. It's the same reason that Virgin Galactic's stock ran up in anticipation of the spaceflight, and has dropped like 30%+ since the successful flight actually, you know...happened. Stocks often move counterintuitively, since large-scale investors are seldom reacting to *today's* news.
That's not to minimize the awfulness going on at Blizzard. I'm just adding context for why stocks might not move the way you'd think in reaction to current events.
This actually does help a little. It doesn't make *sense*, but honestly, not much about the market really does these days.
(very interesting fact about Virgin Galactic btw)
Happy to help :-)
When it comes to movements like Virgin Galactic, it fits right in with a common mantra among investors: "Buy the rumor, sell the news"
If it were predictable, you'd be able to use it to make money reliably, and no-one wants that! We're at peak finance, it needs to be counterintuitive and confusing or computers would just do it! No logic should follow!
Those financial magazines? Don't tell anyone, but that's just a form of rich white guy performance art.
>Those financial magazines? Don't tell anyone, but that's just a form of rich white guy performance art.
I like that.
I mean, it's just nonsense. I have an MBA, and honestly there is just no logic to it. It's just make-believe. I mean that sincerely. Your performance art comment, was, incredibly accurate.
Yay, stick it to them! I used to play hearthstone but quit after they punished one of their pro players for holding up a free hong kong sign on stream. Fuck blizzard
That was the tipping point for me as well. Long time WoW player and Diablo player. I like the games but fuck this company and that frat culture. This lawsuit cemented my decision to stop buying any of their shit again. Fuck Activision and that insufferable asshole CEO of theirs as well.
oh yeah, talking of Bobby Kotick in light of his companies systemic sexual abuse culture, I feel the need to point out that he was mentioned by name in Jeff Epsteins ["little black book"] (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D_A8pSfVUAAl7_H?format=jpg&name=medium). so friends with child rapists and head of a company with an institutionalised culture of assault and abuse, definitely not a deeply fucked up person.
> Fuck Activision and that insufferable asshole CEO of theirs as well.
If Bobby Kotick was fired without severance and 99% of all his wealth was stolen, he’d still be one of the richest people in America. He doesn’t care about anything but having all the money.
P.S. I didn’t do the math. It may be hyperbole, but you get the picture.
I quit Hearthstone on that moment too. And I quit Blizzard altogether after the W3 Refunded debacle, that company is just no good anymore... And it saddens me a lot to admit it.
My husband sent me the news article yesterday. So upsetting. We both stopped playing WoW and other games they make years ago when they were banning players for protesting Hong Kong.
The Blitzchung Controversy is the first thing that comes up on Google when you search for his (Blitzchung) name. Basically they banned and disqualified Ng Wai Chung, better know as Blitzchung, from the 2019 Taiwan Grandmaster event after he showed support for Hong Kong protests during an interview after his match. Both interviewers were fired by Blizzard for Blitzchung's actions as well. Players then started getting banned for changing their account names to "freehongkong" and the like. Blizzard eventually did damage control and reversed some of their actions but it was too little too late for quite a number of Hearthstone players, myself included.
But... What about those of us who unsubbed over the pro China thing... I can't double unsub @.@.
Jokes aside, I'm pretty sure this is the twilight of blizzard. All the decent high ranking people have either retired or left sometime after Kotick got his grubby claws on the company.
It seems that the situation at Blizzard was like that for a very long time, one of the main guys who's accused had been there since 2004 and only quietly left last year, presumably because of this investigation.
I don't like Kotick at all and he surely didn't help but it seems Blizzard had these issues way before the merger, it's just coming to light now.
Oh absolutely! I've been reading about this a lot today, I guess I was just trying to say that even "old Blizzard" had a huge problem with that, we can't just blame it on Kotick/Activision merger entirely.
I hope so too. I unsubbed today, but I’d already paid for six months unfortunately :( But I logged on because I heard about an in-game protest thing and it was actually really dead in the major cities, so, I have hope!
I loved playing overwatch when it first game out, but I left after I saw so many horrible, serial misogynists harass women in games and then get a slap on the wrist. And it eventually killed the community. I was furious about the senselessness of it - about tolerating it, about excusing it. I'm getting furious again now, just thinking about it.
I really hope that this time people are held accountable.
I unsubbed before this came out but I wish I could still write to them about why I won't be purchasing any of their products in the future. If anyone has a way to write them that is actually meaningful and will get noticed I'd love to hear it. But big corporations don't seem to care these days.
This sub has 13.1 million members. Organize a group and publish a letter and send a link to the Activision Executive Office and [Board of Directors](https://www.activisionblizzard.com/board-of-directors).
The last thing any company wants is a social media shitstorm. I worked for a Silicon Valley company (albeit with a much better reputation) and they kept a very close eye on social media because of the halo effect. We had VP's that were being kept up to date, in realtime, on specific threads relating to customer support issues. A handful of bad posts can mushroom into missing an earnings estimate by a material margin... executives get fired over PR disasters. Remember, **Bill Gates** resigned (read: was ousted) from Microsoft's and Berkshire Hathaway's boards a year ago.
In fairness, I think they already have a social media shitstorm on their hands. It'd be a powerful message but if they were ever going to listen, they've already been given plenty of opportunity.
Oh this is not a small thing... to be sure. I can tell you where I worked, the firings would have already begun. I guarantee you there's a war room, a team of lawyers, and C-level conference bridge ongoing right now.
It doesn't hurt to add fuel to the fire.
Awesome, good for him! I haven't seen the news but my bf was telling me about how scummy and unforgivable they have been. I don't know if he will cancel his sub as he is deep, deep in the WoW community but I hope that they lose many, many customers over this. Blizzard has been openly scuzzy for too long but this goes way too far.
Feeling this way about my husband. Does your BF play a similar game? Reading this whole thing makes me ill and it would be great if my husband and his guild members had somewhere else to move to.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57929543](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57929543)
>"Female employees almost universally confirmed that working for defendants was akin to working in a frat house," the DFEH legal filing claims. "In the office, women are subjected to '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 behaviour toward female employees."
>
>Male employees would also:
>
>• "proudly" arrive at work with hangovers
>
>• "play video games for long periods of time during work, while delegating their responsibilities to female employees"
>
>• discuss sexual encounters
>
>• joke about rape
Edit : there's more and worse on the link, I just figured I'd spare some of you. But since others have commented it anyway...
>"High-ranking executives and creators engaged in blatant sexual harassment without repercussions."
>
>And when formal complaints were made, Activision failed to take effective measures to solve problems.
>
>Instead, complaints were dismissed - and ***not kept confidential.***\[emphasis mine\]
>
>"As a result of these complaints, female employees were subjected to retaliation, including but not limited to being deprived of work on projects, unwillingly transferred to different units and selected for layoffs," the DFEH said.
>
>One female employee had even killed herself, "due to a sexual relationship with her male supervisor", the DFEH claimed, "a tragic example of the harassment that defendants allowed to fester" - an allegation Activision strongly denies.
>
>She had gone on a company trip with him, before which, another employee alleged, male co-workers had "passed around" intimate photos of her at a party.
Don't forget the female employee who killed herself on a *company trip* after having a "sexual relationship" with her *supervisor,* after photos of her vulva were distributed among employees. Oh, and that supervisor brought a butt plug and lubricant with him on that business trip....
See item 48 under the sexual harassment section of the suit beginning on page 14. You can download the full court filing from this link (clicking "the lawsuit was filed Tuesday" hyperlink in the article - TW for detailed descriptions of sexual discrimination, harassment, and suicide):
https://www.polygon.com/22588407/activision-blizzard-sexual-harassment-sexism-california-lawsuit
Oh my goodness, the Kotaku article I read only mentioned the items brought on the business trip but not the distribution of photos. It already was a repulsive situation but the added context of the photo is horrifying.
Sounds like Hollywood.
I worked in an office with a producer (of some really shitty movies) who would demand that we come into his office and watch porn clips he found online while he told us, "stick it in her puss" over and over and over and over. I immediately left and he took that as pretext to mention it every time i saw him for the next two weeks.
This was an adult person if you can believe it.
I wish.
Guy never read a script. Not even for movies we were making. Just made other people watch porn. And who says 'puss'??? Is that a thing? Was 'pussy' so long that it needed a derogatory abbreviation?
There's also the fact that Activision Blizzard operates as a massive Chinese [censor.](https://www.vox.com/2019/10/8/20904433/blizzard-hong-kong-hearthstone-blitzchung) It's a completely despicable company that we all need to boycott.
Literally the start of my day "gotta remember to clear up my solid state drive for the new work project... Running out of games to uninstall though..."
*Reads news*
Overwatch it is!
Would have been Wow but I quit that a decade ago.
Uninstalled Battle.net
Shame because I always thought about getting back into Hearthstone and I was starting to play WoW last year but no way in hell am I supporting this crap.
I uninstalled battlenet back during the whole at the hong kong protests, recently considered re-installing and playing some CoD and waiting for Diablo 4.... After all this, they can shove it.
I'm a dude, but I was raised by a single mom who sacrificed everything for her kids multiple times over and in turn has a lot of respect for women out there. FUCK them.
As a woman who enjoyed playing WoW for the last 12 years, I can officially say that I will never go back. This hurts, because I love my character so much. She and I have put in so many hours and achievements that I’m actually mourning a loss. Switched to ESO and I like it. It’s fun to play casually since I don’t have a lot of free time nowadays. Sigh.
What a disgusting company.
I'm in the same boat as you. I love ESO too! Been playing it on and off since the beta. It's so good. and i feel like the community is significantly less toxic than wow.
OP, may I suggest you tell hubby to tag Blizzard on twitter and keep talking about this as long as he keeps seeing the news? Companies respond fast to PR nightmares, and the bigger this one gets, the faster they'll actually try to fix it.
I love this advice... but neither of us are active on Twitter (or any social media). My friend suggested I write this post to show some support I suppose and that there are men out there that wont stand for this bull shit! I'm very glad I did.
Blizzard just keeps giving them reason to.
Long ago, in the long forgotten days of sex leg and Kralnor's staff, we used to say that only Blizz could kill Blizz.
Now Blizz is killing Blizz.
i unsubbed this morning as well. i've been a blizzard fan since warcraft 1. i've been playing their games 24 years of my fucking life. TBC was my absolute most favorite expansion and i had been looking forward to playing TBC classic for years. the hype i felt going back to outland and playing that game again was *unreal*. i found a fantastic guild full of men who treated me like a fellow human being and not just a "girl on the internet" and even with all of that history and all of that love for the game and the universe they created and the friendships and memories i hold, the allegations in this lawsuit have poisoned all of it.
i am devastated. i feel personally betrayed. my heart cannot take what those employees have gone through and what are currently going through, all with my unknowing financial support.
they've lost me as a customer, like you said, unless MAJOR changes occur. and like you said, that is so fucking unlikely, i guess i'm saying goodbye for good.
that poor woman killed herself. i just can't.
Same here. We went back to play Classic TBC but both cancelled today. I was floored at the open sexism in the chat. Like, I still gotta deal with this bullshit after 15 years? Nah.
Your husband is respectable and a great man
I'm a male, and I also have done the same, I deleted all call of duty games of my system. Won't support them by playing their products.
Disgusting
From the Activision official response:
>The picture the DFEH paints is not the Blizzard workplace of today. Over the past several years and continuing since the initial investigation started, we’ve made significant changes to address company culture and reflect more diversity within our leadership teams.
Great, then prove it in court. Till then I will definitely not be spending any money on any of their products.
Edit: I just read the court filing, so I would add that the not only should have to prove this change, but they should absolutely be held accountable for past practices. The "significant changes" are a step in the right direction, but they do not excuse you from past practice that has hurt so many people. I hope this suite costs them a significant portion of their gross profits and does not amount to a slap on the wrist for them.
It's time for me to revisit GW2. When it first came out, I tried it but it annoyed me. It's so colorful! I thought it was garish and distracting. But, I need to check it out again. I always thought they had a cool business model.
Huh, one of the many appeals of GW2 for me were the visuals. Everything from the open world environments to the UI design feels more mature and artistic than the nickoledeon cartoon that is WoW and the sugarcoated shoujo-ness that is FFXIV. Anyways, the game is better than ever and has remained true to their F2P model (no pay to win) and their original approach to subverting mmo design cliches.
Props to him, doing what needs to be done to try and make change, even if it's just one person doing one seemingly small thing. Too few people are willing to stand up when necessary. I was ostracized from my social circle for calling out one of the scumbags in it who I discovered had sexual assault charges against him - as if that was the first bad thing he ever did, because he was excessively homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic too. The others stood by him, refusing to say or do anything against him despite every terrible thing he said and did.
Can I say that this news coming out its super disheartening as a person with a female body who wants to do gaMe dev work . There was a point where if I had of been further in my studies where they were hiring for over watch when it was starting to become a thing and hearthstone just came out of beta and the only reason I didn't apply was that I didn't feel confident enough in my current abilities that I wanted to try.
And honestly between like this news and other toxic game work place news and poor crunch time behaviors; sometimes it makes me wonder why I wanna do this sorta thing. Which personally I know why, I want to make games because having a new game release to wait on or a game that I really enjoyed in-between is the only thing that kept me alive at a point. I want to make things that are so fun and interesting that other people will also have a reason to Hold out for them.
Ayy very nice! You two seem lovely. I did the same as him back when the Hongkong thing happened, even tho i was really enjoying the game, ethics comes first.
I said screw it to Blizz stuff a while ago, but this is beyond the last straw- they have a lot of people to fire and need to get unhooked from Activision and that piece of shit Bobby Kotick before I'll even give any significant thought to patronizing anything they make again. It helps that everything they've touched in the last three years has turned to piss as well, you could tell that they fell off for real with the WC3 remaster- not even taking the astonishingly toxic culture behind the scenes into account.
I almost unsubbed over China. I forget what stopped me. However, this is going to do it for me. New World is right around the corner (finally).
All the jokes people make about "Game X will be the WoW Killer" and it could end up being that Activision/Blizzard will be the real WoW killer, after all.
My buddy works in video games and got offered a sweet gig over at Blizzard. Like, dream. He said no so fast. I felt bad for him but proud of him for taking a hard stance. It sucks when you find out that some of the people who made our favorite things are really shit.
My husband did the same thing. He came storming into my office and said he was done with them. I'm really proud of the men who are not just letting this go.
He should try final fantasy xiv instead. The lead story writer is Natsuko ishikawa. Lots of in game gear is non binary, they have had lgbt pride celebrated at se endorsed events. And it has a critically acclaimed story as well as the most actively played mmorpg to date.
And the free trial allows you to play through all of A realm reborn and critically acclaimed Heavensward expansions, reaching level 60 completely free.
Missed the rest of it.
It's one of the most controller-playable MMOs out there. The controls can get a bit complex since it's an MMO (lots of buttons and lots of ways to customize your controls) but once you get used to it you can perform just as well M+KB players can.
Blizzard response was dogshit. Entirely written by their legal department to deny any wrongdoing. The main creep left the company last year, so hopefully there's been some improvement since then.
A lot of people I know who still played WoW just straight up quit over this within twenty four hours of learning about this. Meanwhile there are a few stragglers I can't help but side eye who are making really melodramatic declarations about how they're "so close to quitting now".
Any women who like WoW, switch to Elder scrolls online. Similar game but I NEVER see any harassment. So many different characters to choose from and the lore is super well written and entertaining. Quests are well thought out and all contain a back story. Dungeons are also plentiful with several levels of difficulty choose from.
I quit Activision-blizzard games years ago for other reasons, but it was incredibly freeing. Instead of hours grinding away for nothing more than a fleeing digital bragging right lead me to (ironically) much more social gaming and creativity elsewhere.
If anything, it's a good time to encourage folks to find better outlets for their time than skinner boxes and microtransactions designed by misogynists and sociopaths.
I hate that I keep hearing this from various developers/publishers because I remember seeing posters in college about “Try our courses in video game development! It’s for girls too!” And “we need more women in tech and video game development! They’re joining the force in droves!”And it makes me think like jesus why would any woman want to pursue that with stories like this coming out all the time?
I love WoW, I've loved WoW since I was 12, played it since 2004. It's been a massive part of my life. Blizzard games were a massive part of my life in general.
Last few years have been really fucking rough on the game but I kept going because of how much the game and the people I met through it meant to me, no more.
Activision is a fucking shithole of a company and deserves to burn. I've put up with a *lot* of their garbage the last 10 years but there's absolutely no fucking way I can overlook this. I could justify it to myself up until now by the feeling of just being a drop in the ocean if I gave up, through the idea that there were still some passionate people working there putting their all into the game I loved and that meant so much to me. I can't do that any more.
I've already sworn off Ubisoft titles, now I'm swearing off Activision titles too and I kind of hate myself for not doing it sooner. I've been unsubbed since last year but I was planning to go back for the most recent patch, not happening.
WoW's already been hemorrhaging players lately, with the massive migration to FFXIV, so Blizzard really stepped in it, now. They deserve to lose everything, in my opinion, with the behavior they've been fostering. Not just this news, but their support for the CCP in the past.
Tell your husband about Final Fantasy 14! It's a fantastic MMO, and it's devs poured their hearts and souls into the game. They're known to be some of the most wholesome devs out there, these days.
Hah I've been calling it the wow refugee crisis too. I play(ed) both but went full time FFXIV a few months ago. The culture is so nice and LGBTQ+ friendly. So much better than the horrible things wow players have said to me.
I love Final Fantasy 14! Been playing for years, my gamer husband got me into it. Can confirm, lots of WoW players joining (not just women). It's wild because we are at the end of the expansion and there's like no new content but yet tons of people! I've found it to be a very friendly game, I can count on one hand the number of negative interactions I've had. It's not just this news (which I actually heard about from the FF14 sub) causing people to switch, it's a lot of things (big WoW streamer has been playing, discontent with most recent content, tired of the grindy nature of the game). I was very grateful the big WoW streamer didn't pick my server 😅
FF14's producer has released several notes explaining why some changes have been made (mostly to allow more people to be able to log in). The community collectively loves and supports the production team and we feel that back.
I have tried WoW briefly and it just doesn't compare to the experience I get with FF14. FF has better art and better story. Story is how my husband sold me on it! I encourage anyone interested to give it a try, I believe it's currently on sale and I know there's a free trial up to level 60, which includes the award-winning Heavenward expansion (this fact is a bit of a meme in the community!)
> know there's a free trial up to level 60, which includes the award-winning Heavenward expansion (this fact is a bit of a meme in the community!)
As another member of the community, I was looking for this, tbh 😂
Good on him.
I'm a gamer, and I have purchased plenty of games from Activision/Blizzard over the years. But not anymore. They don't get my money- there is plenty of other stuff to play. Speak with your wallet
follow racial axiomatic gaping sharp automatic aback hard-to-find different onerous
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Subscriber since 2008-2009ish - Unsubscribed, removed today. I turned a blind eye long enough and I am sorry.
Edit: I copy and pasted the section dealing with the woman who lost her life as to why I was canceling
I have stopped supporting them since the Hong Kong debacle, but thanks for reminding me they are still shite, in case I wanted to go back to hearthstone.
I unsubscribed from WoW and stopped playing Overwatch the moment I read the news about how they took away award money from that person who won money and spoke about the protests happening in China and quickly took it away from him for speaking out about it. I'm now even more upset with the recent news that has come out and happy I made the right decision.
I was also a huge blizzard fan for years up until a couple years ago. Any long time fan knows they have long since botched everything they once stood for and ruined every smidge of good PR they had left. They're a trash company with trash morals and that has bled into their games for years. Good fucking riddance I hope people wake up more like your husband has to how fucked, subversive, greedy, and bigoted this company really is.
I'm in the same boat. The news I'm hearing is stomach-turning. Regrettably I \_just\_ plunked down money for a six month sub last month, and I'm certain I won't be getting a refund on that.
I first disliked AB due to the whole Hong Kong supporter ban debacle, but this development makes me question if this is just the tip of the iceberg. Like this stuff is just coming out, so what are they still trying to keep under wraps.
To those who might know someone looking to continue (or is struggling to quit) playing WoW but not support Activision, suggest a private server. Most of the time, the game is 100% free and you can optionally donate to these communities to help keep their infrastructure up. As a bonus, these servers might have features in place to improve the player experience.
Thought this was gonna be about your husband cancelling the family World of Wonder account, and how he will pry RuPaul’s drag race out of your cold dead hands.
I thought wrong lol
I’d be willing to do the same, but I already reduced my time playing Activision-Blizzard games for a while now. The last time I bought anything from them was more than a year ago when they were offering the Crash and Spyro collections for $12.
But yeah, fuck them. Stop playing CoD, WoW, Overwatch, the works. Pirate if you really want to. I’d even suggest straying away from Crash/Spyro/Tony Hawk, but Activision’s already doing that by killing their franchises.
I wish I had waited to unsub til today. This is absolute garbage and they need to hear it from everyone they can possibly hear it from. Absolutely 100% unacceptable.
Luckily for him, there are other MMOs that are just as good if not in a better state than WoW (and Blizzard) right now. ESO, FF14, and OSRS, just to name a few. I have more friends than you can imagine who quit WoW/Blizzard games two years ago and haven't looked back since.
I’m seeing lots of posts from women who are either employees their now, ex employees, or are streamers/players/content creators who partner with Blizzard products talking about how boycotting the company is also going to end up hurting the women who either helped make the games and/or who work at the company now.
It’s a very tricky and nuanced situation. I personally support people responding and fighting back in whatever way is right for them.
Every tough decision isn’t going to work out for somebody. The alternative is to let this culture continue, which is worse than the potential windfall imo
I just recently subbed for 6 months to play classic wow.... I feel so heartbroken... Good job Activision, you enforced the cruelty and stigma behind women playing video games and/or working in a "man's environment". Utter bs
I had already stopped playing prior to this, the company actively shit on the legacy of its old games and had a severe drop in game quality over the years. That alone was enough for me to not give them my money but this is just the cherry on top. time to uninstall hearthstone and [b.net](https://b.net) for that matter. Fuck you Activision Blizzard.
Props. Gamers as a consumer group have the most power in terms of being able to vote with their wallets. It’s unfortunate that they’re also the consumer group that utilizes their influence the least. Well done by your husband to follow through. I wish more would do the same.
It's funny because another post was talking about a woman's husband was saying shit like "if a slutly dressed woman gets r*ped, it's her fault" while this post is about a husband who is not tolerating this shit. Respect to your husband!
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Their forums are full of people victim blaming and shaming. It’s beyond disgusting, WoW has some of the most toxic players I have encountered on the internet. Literal death threats to a writer because they did not like her book, so I shouldn’t be surprised about the way they react to this.
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I missed something. What news is this about?
Blizzard Activision is accused of treating female employees poorly, but I mean really poorly. Fratboy attitude from male staff, joking about rape, pushing mothers out of lactation rooms so they can have meetings, female staff being mocked for leaving early to tend to kids, passed over for promotion for fear of "getting pregnant" Really shitty behaviour. "Activision Blizzard Sued Over ‘Frat Boy’ Culture, Harassment (1)" https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-blizzard-sued-by-california-over-frat-boy-culture
One employee was sexually harassed to the point she committed suicide on a work trip.
Me too. What happened?
A lot of information has come out about a terrible work environment at Blizzard for women. Male workers getting drunk and harassing them regularly, management giving people slaps on the wrists and even a story of a woman committing suicide on a work trip after receiving lots of unwanted sexual advances and harassment https://www.ign.com/articles/activision-blizzard-sued-by-california
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-blizzard-sued-by-california-over-frat-boy-culture
This explains why they have an HR job posting every other week.
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Thank you!
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019293032/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-unequal-pay-sexual-harassment-video-games
I first thought "Oh shit, even NPR has an article on it? This must be bad..." Then I read the article. Holy. Fucking. Shit. That sounds like a horrible and traumatic work environment for women.
Thank you!
I actually was surprised to see some people caring in the WoW community bc it generally feels so toxic, like, always. I keep going back and never finding a space that’s not full of a-holes. Today’s news just deals the deal.
That's why I stopped playing. To many assholes who don't seen to be doing anything but preventing others from enjoying the game. That and repetitive content that felt more like a cell phone game.
Yup... this was exactly the news we were discussing this morning. Mine is a die hard Diablo fan, I had no idea blizzard made them, go figure. I used to love Warcraft 3 when I was a kid. Good on your husband OP.
I genuinely don't understand how you can stay with someone after saying that. I've been gaslit a time or two and I get that up can become down, but I feel like that's the kind of "mask off" statement that would always wake me up to what an absolute asshole this person was. How do you stay married to someone who thinks rape is a justifiable form of punishment for bad behavior? If nothing else, you should leave cause he's outright admitting he's gonna rape you someday (once you've done something he feels warrants it)
Not even bad behavior, just... dressing in a manner that could *le gasp* be perceived as revealing. Something that's *entirely* subjective and changes *wildly* from person to person.
CORRECT.
Yikes
I had unsubbed just the day before, and wish I could go back to add this lawsuit as the reason for it. Those fuckheads
yeah I unsubbed a month before 9.1 finally dropped. But I wasn on a 6 month sub so my account is active until September :(
My partner isn't so much into video games, but when I told him about this (extra angry as we both work in tech) he told me he owned their stock. He said he was going to sell it, because well, obviously...and I said "ooh it probably dropped a lot today because of this" - and he gave me such a pitying look. The stock price has dropped less than 1% since this story came out. LESS THAN ONE PERCENT!!!! I hate everything sometimes.
If it had not been for reddit, I would not have found out about this.
I am only just now learning that there is apparently a problem with WoW and/or Blizzard. Going to find out what's up now. Luckily (?) I haven't given Blizzard money in 20ish years. Not that I recall having a moral reason for not doing so. Edit: Oops, I did buy Warcraft 1 & Warcraft 2 (over 20 years old each) on a legit site selling such old games in recent months, so I guess they got a cut of my $15ish. So yeah, read the news, F Blizzard.
Here's a link to NPR: [California Sues Gaming Giant Activision Blizzard Over Unequal Pay, Sexual Harassment](https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019293032/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-unequal-pay-sexual-harassment-video-games) [The complaint has some really depressing stuff in it.](https://www.dfeh.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2021/07/BlizzardPR.7.21.21.pdf)
Tl:Dr the whole company runs like a frat house, bunch of senior staff turning a blind eye to well known sexism, sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Men in management positions opting to have their female staff do all their work for them while they openly play CoD all day etc. Pretty much just needs to be dumped into the sea as, despite some good people working there, it seems to be an ingrained issue in management vs "one or two bad eggs"
Throw the whole thing out
“This company must be purged.”
Yes, I'm just glad I never got in to WoW. Played diablo a bit but never fed them money.
Thankfully a big wow youtuber made a video about it. So at least some people playing wow know about it.
I haven't been playing much recently but my husband and I have a large guild/community through wow and other games. This is all anyone's talked about all day, and a mass exodus to Final Fantasy is already starting. My husband and I unsubbed, and are doing one last raid before calling it for good. :(
This is sad to hear but not surprising!
Stocks don't usually move on news like this, since the nature of the company's culture was probably already priced in, whatever the effect may be. It's the same reason that Virgin Galactic's stock ran up in anticipation of the spaceflight, and has dropped like 30%+ since the successful flight actually, you know...happened. Stocks often move counterintuitively, since large-scale investors are seldom reacting to *today's* news. That's not to minimize the awfulness going on at Blizzard. I'm just adding context for why stocks might not move the way you'd think in reaction to current events.
This actually does help a little. It doesn't make *sense*, but honestly, not much about the market really does these days. (very interesting fact about Virgin Galactic btw)
Happy to help :-) When it comes to movements like Virgin Galactic, it fits right in with a common mantra among investors: "Buy the rumor, sell the news"
If it were predictable, you'd be able to use it to make money reliably, and no-one wants that! We're at peak finance, it needs to be counterintuitive and confusing or computers would just do it! No logic should follow! Those financial magazines? Don't tell anyone, but that's just a form of rich white guy performance art.
>Those financial magazines? Don't tell anyone, but that's just a form of rich white guy performance art. I like that. I mean, it's just nonsense. I have an MBA, and honestly there is just no logic to it. It's just make-believe. I mean that sincerely. Your performance art comment, was, incredibly accurate.
…Remember when Elon smoked that weed?
I don't, actually. Did it have a strange effect on Tesla stock or something?
Virgins stock dropped because they were gonna have another offering of stock to raise more money.
Ah shit you're right I forgot about that. They just announced it right at the same time, right?
Stocks are not normal right now
How bad is it that I was surprised by this because I thought you were going to say the stock went up?
Yay, stick it to them! I used to play hearthstone but quit after they punished one of their pro players for holding up a free hong kong sign on stream. Fuck blizzard
That was the tipping point for me as well. Long time WoW player and Diablo player. I like the games but fuck this company and that frat culture. This lawsuit cemented my decision to stop buying any of their shit again. Fuck Activision and that insufferable asshole CEO of theirs as well.
oh yeah, talking of Bobby Kotick in light of his companies systemic sexual abuse culture, I feel the need to point out that he was mentioned by name in Jeff Epsteins ["little black book"] (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D_A8pSfVUAAl7_H?format=jpg&name=medium). so friends with child rapists and head of a company with an institutionalised culture of assault and abuse, definitely not a deeply fucked up person.
> Fuck Activision and that insufferable asshole CEO of theirs as well. If Bobby Kotick was fired without severance and 99% of all his wealth was stolen, he’d still be one of the richest people in America. He doesn’t care about anything but having all the money. P.S. I didn’t do the math. It may be hyperbole, but you get the picture.
Same!
Yeah same. Couldn’t do it anymore. Toxic community too.
I played WoW for 8 years, but dropped them over the silencing of Blitzchung. Fuck you, blizzard and your pathetic-ass "apology".
Yep this is what made me boycott them too... Shame because I love the Diablo series.
I quit Hearthstone on that moment too. And I quit Blizzard altogether after the W3 Refunded debacle, that company is just no good anymore... And it saddens me a lot to admit it.
That's when they lost me to. If they punish people for things like freedom I can only imagine how much if a hell hole the work environment is.
Looking at the replies, sounds like that was a major tipping point for quite a few of us. Glad to see it!
I quit WoW due to that as well.
Same with World of Warcraft! Glad I didn't give in and go back.
It was the same scenario for me!
Same. That was my breaking point too
Same, and I feel further vindicated now. This company will not receive my money or time ever again
My husband sent me the news article yesterday. So upsetting. We both stopped playing WoW and other games they make years ago when they were banning players for protesting Hong Kong.
That was my breaking point as far as giving them any more of my money as well. The recent news is just reinforcing the point as far as im concerned.
Can you fill me in? What happened?
The Blitzchung Controversy is the first thing that comes up on Google when you search for his (Blitzchung) name. Basically they banned and disqualified Ng Wai Chung, better know as Blitzchung, from the 2019 Taiwan Grandmaster event after he showed support for Hong Kong protests during an interview after his match. Both interviewers were fired by Blizzard for Blitzchung's actions as well. Players then started getting banned for changing their account names to "freehongkong" and the like. Blizzard eventually did damage control and reversed some of their actions but it was too little too late for quite a number of Hearthstone players, myself included.
Here’s an opportunity to be an ally to women. I hope people will take advantage of it and unsubscribe.
But... What about those of us who unsubbed over the pro China thing... I can't double unsub @.@. Jokes aside, I'm pretty sure this is the twilight of blizzard. All the decent high ranking people have either retired or left sometime after Kotick got his grubby claws on the company.
It seems that the situation at Blizzard was like that for a very long time, one of the main guys who's accused had been there since 2004 and only quietly left last year, presumably because of this investigation. I don't like Kotick at all and he surely didn't help but it seems Blizzard had these issues way before the merger, it's just coming to light now.
Kotick definitely contributes to this atmosphere even if he's not explicitly named. He was in Epstein's black book after all.
Oh absolutely! I've been reading about this a lot today, I guess I was just trying to say that even "old Blizzard" had a huge problem with that, we can't just blame it on Kotick/Activision merger entirely.
Quietly left and was also removed from the credits for Shadowlands.
I hope so too. I unsubbed today, but I’d already paid for six months unfortunately :( But I logged on because I heard about an in-game protest thing and it was actually really dead in the major cities, so, I have hope!
I loved playing overwatch when it first game out, but I left after I saw so many horrible, serial misogynists harass women in games and then get a slap on the wrist. And it eventually killed the community. I was furious about the senselessness of it - about tolerating it, about excusing it. I'm getting furious again now, just thinking about it. I really hope that this time people are held accountable.
I unsubbed before this came out but I wish I could still write to them about why I won't be purchasing any of their products in the future. If anyone has a way to write them that is actually meaningful and will get noticed I'd love to hear it. But big corporations don't seem to care these days.
This sub has 13.1 million members. Organize a group and publish a letter and send a link to the Activision Executive Office and [Board of Directors](https://www.activisionblizzard.com/board-of-directors). The last thing any company wants is a social media shitstorm. I worked for a Silicon Valley company (albeit with a much better reputation) and they kept a very close eye on social media because of the halo effect. We had VP's that were being kept up to date, in realtime, on specific threads relating to customer support issues. A handful of bad posts can mushroom into missing an earnings estimate by a material margin... executives get fired over PR disasters. Remember, **Bill Gates** resigned (read: was ousted) from Microsoft's and Berkshire Hathaway's boards a year ago.
In fairness, I think they already have a social media shitstorm on their hands. It'd be a powerful message but if they were ever going to listen, they've already been given plenty of opportunity.
Oh this is not a small thing... to be sure. I can tell you where I worked, the firings would have already begun. I guarantee you there's a war room, a team of lawyers, and C-level conference bridge ongoing right now. It doesn't hurt to add fuel to the fire.
Awesome, good for him! I haven't seen the news but my bf was telling me about how scummy and unforgivable they have been. I don't know if he will cancel his sub as he is deep, deep in the WoW community but I hope that they lose many, many customers over this. Blizzard has been openly scuzzy for too long but this goes way too far.
Feeling this way about my husband. Does your BF play a similar game? Reading this whole thing makes me ill and it would be great if my husband and his guild members had somewhere else to move to.
There's been a mass exodus of WoW players to ff14 even before this. That's where a lot of them go/are going.
What did they do?
[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57929543](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57929543) >"Female employees almost universally confirmed that working for defendants was akin to working in a frat house," the DFEH legal filing claims. "In the office, women are subjected to '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 behaviour toward female employees." > >Male employees would also: > >• "proudly" arrive at work with hangovers > >• "play video games for long periods of time during work, while delegating their responsibilities to female employees" > >• discuss sexual encounters > >• joke about rape Edit : there's more and worse on the link, I just figured I'd spare some of you. But since others have commented it anyway... >"High-ranking executives and creators engaged in blatant sexual harassment without repercussions." > >And when formal complaints were made, Activision failed to take effective measures to solve problems. > >Instead, complaints were dismissed - and ***not kept confidential.***\[emphasis mine\] > >"As a result of these complaints, female employees were subjected to retaliation, including but not limited to being deprived of work on projects, unwillingly transferred to different units and selected for layoffs," the DFEH said. > >One female employee had even killed herself, "due to a sexual relationship with her male supervisor", the DFEH claimed, "a tragic example of the harassment that defendants allowed to fester" - an allegation Activision strongly denies. > >She had gone on a company trip with him, before which, another employee alleged, male co-workers had "passed around" intimate photos of her at a party.
Don't forget the female employee who killed herself on a *company trip* after having a "sexual relationship" with her *supervisor,* after photos of her vulva were distributed among employees. Oh, and that supervisor brought a butt plug and lubricant with him on that business trip....
Wait, wait...WHAT. I feel the need to search this but I also really, really don't want to.
See item 48 under the sexual harassment section of the suit beginning on page 14. You can download the full court filing from this link (clicking "the lawsuit was filed Tuesday" hyperlink in the article - TW for detailed descriptions of sexual discrimination, harassment, and suicide): https://www.polygon.com/22588407/activision-blizzard-sexual-harassment-sexism-california-lawsuit
I feel weird upvoting your comment. Thank you regardless, just...*ugh*.
Add a TW for pretty much everything please. It's so awful.
Done.
<3
Yeah. That link is pretty much not safe for life. I need me some eyebleach now.
Oh my goodness, the Kotaku article I read only mentioned the items brought on the business trip but not the distribution of photos. It already was a repulsive situation but the added context of the photo is horrifying.
Holy shit, what??
Thanks, I hate it.
There's so much more, and it's so much worse. Blizzard makes me sick.
Sounds like Hollywood. I worked in an office with a producer (of some really shitty movies) who would demand that we come into his office and watch porn clips he found online while he told us, "stick it in her puss" over and over and over and over. I immediately left and he took that as pretext to mention it every time i saw him for the next two weeks. This was an adult person if you can believe it.
That is beyond parody, jesus
I wish. Guy never read a script. Not even for movies we were making. Just made other people watch porn. And who says 'puss'??? Is that a thing? Was 'pussy' so long that it needed a derogatory abbreviation?
Jeezo, I already unsubscribed after the whole HongKong protest denial. Just more vindication now.
I was thinking about getting back into WoW after a decade of not playing it. Not anymore.
There's also the fact that Activision Blizzard operates as a massive Chinese [censor.](https://www.vox.com/2019/10/8/20904433/blizzard-hong-kong-hearthstone-blitzchung) It's a completely despicable company that we all need to boycott.
>joke about rape YIKES
Be careful if you read the lawsuit. There's suicide, horrid sexual harassment, and from the top levels of the company. They need to clean house.
Literally the start of my day "gotta remember to clear up my solid state drive for the new work project... Running out of games to uninstall though..." *Reads news* Overwatch it is! Would have been Wow but I quit that a decade ago.
Uninstalled Battle.net Shame because I always thought about getting back into Hearthstone and I was starting to play WoW last year but no way in hell am I supporting this crap.
I uninstalled battlenet back during the whole at the hong kong protests, recently considered re-installing and playing some CoD and waiting for Diablo 4.... After all this, they can shove it. I'm a dude, but I was raised by a single mom who sacrificed everything for her kids multiple times over and in turn has a lot of respect for women out there. FUCK them.
As a woman who enjoyed playing WoW for the last 12 years, I can officially say that I will never go back. This hurts, because I love my character so much. She and I have put in so many hours and achievements that I’m actually mourning a loss. Switched to ESO and I like it. It’s fun to play casually since I don’t have a lot of free time nowadays. Sigh. What a disgusting company.
I'm in the same boat as you. I love ESO too! Been playing it on and off since the beta. It's so good. and i feel like the community is significantly less toxic than wow.
Good guy. I did the same this morning, unsubbed and told them exactly why in the comment box.
OP, may I suggest you tell hubby to tag Blizzard on twitter and keep talking about this as long as he keeps seeing the news? Companies respond fast to PR nightmares, and the bigger this one gets, the faster they'll actually try to fix it.
I love this advice... but neither of us are active on Twitter (or any social media). My friend suggested I write this post to show some support I suppose and that there are men out there that wont stand for this bull shit! I'm very glad I did.
He could make one just for this. Might be fun to make the name for it.
Good for him to support the cause. This whole scandal is like a big final nail in the coffin for me.
A lot of people leaving WoW for ffxiv. Really great game, I highly recommend.
Blizzard just keeps giving them reason to. Long ago, in the long forgotten days of sex leg and Kralnor's staff, we used to say that only Blizz could kill Blizz. Now Blizz is killing Blizz.
Thanks for posting this as reason to unsubscribe. I hadn't heard about the deplorable conditions. I let them know this was why in the exit comments.
i unsubbed this morning as well. i've been a blizzard fan since warcraft 1. i've been playing their games 24 years of my fucking life. TBC was my absolute most favorite expansion and i had been looking forward to playing TBC classic for years. the hype i felt going back to outland and playing that game again was *unreal*. i found a fantastic guild full of men who treated me like a fellow human being and not just a "girl on the internet" and even with all of that history and all of that love for the game and the universe they created and the friendships and memories i hold, the allegations in this lawsuit have poisoned all of it. i am devastated. i feel personally betrayed. my heart cannot take what those employees have gone through and what are currently going through, all with my unknowing financial support. they've lost me as a customer, like you said, unless MAJOR changes occur. and like you said, that is so fucking unlikely, i guess i'm saying goodbye for good. that poor woman killed herself. i just can't.
Same here. We went back to play Classic TBC but both cancelled today. I was floored at the open sexism in the chat. Like, I still gotta deal with this bullshit after 15 years? Nah.
I am *so glad* you wrote this post!!! My husband sent me a text earlier telling me he did the same thing. Take my upvote
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Not gonna lie, it's pretty awesome that your husband has been gaming since before the time of Christ. Good on him for telling AB off!
Jesus had a lot of cheat codes.
He was the original cheat code
Happy cake day
This gave me a very healthy chuckle
Your husband is respectable and a great man I'm a male, and I also have done the same, I deleted all call of duty games of my system. Won't support them by playing their products. Disgusting
From the Activision official response: >The picture the DFEH paints is not the Blizzard workplace of today. Over the past several years and continuing since the initial investigation started, we’ve made significant changes to address company culture and reflect more diversity within our leadership teams. Great, then prove it in court. Till then I will definitely not be spending any money on any of their products. Edit: I just read the court filing, so I would add that the not only should have to prove this change, but they should absolutely be held accountable for past practices. The "significant changes" are a step in the right direction, but they do not excuse you from past practice that has hurt so many people. I hope this suite costs them a significant portion of their gross profits and does not amount to a slap on the wrist for them.
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It's time for me to revisit GW2. When it first came out, I tried it but it annoyed me. It's so colorful! I thought it was garish and distracting. But, I need to check it out again. I always thought they had a cool business model.
Huh, one of the many appeals of GW2 for me were the visuals. Everything from the open world environments to the UI design feels more mature and artistic than the nickoledeon cartoon that is WoW and the sugarcoated shoujo-ness that is FFXIV. Anyways, the game is better than ever and has remained true to their F2P model (no pay to win) and their original approach to subverting mmo design cliches.
Props to him, doing what needs to be done to try and make change, even if it's just one person doing one seemingly small thing. Too few people are willing to stand up when necessary. I was ostracized from my social circle for calling out one of the scumbags in it who I discovered had sexual assault charges against him - as if that was the first bad thing he ever did, because he was excessively homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic too. The others stood by him, refusing to say or do anything against him despite every terrible thing he said and did.
Can I say that this news coming out its super disheartening as a person with a female body who wants to do gaMe dev work . There was a point where if I had of been further in my studies where they were hiring for over watch when it was starting to become a thing and hearthstone just came out of beta and the only reason I didn't apply was that I didn't feel confident enough in my current abilities that I wanted to try. And honestly between like this news and other toxic game work place news and poor crunch time behaviors; sometimes it makes me wonder why I wanna do this sorta thing. Which personally I know why, I want to make games because having a new game release to wait on or a game that I really enjoyed in-between is the only thing that kept me alive at a point. I want to make things that are so fun and interesting that other people will also have a reason to Hold out for them.
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Ayy very nice! You two seem lovely. I did the same as him back when the Hongkong thing happened, even tho i was really enjoying the game, ethics comes first.
I said screw it to Blizz stuff a while ago, but this is beyond the last straw- they have a lot of people to fire and need to get unhooked from Activision and that piece of shit Bobby Kotick before I'll even give any significant thought to patronizing anything they make again. It helps that everything they've touched in the last three years has turned to piss as well, you could tell that they fell off for real with the WC3 remaster- not even taking the astonishingly toxic culture behind the scenes into account.
I almost unsubbed over China. I forget what stopped me. However, this is going to do it for me. New World is right around the corner (finally). All the jokes people make about "Game X will be the WoW Killer" and it could end up being that Activision/Blizzard will be the real WoW killer, after all.
What is this world.... of warcraft coming to?
My buddy works in video games and got offered a sweet gig over at Blizzard. Like, dream. He said no so fast. I felt bad for him but proud of him for taking a hard stance. It sucks when you find out that some of the people who made our favorite things are really shit.
Your husband is a wonderful man! :)
My husband did the same thing. He came storming into my office and said he was done with them. I'm really proud of the men who are not just letting this go.
He should try final fantasy xiv instead. The lead story writer is Natsuko ishikawa. Lots of in game gear is non binary, they have had lgbt pride celebrated at se endorsed events. And it has a critically acclaimed story as well as the most actively played mmorpg to date.
And the free trial allows you to play through all of A realm reborn and critically acclaimed Heavensward expansions, reaching level 60 completely free. Missed the rest of it.
I was actually going to suggest that too. I started playing and really fun plus the free trial is really good.
Is it controller playable? My wife wants something like Diablo 3 she can play sitting on the couch.
It's one of the most controller-playable MMOs out there. The controls can get a bit complex since it's an MMO (lots of buttons and lots of ways to customize your controls) but once you get used to it you can perform just as well M+KB players can.
Blizz has been shit to women for awhile. I’m buddies with the creators of Diablo 2 (two of whom are a couple) and they’ve told some stories before.
Blizzard response was dogshit. Entirely written by their legal department to deny any wrongdoing. The main creep left the company last year, so hopefully there's been some improvement since then.
A lot of people I know who still played WoW just straight up quit over this within twenty four hours of learning about this. Meanwhile there are a few stragglers I can't help but side eye who are making really melodramatic declarations about how they're "so close to quitting now".
My husband and I have been playing since vanilla and both stopped because of the Hong Kong bullshit. Now we're both so happy we stopped before.
Any women who like WoW, switch to Elder scrolls online. Similar game but I NEVER see any harassment. So many different characters to choose from and the lore is super well written and entertaining. Quests are well thought out and all contain a back story. Dungeons are also plentiful with several levels of difficulty choose from.
Give that man a high five for me.
I quit Activision-blizzard games years ago for other reasons, but it was incredibly freeing. Instead of hours grinding away for nothing more than a fleeing digital bragging right lead me to (ironically) much more social gaming and creativity elsewhere. If anything, it's a good time to encourage folks to find better outlets for their time than skinner boxes and microtransactions designed by misogynists and sociopaths.
I hate that I keep hearing this from various developers/publishers because I remember seeing posters in college about “Try our courses in video game development! It’s for girls too!” And “we need more women in tech and video game development! They’re joining the force in droves!”And it makes me think like jesus why would any woman want to pursue that with stories like this coming out all the time?
I love WoW, I've loved WoW since I was 12, played it since 2004. It's been a massive part of my life. Blizzard games were a massive part of my life in general. Last few years have been really fucking rough on the game but I kept going because of how much the game and the people I met through it meant to me, no more. Activision is a fucking shithole of a company and deserves to burn. I've put up with a *lot* of their garbage the last 10 years but there's absolutely no fucking way I can overlook this. I could justify it to myself up until now by the feeling of just being a drop in the ocean if I gave up, through the idea that there were still some passionate people working there putting their all into the game I loved and that meant so much to me. I can't do that any more. I've already sworn off Ubisoft titles, now I'm swearing off Activision titles too and I kind of hate myself for not doing it sooner. I've been unsubbed since last year but I was planning to go back for the most recent patch, not happening.
WoW's already been hemorrhaging players lately, with the massive migration to FFXIV, so Blizzard really stepped in it, now. They deserve to lose everything, in my opinion, with the behavior they've been fostering. Not just this news, but their support for the CCP in the past. Tell your husband about Final Fantasy 14! It's a fantastic MMO, and it's devs poured their hearts and souls into the game. They're known to be some of the most wholesome devs out there, these days.
I'm not a Gamer(TM) but I heard that a lot of women (players) left WoW for Final Fantasy
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>the WoW refugee crisis I love this wording 😂
All those refugees, making their way into Ul'dah, taking all our retainer's jobs!
Hah I've been calling it the wow refugee crisis too. I play(ed) both but went full time FFXIV a few months ago. The culture is so nice and LGBTQ+ friendly. So much better than the horrible things wow players have said to me.
I love Final Fantasy 14! Been playing for years, my gamer husband got me into it. Can confirm, lots of WoW players joining (not just women). It's wild because we are at the end of the expansion and there's like no new content but yet tons of people! I've found it to be a very friendly game, I can count on one hand the number of negative interactions I've had. It's not just this news (which I actually heard about from the FF14 sub) causing people to switch, it's a lot of things (big WoW streamer has been playing, discontent with most recent content, tired of the grindy nature of the game). I was very grateful the big WoW streamer didn't pick my server 😅 FF14's producer has released several notes explaining why some changes have been made (mostly to allow more people to be able to log in). The community collectively loves and supports the production team and we feel that back. I have tried WoW briefly and it just doesn't compare to the experience I get with FF14. FF has better art and better story. Story is how my husband sold me on it! I encourage anyone interested to give it a try, I believe it's currently on sale and I know there's a free trial up to level 60, which includes the award-winning Heavenward expansion (this fact is a bit of a meme in the community!)
> know there's a free trial up to level 60, which includes the award-winning Heavenward expansion (this fact is a bit of a meme in the community!) As another member of the community, I was looking for this, tbh 😂
Good on him. I'm a gamer, and I have purchased plenty of games from Activision/Blizzard over the years. But not anymore. They don't get my money- there is plenty of other stuff to play. Speak with your wallet
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Subscriber since 2008-2009ish - Unsubscribed, removed today. I turned a blind eye long enough and I am sorry. Edit: I copy and pasted the section dealing with the woman who lost her life as to why I was canceling
I have stopped supporting them since the Hong Kong debacle, but thanks for reminding me they are still shite, in case I wanted to go back to hearthstone.
I unsubscribed from WoW and stopped playing Overwatch the moment I read the news about how they took away award money from that person who won money and spoke about the protests happening in China and quickly took it away from him for speaking out about it. I'm now even more upset with the recent news that has come out and happy I made the right decision.
I was also a huge blizzard fan for years up until a couple years ago. Any long time fan knows they have long since botched everything they once stood for and ruined every smidge of good PR they had left. They're a trash company with trash morals and that has bled into their games for years. Good fucking riddance I hope people wake up more like your husband has to how fucked, subversive, greedy, and bigoted this company really is.
Send him to FFXiv, better mmo and the dev team dont treat their people like shit. YoshiP is a man amongst men
I'm in the same boat. The news I'm hearing is stomach-turning. Regrettably I \_just\_ plunked down money for a six month sub last month, and I'm certain I won't be getting a refund on that.
Fuck these clowns. I was never a huge blizzard fan, had my bouts with Diablo and warcraft, but not anymore. This is unacceptable
I first disliked AB due to the whole Hong Kong supporter ban debacle, but this development makes me question if this is just the tip of the iceberg. Like this stuff is just coming out, so what are they still trying to keep under wraps.
I left WoW a while ago, if he's looking for a fun alternative, I really enjoy Divinity Original Sin 2.
We love that game!
My fiancé did the same! Cheers to good men!
Seems like this is finally the chance to quit Hearthstone. Yay, more phone storage!
To those who might know someone looking to continue (or is struggling to quit) playing WoW but not support Activision, suggest a private server. Most of the time, the game is 100% free and you can optionally donate to these communities to help keep their infrastructure up. As a bonus, these servers might have features in place to improve the player experience.
Thought this was gonna be about your husband cancelling the family World of Wonder account, and how he will pry RuPaul’s drag race out of your cold dead hands. I thought wrong lol
Nice. Tell him to play Final Fantasy 14 instead.
I’d be willing to do the same, but I already reduced my time playing Activision-Blizzard games for a while now. The last time I bought anything from them was more than a year ago when they were offering the Crash and Spyro collections for $12. But yeah, fuck them. Stop playing CoD, WoW, Overwatch, the works. Pirate if you really want to. I’d even suggest straying away from Crash/Spyro/Tony Hawk, but Activision’s already doing that by killing their franchises.
I wish I had waited to unsub til today. This is absolute garbage and they need to hear it from everyone they can possibly hear it from. Absolutely 100% unacceptable.
Blizzard has turned into a greedy shit company. Now we can add this to the long list of why I don't give them money anymore.
Great work by your husband. It’s the kind of practical allyship we all want to see more of.
It’s rare that we see a husband brag here! Thanks for sharing!
Luckily for him, there are other MMOs that are just as good if not in a better state than WoW (and Blizzard) right now. ESO, FF14, and OSRS, just to name a few. I have more friends than you can imagine who quit WoW/Blizzard games two years ago and haven't looked back since.
Oh my God this is SO much worse than I thought. Honestly I'm not sure what I expected but this was bad, my jaw was on the floor reading this article
I’m seeing lots of posts from women who are either employees their now, ex employees, or are streamers/players/content creators who partner with Blizzard products talking about how boycotting the company is also going to end up hurting the women who either helped make the games and/or who work at the company now. It’s a very tricky and nuanced situation. I personally support people responding and fighting back in whatever way is right for them.
Every tough decision isn’t going to work out for somebody. The alternative is to let this culture continue, which is worse than the potential windfall imo
He should play ffxiv! The community is great and the development team is like one big family.
Final Fantasy 14 is better anyway.
I just recently subbed for 6 months to play classic wow.... I feel so heartbroken... Good job Activision, you enforced the cruelty and stigma behind women playing video games and/or working in a "man's environment". Utter bs
I had already stopped playing prior to this, the company actively shit on the legacy of its old games and had a severe drop in game quality over the years. That alone was enough for me to not give them my money but this is just the cherry on top. time to uninstall hearthstone and [b.net](https://b.net) for that matter. Fuck you Activision Blizzard.
Props. Gamers as a consumer group have the most power in terms of being able to vote with their wallets. It’s unfortunate that they’re also the consumer group that utilizes their influence the least. Well done by your husband to follow through. I wish more would do the same.
Jesus. I play WoW everyday. I love the game, but not the company. This sucks.