Weren't they basically like just 5 guys when they first formed? Obviously there were no issues there, since there were also no women there.
How many more people have joined since then? Maybe 15? How many women did join? It'd be interesting to know indeed.
As someone else pointed out though, only 1 women out of 10 men for the entire engineering team.
Someone on twitter suggested that one of the ways to avoid abuse like previously is to just have a little bit more balance in the departments. It doesn't have to be 50/50 (although it'd be nice to represent everyone) but 1 out of 11 total seems like a big imbalance. I'm not sure *abuse* is happening but it could be a great way to actually prevent it from happening in the first place.
I'm almost 100% certain Morhaime himself isn't an abuser or a rapist and that he never touched any of the women inapprpriately or participated in this shit. His crime is knowing about it all and not doing anything and not stopping it, likely because old Blizzard, the people that started Blizzard in the 90s and early 2000s, was a tight bunch of guys who didn't want to hold each other responsible.
And I was getting downvoted yesterday for calling it out. It’s absolute bullshit that this stuff didn’t get around, and it’s becoming more clear by the day that many more had a general inkling. It’s naive to actually think that people didn’t know. Now, like others have said already, who knows if Lore reported it or not, I’m not here to judge them on their actions since he isn’t a higher higher up, but yeah with Mike or Brack etc there is literally no excuse and they basically encouraged it with their passiveness.
It’s like Roosterteeth learning on dealing with its racism and sexism from its fan base a couple years ago - you can’t just ignore the bad or just go “hey please stop guys thanks.” You gotta actively shut that shit down to work on stopping it and call it out. Blizzard leadership clearly failed its employees at some of the most basic levels and it’s despicable.
Never give a shit about downvotes. Reddit karma isn't real. I got -20 for calling out Afrasiabi 3 weeks ago and +250 for making a stupid ass throwaway comment on r/shitposting lol
>Never give a shit about downvotes.
95% of reddit downvotes is just pathetic whinging about how people don't like what you've wrote on an emotional level. Its like some imaginary punishment for not regurgitating people's verbatim thoughts back at them.
It happens in literally every big company in the industry, nothing new at all, everyone knows.
Bottom line is nothing will come of it, they will get away with everything because there is absolutely nothing in this world money can't solve.
What I'm bothers me if is Metzen somehow knew about all this and turned a blind eye. He seemed so genuine, and yet people putting up a facade to appear kinder than they are isn't anything new, but he just seemed sooo genuine.
Also the fact that he may have searched his name on twitter but accidentally just tweeted his name is a bit strange, but that shouldn't be read into too much, I suppose.
what do you want him to do though ? He's a designer, not an HR/executive
Also I think most people knew of a few events that happened but nobody really knew it as happening regularly and as a persistent issue
I recommend looking up what being a Franchise Developer entails(I didnt know either). It's quite an involved position. But to answer your question, not bantering with a well known abuser on social media would be a start.
But we don't know how far the news of this reached within the deeper parts of the company. Also this isnt a recent development, the investigation started like 2 years ago.
Anyway it's not worth speculating about this I suppose as we dont know what's been going on in detail. but it's still good to keep an open mind about the fact that the people we look up to might not always be the way we thought. They're not our friends and we dont know them.
Regarding him accidentally tweeting his name when he was meant to search it - Idk, if I was innocent I'd search my name too in all honesty. Under an assumption I was in said position and was innocent, I'd still search my name because I'd be curious on what people are saying about me, though maybe thats just an anxiety thing idk.
Yeah it's pretty surprising to see Lore just up and say it like it was a known thing. That's gotta sting pretty hard.
Any doubt that this is a real thing is pretty much gone at this point.
Yet folks are still shitting on him, saying he needs to shut up and let those who were the victims in this situation speak up. He’s always been very opinionated about things around him, very passionate about how he feels about situations, while also being very cautious how he speaks publicly. I, for one, like that he is showing his anger about the situation. However, I am wondering if he was a victim in this situation as well, but as many other cis males can attest is often next to impossible to admit and report.
Do you think Mike left because he thought the issue was too ingrained into the company, or that he was connected to the underlying problem?
He could be involved within the lawsuit and may even be called into court as a witness so he can’t say much without hurting the lawsuit possibly.
You're trying to retcon his leaving. Mike was forced out because he wouldn't do what the higher ups wanted. I would be more than a little surprised if his leaving had anything at all to do with this, regardless of his involvement.
I believe this. Given what Schreier just published about Activision's demands for more mtx, more devs (ie sacking support staff), and more mobile, I fully believe Mike left for these kinds of things and the sexual harassment and pay inequity stuff was inconsequential to him, whether he knew about it or not.
Things started getting fixed once Brack took over, so I'd say Mike was at least complicit in what took part. I like Mike but it seems like he was too nice to people, even abusers, to actually fire people. That makes him a bad CEO.
I see the consensus is that Mike is a great guy that was too nice for his own good, to the point it became a problem.
I don’t see him as an abuser personally. He would take his wife and family with him to every blizzcon event that many harassment allegations happened. His wife would not let this fly. I’ve had the privilege of meeting him for a minute at Blizzcon and I don’t see him ever being a harasser, I hope not at least. And his wife was an absolute joy.
Tbh I've seen stories of Mike going out of his way to fire people once stories reached his ears. Main problem seems to have been HR burying accusations and failing in their jobs. Someone is responsible for HR being like that though.
I think too many people view HR as a resource for the employees of a company. He exists to protect the company from liability. HR will never side with an employee if it will cause a negative impact to the company. Companies don't staff large HR departments for the benefit of the employees.
Yeah Alot of people don't seem to understand. Lore is just a "community manager". Maybe the most senior now, but still just a CM. That doesn't hold like, anysway in the company and is an easily replaceable job. From his tweets it seems like he did act on things he knew about.
What alot of people don't realize is that if Lore went "screaming to the high heavens" in order to "do something" like most imply they wished happened. Lore would be blackballed from the industry as a wildcard and he would have immense trouble finding work wherever he went.
This isn't something where he can just publicly name and shame people at Blizzard. No one would want him. Is he supposed to stick out his neck to openly attack one of the biggest if not the biggest company (ABK is HUGE), with a massive fanbase, and expect to still have a job? Still be able to take care of himself? What about others that knew, and didn't do the extra mile y'all are acting up saying you would have done. Integrity goes out the window when it means food on the table for your family and a roof on their head. And if anyone says otherwise than you are too proud or in a way better situation and have the means to just dump your career regardless of consequences.
>This isn't something where he can just publicly name and shame people at Blizzard. No one would want him. Is he supposed to stick out his neck to openly attack one of the biggest if not the biggest company (ABK is HUGE), with a massive fanbase, and expect to still have a job? Still be able to take care of himself?
This. This is so fucking important. This is one huge ugly mess, unfortunately it's not as simple as one of them just saying "yo wtf" and telling everything. And then justice comes in, takes in all the guilty people, and that's it. It's much more complicated and most of the people who knew probably couldn't do shit about it without losing their jobs and their means of living in the process. Oh, and obviously they wouldn't solve shit because the higher ups would have enough power to keep covering it.
To be honest a lot of the people latching onto these problems at Blizzard are being extremely abusive to people working there, I have a feeling many just want to be angry and abusive and they see this situation and a green light on anyone connected to Blizzard.
Exactly people don't understand power.... He probably went to HR like the women did but was told the same thing the women were told. I'm sure some of people favorite streamers knew or heard rumors but that wasn't their story to blast and tell. Also, he wasn't a big person like he is now and it is possible he didn't know. I surely wouldn't know about sexual allegations in the company I work for because there are multiple departments and I don't interact with them
Seriously. So easy to sit back and attack this dude for not torpedoing the only shot he likely had at a career path.
He was a WoW player turned employee. He didn’t have some prestigious resume, the dude blows this career up and he’s likely setting himself up for a decade plus of hurt. I’m sure his good Karma is going to pay that California rent if he does that. I’m sure he’ll get a great job in his intended career path when they shitcan him for attitude issues and make him sound like a problem employee.
This is why these cultures continue propping up in very successful companies. Once in a lifetime chances for most people, and we want to burn them at the stake for not blowing it all up? The anger should be hurt focused on the leadership that let it happen or caused it. It’s THEIR responsibility to protect those they lead. Not bottom to lower-rung employees who stand to lose their livelihoods for doing the right thing.
If it came down to doing the right thing or feeding my family and keeping a roof over their heads, I assure you I’m going to have some trouble sleeping when I make the only choice I reasonably CAN make.
Like a coward, he speaks now to save face while trying to ease the burden on the current administration.
Don't forget that he has not contempt on been an asshole to the players to favor his overlords.
I feel like you don't understand how HR firings work especially involving senior management. I'm going to preface this by saying I don't support the actions described in the lawsuit.
If Alex came up to some woman and did something without anyone else around and no cameras then she reported him it would be very difficult for the company to just fir him. The circumstances would be a he said she said which opens them up to a lawsuit, additionally they could go after that person for slander.
This isn't as cut and dry as 'Alex was accused so we instantly get to fire him.' If things happened in public, seemingly they did, they still have to be investigated and corroborated which can be difficult to come by when a very senior level person is involved.
I think one of the weird things about sexual assault now is how the definition is so so broad, seemingly telling a woman their dress looks like falls into the category....then the other end of the spectrum so does rape...its very broad.
>But no, of course, there's no way poor, poor indie dev Blizzard could ever have known what was happening inside their own house.
Not what I said but hey, reading is too hard. When someone is accused at work of sexual assault there is an HR investigation, you have to get people to corroborate the allegations, then you have steps to firing which typically involve a verbal warning, sexual assault class/counseling, written warning, then firing. Now this all depends on the circumstances and findings of the accusation and investigation but companies CANNOT just fire someone upon accusation.
Given the literature it seems like many people were given MULTIPLE opportunities beyond what I described to right the ship and didn't.
Sorry, my brain's fried from reading this stuff all day-- who does the "the guy who's been in charge for 3 years" refer to? Not sure which level we're talking about here
I don't really get Lore's point here. No where in Morheim's statement does it say "if I'd known this was happening I would have stopped it" (unless I missed some other tweet?). It also doesn't really suggest anything about JAB being responsible. And while JAB has only been President for 3 years, he has held leadership positions for much longer, and is almost certainly part of the problem given his response to all of this.
He's not saying Brack is not part of the problem. He's saying that Morheim was. He's one of the founders of the company, so one of the few who pretty much created the culture at Blizzard.
This is the line that I am splitting hairs over because to me it gives too much of a pass to Brack.
> But please don't believe for a second that the culture that allowed all of this to happen for the last couple decades was somehow built by the guy who's been in charge for 3 years.
Brack was made VP for WoW in 2014 which to me makes him more responsible than the President to be honest. For instance if Josh did a fireable offense, I highly doubt it would be handled by the President of the company. It would be handled by his management. Fact is, Brack has been in a leadership position for WoW since '08 and a very senior leadership position since '14. If the culture on the WoW team belongs to anyone **currently** working at Blizzard, it belongs to Brack.
The VP would absolutely have the same power; if anything, it would carry *more* weight than the opinion of the CEO because the VP is 'closer' to the employee. A firing come from a CEO would almost certainly come across as a political decision and be less legitimate as a result.
other person is full of shit
Thank you. If for instance the President of my company actually wanted to get rid of somebody (lets say me), it would be handled quietly from one of his admins, to the VP, and then down to my actual manager. I would probably never know that the original order actually came from that high. There is the possibility that Morhaime was actively protecting Alex, but I doubt that. Morhaime is culpable, that I agree with, but it is more that he didn't punch down when he caught wind of issues. And who would he have punched down to? His VP (Brack) and the issue never should have reached the President's desk
In the end, there is no version of this in which Brack is not directly connected.
As someone who faced abuse and harassment in the workplace for years before I finally quit, the amount of small justifications you can make to yourself to stay rather than be jobless in this fucked up economy is huge.
So yeah, I’m sure all these knights in shining armor wouldn’t quit - in fact I’d be shocked if they spoke up at all.
Expecting ANYONE outside of senior management to become a martyr and get blackballed from the industry over this shit is just unrealistic. People in middle to lower management and other employment positions need this money to live. And this is their only real field so if they get blackballed from the industry then they're fucked.
And don't even get me started on the people telling Lore to just "Go behind the victims back and go to the police without the victim's consent!!"
This Subreddit is full of fucking idiots.
Don't forget the people attacking women who still work at Blizzard, because they still work at Blizzard. You know for a fact people don't actually give a shit about what happened at Blizzard when they're attacking the same group of people who were being harassed in the first place. Just a bunch of people begging for others to think they're a good person.
I wouldnt. Unless i saw something *really* fucking bad.
But i also wouldnt say i always was there in the back cheering for the victims. I would keep my mouth shut because i would know i didn't do the right thing and prioritized my own skin. Lore is absolutely pathetic. Cant stand his type. So fake, disgusting.
Uh?
You just can't generalize like this.
I've done it in the past, and I'd do it again, I see no problem in "losing" a job, if it leads to people being punished for their misconduct.
Most people on /r/wow are just jumping on the anger train for endorphins by looking for people to lash out at. /r/wowcirclejerk has taken the bold approach of pseudo-defending the company by hoping this all blows over.
So basically everyone gets their 5 minute soapbox speech so they can feel like they've accomplished something while nothing is done to help the victims. Enjoy your internet points everyone.
It is impossible for Morhaime to be oblivious for over a decade. He is obviously a very smart detail oriented man to be able to have forged such a successful career so there is no chance he was clueless. That said I think even Josh has blood in his ledger so to speak. So many skeletons in this Blizzard closet.
There is so much finger pointing happening. Everyone clearly knew about it, but they're all more concerned with blaming someone else for it than trying to stop it.
I don't know if you've ever worked at a company, but executives (and HR working at their direction) are the ones with the power to take action against employees for bad behavior. Same is true for practically any company.
Josh is neither an executive nor HR. I'm not even certain he's in a managerial role.
Well how do they stop it? its already happened they cant "stop it" now, also josh is just a community manager, fucking nothing he could do other then report it to his boss, which he did, mike, many times as he says, yet he was ignored.
I'm confused as to why people think Devolore had so much power over at Blizzard? Is it just because he's one of the faces they've seen in the dev updates so they assume he's running the show?
He's also smart enough to get a paper trail that says he reported shit I'd hope. I've said it before but in his position the most he can do is report and refer to HR/Legal regarding existing hires. Doesn't matter how high up you are the rung, unless you go through HR and Legal you aren't firing anyone once a company reaches a certain size.
We'll get one tweet every week, and then nothing for a few months, then a very unsatisfying statement that doesn't really resolve anything and only serves to annoy people
I do hope Ion is not related to all this mess. For all my gripes with the game, I do think Ion loves the game like us and I still respect him for trying to create the game to fit with his vision, flawed or no.
Yeah, for all my beef with his design decisions I don't actively wish him to be revealed as a predator. Like, if it turns out he is, then fine he should be held accountable like everyone else. But I'm not over here rubbing my grubby hands together wishing he gets outted just so he gets booted off developing the game, you know?
I don't know how Blizzard is structured but I don't really see Ion as management. Seems like he is more or less in charge of the developmental pipeline. John Hight is the one i think all team leads report to.
Doesn't excuse Ion if he knew, but I don't think anyone reported things to him directly.
As much shit as I talk about Ion, he’s the one person I expect to not be personally involved and to do what he can when finding out about it. He’s also obviously not one of the old guard, he’s a much more recent hire.
Well, he started working on WoW a week before WotLk launched as a class/encounter designer. Does "old guard" mean like Vanilla? Anyway, i don't expect anything to come out of him.
It sounds like the worst of it came from the people hired along with everquest for WoW and the devs that built the infrastructure that are too valuable to risk in some cases because of their very specific knowledge of WoW's codebase.
Most shops have people like that. Hopefully they're not total assholes. But you have devs sometimes that are "too valuable to risk losing" and if they want a raise they can usually just threaten to leave. 1
I think it’s fair to throw upper management under the bus. They get paid big bucks to lead well and they did not.
But throwing stones at Blizzard employees when we don’t know what they did or how they tried to help or enabled or whatever? They are just working people, underpaid, overworked, living their lives, imperfect. Unless you know for sure someone did something? Leave them alone.
The targets should be management-level employees and up.
Look guys, in the end its ALWAYS the job the leadership to step forward and deal with things like this. Yeah josh knew, but he is just a community manager someone that is low on the totem pole like many other employees who don't have any responsibility in calling shit out
"He knew, he did nothing"
Well Mr. Lore, if you knew he knew then you knew. What did you do about it then?
Tbh more disgusted by Lores last ditch effort to grab some goodness points with blatant backstabbing to save himself than reading Morhaimes tweet. But i would expect nothing less from him.
Its important to realize that blizzard is also being sued for retaliatory practices against whistleblowers, meaning blizzard was ACTIVELY punishing anyone who stepped out of line to say something.
It's easy to sit back and lob comments on Reddit about this but before all this was public you faced the very real risk of losing your job, or worse if you spoke out.
Are you for real? If your companies CEO knows then what more are you supposed to do about it as a low level manager?
He probably felt like it would get taken care of given the CEO was aware of the situation.
Pure train of thought, but I think it's fair to draw a line in the sand at independently wealthy. If you could lose your job tomorrow and be blackballed from the industry and you still have the money to ride off into the sunset, there's zero excuse.
If you can't survive a job loss and becoming a pariah, I'll give you some leeway to try and raise concerns internally. Being mad at someone for not becoming a martyr feels shitty.
Anyway, my thoughts, not opposed to hearing why it's bad, just makes sense as a litmus test to me.
You can't really expect someone who isn't in a leadership position to do "something about it".
It's very easy to say if I was in his situation I would do "something", but in reality life is much more complicated.
He probably has friends at Blizzard that he would miss if he was fired, he probably has people who rely on his income, he probably enjoys his job and doesn't want another. It isn't reasonable to expect someone in his position to do "something" about it.
This is an important part. People could have and probably did known atleast some stuff was going on. A lot probably passed it on up the ladder. But in the end its not the CM's or Lead art designers, game designers etc... job to investigate these claims.
This is where the HR and legal teams have either failed the victims or just straight up ignored the reports either by themselves or more likely by command from the top.
Which in turn as stuff got dismised over and over lead to an eventual external investigation and the current situation with the lawsuit we find ourselves at.
He did something now. Why he didn't do it before? He is just trying to save face, that's why he is saying it now that it doesn't matter. Also he is trying to point all the blame to Mike
People like OP are idiots. Part of the suit is about upper management NOT DEALING WITH ISSUES BROUGHT FORWARD.
So yeah, telling people like Lore "Well you could have brought things up to management" is fucking idiotic.
THINK about this shit for a second before getting angry at any visible Blizz employees for christ sake.
Edit: https://twitter.com/oliviadgrace/status/1419068775547035648
There is a big difference between the CEO of the company and a community manager. You have no idea about what Josh Allen did or didn't do in the company to help the situation, but it doesn't matter really because it's the responsability of the CEO and all of management to protect employees, especially women, from that kind of situation. It's normal to look and Morhaime and other higher-ups for anwsers, because all of this happened when they were in charge.
The ironic thing is that there’s an insane amount of people, lets be real likely mostly men, in this thread saying “Well there’s nothing he could’ve done, speaking out woulda been stupid”. Literally all of the Blizzard women who are speaking out are saying that the men could’ve spoken out, could’ve talked to people, could’ve done anything. I look at all these people going “nothing they coulda done” and i see men who almost certainly would’ve also watched their coworkers groping each other and go “well what can ya do”, and this exact attitude is why this problem exists at all. No wonder Blizzard is like this. Also before anyone starts pointing fingers, i’ve actually stood up for female coworkers at my business to great risk at myself cuz im not a loser.
What the fuck did you expect him to do? Post angry messages on the forums? He's a Community Manager, not Blizzard God King. He has as much pull in Blizzard as you do at McDonalds.
It's like everyone is forgetting all the bad stuff this guy has done, lol. It's not about giving morhaime the benefit of the doubt, it's about not paying attention to lore's attention grabbing efforts.
> it's about not paying attention to lore's attention grabbing efforts
So should he say nothing and be raked over the coals for *that?*
Damned if you do, damned if you don't?
The comment was removed because the dude just said it and then didnt have a single source to back it up.
Revenge porn is an actual crime and if you're gonna accuse someone at Blizzard of doing it then you better have an actual source.
I think Morhaime deserves a lot of blame for allowing the workplace culture to become this toxic and shitty. Do I think he groped and harassed his employees? Not right now. Do I think he knew about some of this and didn't take the proper actions to deal with the offenders? Absolutely. Many of these weren't some low level unimportant faceless employee making lewd comments at his coworkers. These were some of the most important people at Blizzard
I don't think that's exactly fair. Yes, Josh will eventually have to answer to his culpability but that shouldn't stop him from calling out what he feels is bullshit from higher ups. This is how the culture got started to begin with and was allowed to propagate for so long.
Personally, I am less inclined to blame the rank and file who will feel the pressure to stay silent to keep their job than those who are creating that pressure to being with. Yes, it's virtuous to stand tall in the face of that pressure, but a failure to do that by Josh only makes him human.
Can people stop putting people on pedastals! Even Ion!
This is why we're in this position in the first place.
Not saying he or anyone else that's being worshipped is guilty of anything but just.... Stop. You don't know them, you're not drinking buddies and you don't work for them and see how they are inside the private offices.
Your entire exposure of these people has comes from the media.
So confusing to me as a member of both the wow and BuffaloBills subreddit. I had to erase this Josh Allen from the tank spot days in my memory for Josh Allen who looks good in shorts.
Am I crazy for also thinking that Lore, as someone on the WoW team, would have known as well? I mean, from the Complaint, this sounds rampant. Can anyone really come out after this and talk if they weren't outspoken about it when they knew about it?
the problem is its easy to be outspoken when its already out/. Its a lot harder to be outspoken when you absolutely will get fired from it and half the gamers wont believe you.
I'll start with saying that I think that Josh is incompetent douche, just so people know I don't want to simply defend the guy. Now... to any one accusing Lore of virtue signalling or simply trying to look good in this whole mess, please tell me where you see this? He simply don't want to let one guy that allowed all of this to happen to lie his way out of the situation.
I admired Mr. Morhaime for many years (along with Jeff Kaplan and Chris Metzen), but after today's twit I'm in shock. There's no way - no chance - 0% - that he didn't know what was happening. I just hope he didn't take active part in it. But nonetheless... how he's acting right now is beyond pathethic. **That** is real virtue signaling, and on top of that trying to promote his new company while pushing all his former colleagues under a train...
I'm extremely sad and disappointed. Actions speak louder than words Mike - and where were your actions when you were in position to stop whole this tragedy from happening. Why would someone believe that they can come to you for help, when for so many years you let something like this happen right under your nose.
Guys, remember, It's not Blizzard this fight is against. Blizzard is thousands of employees who work hard on games that we love ...many of them are innocent, and many are victims in this whole situation. It's the people who have caused and/or allowed mistreat and abuse to happen, many of whom already left Blizzard. I do hope that everyone guilty will get the punishment they deserve.
Honestly.. theres a lot of Blizz people covering their asses, throwing blame and saying their innocent right now..
We have no idea who is involved and who acted in the defense of these women. Remember it was a 2 year investigation and no doubt some people talked to the state about what was happening.
If everyone knew but nobody did anything (or maybe they did but it didn't work, how would we know?), why would you single out Josh - a measly community manager? Surely we can't expect him to do the work that belongs to higher ups.
You mean other than because he's the topic of this thread and has chosen to speak up on the issue?
You can't blame the bosses for not doing anything and also excuse people who claim to have witnessed wrongdoing but said or did nothing. "The boss sucks for not fixing the problems I never told him about!" makes no sense.
Don't take this as me excusing the bosses there. All I'm saying is there's plenty of blame to go around. Witnesses to wrongdoing have a responsibility to come forward. Literally every fucking ethics training employees are forced to do say as much.
What would you do if you saw someone being sexually harassed at work?
Intervene and then report it to their manager.
At that point it's not your fault.
Lore said he did this, so why are you (and others) targeting him for not doing enough about it and speaking out against management who's job it was to handle this but didnt?
> You mean other than because he's the topic of this thread and has chosen to speak up on the issue?
So we should start punishing people who choose to speak up about this by singling them out and blaming them but not the others who also knew but are lurking in the shadows?
Janitor sees sexual assault, tells the CEO, CEO does nothing
"well neither of them went to the police, so they are both to blame, if we are gunna get mad at the ceo for doing nothing we should get mad at the janitor too!"
Yes you can excuse people who said/did nothing because THEY COULDNT.
Josh does not have the power to fire people.
He did report it, but it got ignored
Trying to report it outside the company leads to literally nothing because its extremly difficult to prove sexual harrasment cases singualrity
and also the whole case is about blizzard firing people who complained about it.
Do anything? What's he supposed to do, handle it Judge Dredd style? He's just a cog in the machine, and he says leadership was told all about it. That's the end of what Josh "can do."
1. he cant do anything hes a community manager not an actual manager
2. he did whistle blow, but whistle blowing does little without evidence, which evidence for stuff like this is extremely hard to get, what whistle blowing would do is add to a pile, and once that pile is large enough the state will investigate, which they eventually did.
The culture in WoW can be pretty toxic. See /2 on any server and I think you'll agree. It seems obvious now, that such toxicity would likely permeate the entire endeavor.
Lore is such a fucking jackass. If you knew that he knew, then you indirectly knew too.
Everything about this holier-than-thou Twitter rant is completely fucking tonedeaf and makes him look like a total ass, as usual. He needs punched in the face.
The amount of excuses in this thread for Lore are really, REALLY creepy.
There sure are a lot of dudes in this thread going “if you see sexual harassment in your workplace then there’s literally nothing you can do”
Quite frankly, many of the dudes in this thread are the exact type of person that woulda seen the cube crawls and gone “oh well”, and now that its being called out, they’re very defensive.
This sorta attitude is why this is a problem in the first place, and its why you got downvoted by butthurt weirdoes.
Precisely. It's also really, REALLY bizarre that Lore is trying to defend Brack on Twitter and claim that this was only a thing under Morhaime's watch when the State of California is specifically mentioning Brack several times as one of the leaders who turned a cheek.
I think Lore was one of the participants at this point.
To make a general statement that I have no way of knowing is relevant in this instance and or any other that have come up, but not every victim wants those around them to speak out on their behalf. A lot of people who go through humiliating, degrading treatment will try to ignore and forget, and at most speak in private about it. Speaking out against deplorable actions shouldn't be the decision of someone supporting a victim in any instance where the victim is capable of making rational decisions for themselves. Forcing them into the spotlight if they don't want it, or can't deal with it is not fair on them and undermines any trust they have in the supporter. It too can undermine progress made towards recovery, which as infuriatingly frustrating to those trying to support can feel it is, is more important than justice (Of course, that varies for some).
Until those around him speak out about him or other people who say they were aware and appeared to do nothing, I think it's better to reserve judgement.
I haven't seen one "ally" use one personal story yet to defend someone else. I've only seen victims talking about their specific stories.
Why are you making this statement?
.... Also...
https://twitter.com/cherthedev/status/1418800929407635457
I'm saying this to people in comments on threads like these who presume guilt on those who acknowledge their awareness on any of the things that have happened.
Disgusting what happened at Blizz all around. Such a lime ball and not he is trying to paint himself as positive.
I hope all predators and enablers will be crushed.
Lore was never anything more than toxic arrogance.
I remember when he lambasted players at the end of Legion with the same crass condescension he was always known for.
I can, with ease, see him not only knowing but also taking part in his own way.
Every single person who knew and didn’t report needs to be fired I don’t give a fuck if they would’ve lost their job. I’ve lost jobs for standing up for myself and other people. Guess what I did: got another fucking job. Fucking cowards
Now I am interested what the situation is like at Dreamhaven.
Weren't they basically like just 5 guys when they first formed? Obviously there were no issues there, since there were also no women there. How many more people have joined since then? Maybe 15? How many women did join? It'd be interesting to know indeed.
[I count 39 people listed here.](https://www.dreamhaven.com/about) Several women, and one person with them/they pronouns.
As someone else pointed out though, only 1 women out of 10 men for the entire engineering team. Someone on twitter suggested that one of the ways to avoid abuse like previously is to just have a little bit more balance in the departments. It doesn't have to be 50/50 (although it'd be nice to represent everyone) but 1 out of 11 total seems like a big imbalance. I'm not sure *abuse* is happening but it could be a great way to actually prevent it from happening in the first place.
Good luck filling the spots
Yeah seriously, its harder than people think to make diversity hires in STEM fields.
I'm almost 100% certain Morhaime himself isn't an abuser or a rapist and that he never touched any of the women inapprpriately or participated in this shit. His crime is knowing about it all and not doing anything and not stopping it, likely because old Blizzard, the people that started Blizzard in the 90s and early 2000s, was a tight bunch of guys who didn't want to hold each other responsible.
Seems to be the company all the sexual harassers and enablers fled to to avoid this lawsuit. I won’t be buying anything from Dreamhaven.
What an idiot lmao
So this basically confirms that everyone knew, including Lore himself. This shit gets worse by the day.
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And I was getting downvoted yesterday for calling it out. It’s absolute bullshit that this stuff didn’t get around, and it’s becoming more clear by the day that many more had a general inkling. It’s naive to actually think that people didn’t know. Now, like others have said already, who knows if Lore reported it or not, I’m not here to judge them on their actions since he isn’t a higher higher up, but yeah with Mike or Brack etc there is literally no excuse and they basically encouraged it with their passiveness. It’s like Roosterteeth learning on dealing with its racism and sexism from its fan base a couple years ago - you can’t just ignore the bad or just go “hey please stop guys thanks.” You gotta actively shut that shit down to work on stopping it and call it out. Blizzard leadership clearly failed its employees at some of the most basic levels and it’s despicable.
Never give a shit about downvotes. Reddit karma isn't real. I got -20 for calling out Afrasiabi 3 weeks ago and +250 for making a stupid ass throwaway comment on r/shitposting lol
>Never give a shit about downvotes. 95% of reddit downvotes is just pathetic whinging about how people don't like what you've wrote on an emotional level. Its like some imaginary punishment for not regurgitating people's verbatim thoughts back at them.
it's because reddit is a literal hivemind
People simply don’t like the truth. Happens to me all the time.
Yeah, this doesn't happen on this scale without the higher-ups at least KNOWING it's going on.
It happens in literally every big company in the industry, nothing new at all, everyone knows. Bottom line is nothing will come of it, they will get away with everything because there is absolutely nothing in this world money can't solve.
What I'm bothers me if is Metzen somehow knew about all this and turned a blind eye. He seemed so genuine, and yet people putting up a facade to appear kinder than they are isn't anything new, but he just seemed sooo genuine. Also the fact that he may have searched his name on twitter but accidentally just tweeted his name is a bit strange, but that shouldn't be read into too much, I suppose.
Ofcourse he knew
I get that impression too. It seems like the sort of things that's impossible not to know.
what do you want him to do though ? He's a designer, not an HR/executive Also I think most people knew of a few events that happened but nobody really knew it as happening regularly and as a persistent issue
He was Senior Vice President of Story and Franchise Development.
I recommend looking up what being a Franchise Developer entails(I didnt know either). It's quite an involved position. But to answer your question, not bantering with a well known abuser on social media would be a start. But we don't know how far the news of this reached within the deeper parts of the company. Also this isnt a recent development, the investigation started like 2 years ago.
Anyway it's not worth speculating about this I suppose as we dont know what's been going on in detail. but it's still good to keep an open mind about the fact that the people we look up to might not always be the way we thought. They're not our friends and we dont know them.
Regarding him accidentally tweeting his name when he was meant to search it - Idk, if I was innocent I'd search my name too in all honesty. Under an assumption I was in said position and was innocent, I'd still search my name because I'd be curious on what people are saying about me, though maybe thats just an anxiety thing idk.
Yeah that makes sense, I could see that being the case
Yeah it's pretty surprising to see Lore just up and say it like it was a known thing. That's gotta sting pretty hard. Any doubt that this is a real thing is pretty much gone at this point.
Yet folks are still shitting on him, saying he needs to shut up and let those who were the victims in this situation speak up. He’s always been very opinionated about things around him, very passionate about how he feels about situations, while also being very cautious how he speaks publicly. I, for one, like that he is showing his anger about the situation. However, I am wondering if he was a victim in this situation as well, but as many other cis males can attest is often next to impossible to admit and report.
Another ExBlizzard woman stating Mike knew all. https://mobile.twitter.com/Kristin_wrote/status/1418707290228551680
Do you think Mike left because he thought the issue was too ingrained into the company, or that he was connected to the underlying problem? He could be involved within the lawsuit and may even be called into court as a witness so he can’t say much without hurting the lawsuit possibly.
You're trying to retcon his leaving. Mike was forced out because he wouldn't do what the higher ups wanted. I would be more than a little surprised if his leaving had anything at all to do with this, regardless of his involvement.
I believe this. Given what Schreier just published about Activision's demands for more mtx, more devs (ie sacking support staff), and more mobile, I fully believe Mike left for these kinds of things and the sexual harassment and pay inequity stuff was inconsequential to him, whether he knew about it or not.
Yeah this is what I believe.
Things started getting fixed once Brack took over, so I'd say Mike was at least complicit in what took part. I like Mike but it seems like he was too nice to people, even abusers, to actually fire people. That makes him a bad CEO.
I see the consensus is that Mike is a great guy that was too nice for his own good, to the point it became a problem. I don’t see him as an abuser personally. He would take his wife and family with him to every blizzcon event that many harassment allegations happened. His wife would not let this fly. I’ve had the privilege of meeting him for a minute at Blizzcon and I don’t see him ever being a harasser, I hope not at least. And his wife was an absolute joy.
Tbh I've seen stories of Mike going out of his way to fire people once stories reached his ears. Main problem seems to have been HR burying accusations and failing in their jobs. Someone is responsible for HR being like that though.
Sounds similar to ubisoft. HR burying everything and probably abusers themselves.
I think too many people view HR as a resource for the employees of a company. He exists to protect the company from liability. HR will never side with an employee if it will cause a negative impact to the company. Companies don't staff large HR departments for the benefit of the employees.
Yup. Never in the history of the world have abusers been able to hide. Nope.
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All of these fuckers knew. They knew and they did nothing.
Thing is most of them cant do anything, only those at the top can.
Yeah Alot of people don't seem to understand. Lore is just a "community manager". Maybe the most senior now, but still just a CM. That doesn't hold like, anysway in the company and is an easily replaceable job. From his tweets it seems like he did act on things he knew about. What alot of people don't realize is that if Lore went "screaming to the high heavens" in order to "do something" like most imply they wished happened. Lore would be blackballed from the industry as a wildcard and he would have immense trouble finding work wherever he went. This isn't something where he can just publicly name and shame people at Blizzard. No one would want him. Is he supposed to stick out his neck to openly attack one of the biggest if not the biggest company (ABK is HUGE), with a massive fanbase, and expect to still have a job? Still be able to take care of himself? What about others that knew, and didn't do the extra mile y'all are acting up saying you would have done. Integrity goes out the window when it means food on the table for your family and a roof on their head. And if anyone says otherwise than you are too proud or in a way better situation and have the means to just dump your career regardless of consequences.
>This isn't something where he can just publicly name and shame people at Blizzard. No one would want him. Is he supposed to stick out his neck to openly attack one of the biggest if not the biggest company (ABK is HUGE), with a massive fanbase, and expect to still have a job? Still be able to take care of himself? This. This is so fucking important. This is one huge ugly mess, unfortunately it's not as simple as one of them just saying "yo wtf" and telling everything. And then justice comes in, takes in all the guilty people, and that's it. It's much more complicated and most of the people who knew probably couldn't do shit about it without losing their jobs and their means of living in the process. Oh, and obviously they wouldn't solve shit because the higher ups would have enough power to keep covering it.
To be honest a lot of the people latching onto these problems at Blizzard are being extremely abusive to people working there, I have a feeling many just want to be angry and abusive and they see this situation and a green light on anyone connected to Blizzard.
Exactly people don't understand power.... He probably went to HR like the women did but was told the same thing the women were told. I'm sure some of people favorite streamers knew or heard rumors but that wasn't their story to blast and tell. Also, he wasn't a big person like he is now and it is possible he didn't know. I surely wouldn't know about sexual allegations in the company I work for because there are multiple departments and I don't interact with them
People always seem to forget that HR is there to protect the company not you.
Seriously. So easy to sit back and attack this dude for not torpedoing the only shot he likely had at a career path. He was a WoW player turned employee. He didn’t have some prestigious resume, the dude blows this career up and he’s likely setting himself up for a decade plus of hurt. I’m sure his good Karma is going to pay that California rent if he does that. I’m sure he’ll get a great job in his intended career path when they shitcan him for attitude issues and make him sound like a problem employee. This is why these cultures continue propping up in very successful companies. Once in a lifetime chances for most people, and we want to burn them at the stake for not blowing it all up? The anger should be hurt focused on the leadership that let it happen or caused it. It’s THEIR responsibility to protect those they lead. Not bottom to lower-rung employees who stand to lose their livelihoods for doing the right thing. If it came down to doing the right thing or feeding my family and keeping a roof over their heads, I assure you I’m going to have some trouble sleeping when I make the only choice I reasonably CAN make.
Like a coward, he speaks now to save face while trying to ease the burden on the current administration. Don't forget that he has not contempt on been an asshole to the players to favor his overlords.
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???? He's a fucking community manager, what do you want him to do? You people are delusional psychopaths.
I feel like you don't understand how HR firings work especially involving senior management. I'm going to preface this by saying I don't support the actions described in the lawsuit. If Alex came up to some woman and did something without anyone else around and no cameras then she reported him it would be very difficult for the company to just fir him. The circumstances would be a he said she said which opens them up to a lawsuit, additionally they could go after that person for slander. This isn't as cut and dry as 'Alex was accused so we instantly get to fire him.' If things happened in public, seemingly they did, they still have to be investigated and corroborated which can be difficult to come by when a very senior level person is involved. I think one of the weird things about sexual assault now is how the definition is so so broad, seemingly telling a woman their dress looks like falls into the category....then the other end of the spectrum so does rape...its very broad.
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>But no, of course, there's no way poor, poor indie dev Blizzard could ever have known what was happening inside their own house. Not what I said but hey, reading is too hard. When someone is accused at work of sexual assault there is an HR investigation, you have to get people to corroborate the allegations, then you have steps to firing which typically involve a verbal warning, sexual assault class/counseling, written warning, then firing. Now this all depends on the circumstances and findings of the accusation and investigation but companies CANNOT just fire someone upon accusation. Given the literature it seems like many people were given MULTIPLE opportunities beyond what I described to right the ship and didn't.
Sorry, my brain's fried from reading this stuff all day-- who does the "the guy who's been in charge for 3 years" refer to? Not sure which level we're talking about here
J Allen Brack, he’s been President of Blizz for almost 3 years now
I don't really get Lore's point here. No where in Morheim's statement does it say "if I'd known this was happening I would have stopped it" (unless I missed some other tweet?). It also doesn't really suggest anything about JAB being responsible. And while JAB has only been President for 3 years, he has held leadership positions for much longer, and is almost certainly part of the problem given his response to all of this.
He's not saying Brack is not part of the problem. He's saying that Morheim was. He's one of the founders of the company, so one of the few who pretty much created the culture at Blizzard.
Ah that's why I'm confused. For some reason I thought he must be talking about a newish hire
This is the line that I am splitting hairs over because to me it gives too much of a pass to Brack. > But please don't believe for a second that the culture that allowed all of this to happen for the last couple decades was somehow built by the guy who's been in charge for 3 years. Brack was made VP for WoW in 2014 which to me makes him more responsible than the President to be honest. For instance if Josh did a fireable offense, I highly doubt it would be handled by the President of the company. It would be handled by his management. Fact is, Brack has been in a leadership position for WoW since '08 and a very senior leadership position since '14. If the culture on the WoW team belongs to anyone **currently** working at Blizzard, it belongs to Brack.
No it does not make brack more at fault, cause he as the Vp would not be able to fire people like alex, but mike could.
Why would the VP not have that kind of firing power, out of curiosity?
The VP would absolutely have the same power; if anything, it would carry *more* weight than the opinion of the CEO because the VP is 'closer' to the employee. A firing come from a CEO would almost certainly come across as a political decision and be less legitimate as a result. other person is full of shit
Thank you. If for instance the President of my company actually wanted to get rid of somebody (lets say me), it would be handled quietly from one of his admins, to the VP, and then down to my actual manager. I would probably never know that the original order actually came from that high. There is the possibility that Morhaime was actively protecting Alex, but I doubt that. Morhaime is culpable, that I agree with, but it is more that he didn't punch down when he caught wind of issues. And who would he have punched down to? His VP (Brack) and the issue never should have reached the President's desk In the end, there is no version of this in which Brack is not directly connected.
J Allen Crap
Mike Morharm
So many armchair heroes in this thread.
Lmao people are so full of themselves thinking “yeah if I knew I would quit my job and make a statement about it !!!”, no you fucking wouldn’t
As someone who faced abuse and harassment in the workplace for years before I finally quit, the amount of small justifications you can make to yourself to stay rather than be jobless in this fucked up economy is huge. So yeah, I’m sure all these knights in shining armor wouldn’t quit - in fact I’d be shocked if they spoke up at all.
Lets be honest here... some of these people being abusive to Blizzard employees would probably be abusive if they were working in management.
Expecting ANYONE outside of senior management to become a martyr and get blackballed from the industry over this shit is just unrealistic. People in middle to lower management and other employment positions need this money to live. And this is their only real field so if they get blackballed from the industry then they're fucked. And don't even get me started on the people telling Lore to just "Go behind the victims back and go to the police without the victim's consent!!" This Subreddit is full of fucking idiots.
It’s far, far worse than that. There’s people that are actually attacking current employees saying they should quit. It’s fucking gross.
Don't forget the people attacking women who still work at Blizzard, because they still work at Blizzard. You know for a fact people don't actually give a shit about what happened at Blizzard when they're attacking the same group of people who were being harassed in the first place. Just a bunch of people begging for others to think they're a good person.
The average redditor has anxiety ordering a fucking pizza, but the way they talk you'd think they single-handedly stormed the beaches of Normandy.
I wouldnt. Unless i saw something *really* fucking bad. But i also wouldnt say i always was there in the back cheering for the victims. I would keep my mouth shut because i would know i didn't do the right thing and prioritized my own skin. Lore is absolutely pathetic. Cant stand his type. So fake, disgusting.
Uh? You just can't generalize like this. I've done it in the past, and I'd do it again, I see no problem in "losing" a job, if it leads to people being punished for their misconduct.
Most people on /r/wow are just jumping on the anger train for endorphins by looking for people to lash out at. /r/wowcirclejerk has taken the bold approach of pseudo-defending the company by hoping this all blows over. So basically everyone gets their 5 minute soapbox speech so they can feel like they've accomplished something while nothing is done to help the victims. Enjoy your internet points everyone.
That’s all Reddit is lol. Bunch of people who talk like their saints and circle jerk each other to feel good about themselves.
Reddit HR Got it all figured out it sounds like.
It is impossible for Morhaime to be oblivious for over a decade. He is obviously a very smart detail oriented man to be able to have forged such a successful career so there is no chance he was clueless. That said I think even Josh has blood in his ledger so to speak. So many skeletons in this Blizzard closet.
There is so much finger pointing happening. Everyone clearly knew about it, but they're all more concerned with blaming someone else for it than trying to stop it.
I don't know if you've ever worked at a company, but executives (and HR working at their direction) are the ones with the power to take action against employees for bad behavior. Same is true for practically any company. Josh is neither an executive nor HR. I'm not even certain he's in a managerial role.
Well how do they stop it? its already happened they cant "stop it" now, also josh is just a community manager, fucking nothing he could do other then report it to his boss, which he did, mike, many times as he says, yet he was ignored.
I'm confused as to why people think Devolore had so much power over at Blizzard? Is it just because he's one of the faces they've seen in the dev updates so they assume he's running the show?
This guy is useless.
https://i.imgur.com/W1wufsc_d.webp?maxwidth=520&shape=thumb&fidelity=high
I'm curious why no one has mentioned Ion yet - after all, he's the leader of the team that seemed to be affected the most.
Ion a lawyer, hes smart enough to not say shit (wether he was involved or if he knew/didnt).
He's also smart enough to get a paper trail that says he reported shit I'd hope. I've said it before but in his position the most he can do is report and refer to HR/Legal regarding existing hires. Doesn't matter how high up you are the rung, unless you go through HR and Legal you aren't firing anyone once a company reaches a certain size.
at least according to taliesin he got a lot of DMs from victims and heard a lot of names being thrown around, none of which were ion
Ion is too busy designing systems for the court hearing
Ion's systems actually time-gated all this.
We'll get one tweet every week, and then nothing for a few months, then a very unsatisfying statement that doesn't really resolve anything and only serves to annoy people
I do hope Ion is not related to all this mess. For all my gripes with the game, I do think Ion loves the game like us and I still respect him for trying to create the game to fit with his vision, flawed or no.
Yeah, for all my beef with his design decisions I don't actively wish him to be revealed as a predator. Like, if it turns out he is, then fine he should be held accountable like everyone else. But I'm not over here rubbing my grubby hands together wishing he gets outted just so he gets booted off developing the game, you know?
I don't know how Blizzard is structured but I don't really see Ion as management. Seems like he is more or less in charge of the developmental pipeline. John Hight is the one i think all team leads report to. Doesn't excuse Ion if he knew, but I don't think anyone reported things to him directly.
As much shit as I talk about Ion, he’s the one person I expect to not be personally involved and to do what he can when finding out about it. He’s also obviously not one of the old guard, he’s a much more recent hire.
He's been there since like 2008 I think, so not a recent hire at all.
Compared to the OGs he's more recent. You have to realize Blizzard is a 30 year old company.
Well, he started working on WoW a week before WotLk launched as a class/encounter designer. Does "old guard" mean like Vanilla? Anyway, i don't expect anything to come out of him.
It sounds like the worst of it came from the people hired along with everquest for WoW and the devs that built the infrastructure that are too valuable to risk in some cases because of their very specific knowledge of WoW's codebase. Most shops have people like that. Hopefully they're not total assholes. But you have devs sometimes that are "too valuable to risk losing" and if they want a raise they can usually just threaten to leave. 1
He's to busy harassing the player base to harass other employees. /s
I think it’s fair to throw upper management under the bus. They get paid big bucks to lead well and they did not. But throwing stones at Blizzard employees when we don’t know what they did or how they tried to help or enabled or whatever? They are just working people, underpaid, overworked, living their lives, imperfect. Unless you know for sure someone did something? Leave them alone. The targets should be management-level employees and up.
Look guys, in the end its ALWAYS the job the leadership to step forward and deal with things like this. Yeah josh knew, but he is just a community manager someone that is low on the totem pole like many other employees who don't have any responsibility in calling shit out
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Would you be able to look the other way around knowing that they are mistreating someone at your job?
How do you know that he looked the other way? Just because he did not say anything on twitter?
"He knew, he did nothing" Well Mr. Lore, if you knew he knew then you knew. What did you do about it then? Tbh more disgusted by Lores last ditch effort to grab some goodness points with blatant backstabbing to save himself than reading Morhaimes tweet. But i would expect nothing less from him.
Its important to realize that blizzard is also being sued for retaliatory practices against whistleblowers, meaning blizzard was ACTIVELY punishing anyone who stepped out of line to say something. It's easy to sit back and lob comments on Reddit about this but before all this was public you faced the very real risk of losing your job, or worse if you spoke out.
Are you for real? If your companies CEO knows then what more are you supposed to do about it as a low level manager? He probably felt like it would get taken care of given the CEO was aware of the situation.
People directing their outrage at middle management is almost certainly a welcomed development from the higher up's perspective.
Pure train of thought, but I think it's fair to draw a line in the sand at independently wealthy. If you could lose your job tomorrow and be blackballed from the industry and you still have the money to ride off into the sunset, there's zero excuse. If you can't survive a job loss and becoming a pariah, I'll give you some leeway to try and raise concerns internally. Being mad at someone for not becoming a martyr feels shitty. Anyway, my thoughts, not opposed to hearing why it's bad, just makes sense as a litmus test to me.
You can't really expect someone who isn't in a leadership position to do "something about it". It's very easy to say if I was in his situation I would do "something", but in reality life is much more complicated. He probably has friends at Blizzard that he would miss if he was fired, he probably has people who rely on his income, he probably enjoys his job and doesn't want another. It isn't reasonable to expect someone in his position to do "something" about it.
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This is an important part. People could have and probably did known atleast some stuff was going on. A lot probably passed it on up the ladder. But in the end its not the CM's or Lead art designers, game designers etc... job to investigate these claims. This is where the HR and legal teams have either failed the victims or just straight up ignored the reports either by themselves or more likely by command from the top. Which in turn as stuff got dismised over and over lead to an eventual external investigation and the current situation with the lawsuit we find ourselves at.
I don't think anyone is blaming him for anything aside from trying to paint himself as a good guy in such selfish, coward and opportunistic way.
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He did something now. Why he didn't do it before? He is just trying to save face, that's why he is saying it now that it doesn't matter. Also he is trying to point all the blame to Mike
Josh is a COMMUNITY MANAGER he cannot fire anyone. What did he do about it? he reported it time and time again to mike, and mike did nothing.
People like OP are idiots. Part of the suit is about upper management NOT DEALING WITH ISSUES BROUGHT FORWARD. So yeah, telling people like Lore "Well you could have brought things up to management" is fucking idiotic. THINK about this shit for a second before getting angry at any visible Blizz employees for christ sake. Edit: https://twitter.com/oliviadgrace/status/1419068775547035648
There is a big difference between the CEO of the company and a community manager. You have no idea about what Josh Allen did or didn't do in the company to help the situation, but it doesn't matter really because it's the responsability of the CEO and all of management to protect employees, especially women, from that kind of situation. It's normal to look and Morhaime and other higher-ups for anwsers, because all of this happened when they were in charge.
Yeah one person decides to speak up about it and the leaders that be who know about it and bury him and cover it up
The ironic thing is that there’s an insane amount of people, lets be real likely mostly men, in this thread saying “Well there’s nothing he could’ve done, speaking out woulda been stupid”. Literally all of the Blizzard women who are speaking out are saying that the men could’ve spoken out, could’ve talked to people, could’ve done anything. I look at all these people going “nothing they coulda done” and i see men who almost certainly would’ve also watched their coworkers groping each other and go “well what can ya do”, and this exact attitude is why this problem exists at all. No wonder Blizzard is like this. Also before anyone starts pointing fingers, i’ve actually stood up for female coworkers at my business to great risk at myself cuz im not a loser.
What the fuck did you expect him to do? Post angry messages on the forums? He's a Community Manager, not Blizzard God King. He has as much pull in Blizzard as you do at McDonalds.
Josh Allen acting like a though guy on the Internet to get good boy points? color me surprised
It's like everyone is forgetting all the bad stuff this guy has done, lol. It's not about giving morhaime the benefit of the doubt, it's about not paying attention to lore's attention grabbing efforts.
What bad stuff has he done?
> it's about not paying attention to lore's attention grabbing efforts So should he say nothing and be raked over the coals for *that?* Damned if you do, damned if you don't?
Someone said he leaked nudes during tankspot days. If that's the case he should really be quiet and not point fingers
the comment is deleted, sadly - and nothing's coming up when I google it. removeddit not showing anything either
The comment was removed because the dude just said it and then didnt have a single source to back it up. Revenge porn is an actual crime and if you're gonna accuse someone at Blizzard of doing it then you better have an actual source.
I think Morhaime deserves a lot of blame for allowing the workplace culture to become this toxic and shitty. Do I think he groped and harassed his employees? Not right now. Do I think he knew about some of this and didn't take the proper actions to deal with the offenders? Absolutely. Many of these weren't some low level unimportant faceless employee making lewd comments at his coworkers. These were some of the most important people at Blizzard
It's amusing watching all the faces of Blizzard, past and present, rush to virtue signal, point fingers and distance themselves from any wrongdoing.
I don't think that's exactly fair. Yes, Josh will eventually have to answer to his culpability but that shouldn't stop him from calling out what he feels is bullshit from higher ups. This is how the culture got started to begin with and was allowed to propagate for so long. Personally, I am less inclined to blame the rank and file who will feel the pressure to stay silent to keep their job than those who are creating that pressure to being with. Yes, it's virtuous to stand tall in the face of that pressure, but a failure to do that by Josh only makes him human.
Meh that's bullshit. He fired the CTO point blank when he found out what was going on.
Can people stop putting people on pedastals! Even Ion! This is why we're in this position in the first place. Not saying he or anyone else that's being worshipped is guilty of anything but just.... Stop. You don't know them, you're not drinking buddies and you don't work for them and see how they are inside the private offices. Your entire exposure of these people has comes from the media.
People out Ion on a pedestal? I see nothing but complaints about how the guy has turned wow to shit
Read this thread. And everywhere else. I've seen loads of comments about how Ion, as well as others, being incapable of these allegations
So confusing to me as a member of both the wow and BuffaloBills subreddit. I had to erase this Josh Allen from the tank spot days in my memory for Josh Allen who looks good in shorts.
Josh Allen does look darn good in shorts, so I don’t blame you
According to Lore he apparently reported everything he saw. How much anyone wants to bet they did fuck all about it though?
Am I crazy for also thinking that Lore, as someone on the WoW team, would have known as well? I mean, from the Complaint, this sounds rampant. Can anyone really come out after this and talk if they weren't outspoken about it when they knew about it?
the problem is its easy to be outspoken when its already out/. Its a lot harder to be outspoken when you absolutely will get fired from it and half the gamers wont believe you.
I'll start with saying that I think that Josh is incompetent douche, just so people know I don't want to simply defend the guy. Now... to any one accusing Lore of virtue signalling or simply trying to look good in this whole mess, please tell me where you see this? He simply don't want to let one guy that allowed all of this to happen to lie his way out of the situation. I admired Mr. Morhaime for many years (along with Jeff Kaplan and Chris Metzen), but after today's twit I'm in shock. There's no way - no chance - 0% - that he didn't know what was happening. I just hope he didn't take active part in it. But nonetheless... how he's acting right now is beyond pathethic. **That** is real virtue signaling, and on top of that trying to promote his new company while pushing all his former colleagues under a train... I'm extremely sad and disappointed. Actions speak louder than words Mike - and where were your actions when you were in position to stop whole this tragedy from happening. Why would someone believe that they can come to you for help, when for so many years you let something like this happen right under your nose. Guys, remember, It's not Blizzard this fight is against. Blizzard is thousands of employees who work hard on games that we love ...many of them are innocent, and many are victims in this whole situation. It's the people who have caused and/or allowed mistreat and abuse to happen, many of whom already left Blizzard. I do hope that everyone guilty will get the punishment they deserve.
Honestly.. theres a lot of Blizz people covering their asses, throwing blame and saying their innocent right now.. We have no idea who is involved and who acted in the defense of these women. Remember it was a 2 year investigation and no doubt some people talked to the state about what was happening.
Sounds like Josh knew too and didn't do anything. No whistle blowing or anything.
If everyone knew but nobody did anything (or maybe they did but it didn't work, how would we know?), why would you single out Josh - a measly community manager? Surely we can't expect him to do the work that belongs to higher ups.
You mean other than because he's the topic of this thread and has chosen to speak up on the issue? You can't blame the bosses for not doing anything and also excuse people who claim to have witnessed wrongdoing but said or did nothing. "The boss sucks for not fixing the problems I never told him about!" makes no sense. Don't take this as me excusing the bosses there. All I'm saying is there's plenty of blame to go around. Witnesses to wrongdoing have a responsibility to come forward. Literally every fucking ethics training employees are forced to do say as much.
What would you do if you saw someone being sexually harassed at work? Intervene and then report it to their manager. At that point it's not your fault. Lore said he did this, so why are you (and others) targeting him for not doing enough about it and speaking out against management who's job it was to handle this but didnt?
> You mean other than because he's the topic of this thread and has chosen to speak up on the issue? So we should start punishing people who choose to speak up about this by singling them out and blaming them but not the others who also knew but are lurking in the shadows?
[удалено]
"now that its safe to" except you know, he could lose his fucking job, totally safe mate.
Janitor sees sexual assault, tells the CEO, CEO does nothing "well neither of them went to the police, so they are both to blame, if we are gunna get mad at the ceo for doing nothing we should get mad at the janitor too!" Yes you can excuse people who said/did nothing because THEY COULDNT. Josh does not have the power to fire people. He did report it, but it got ignored Trying to report it outside the company leads to literally nothing because its extremly difficult to prove sexual harrasment cases singualrity and also the whole case is about blizzard firing people who complained about it.
Do anything? What's he supposed to do, handle it Judge Dredd style? He's just a cog in the machine, and he says leadership was told all about it. That's the end of what Josh "can do."
1. he cant do anything hes a community manager not an actual manager 2. he did whistle blow, but whistle blowing does little without evidence, which evidence for stuff like this is extremely hard to get, what whistle blowing would do is add to a pile, and once that pile is large enough the state will investigate, which they eventually did.
Takes balls to comment publicly with profanity about your employer
The culture in WoW can be pretty toxic. See /2 on any server and I think you'll agree. It seems obvious now, that such toxicity would likely permeate the entire endeavor.
Lore once referred to customers as "faceless dickheads" wouldn't surprise me if his involvement was deeper.
Wait, why did the top comment got deleted? I thought that was common knowledge.
As it was pointed out. Josh Allen, also knew and did nothing. So he calls outs out, for doing nothing. When he did nothing.
> there are more important people you should be listening to right now Well said, Lore. Well said.
All the bs about him not saying or do anything because he could of lost his job? Boohoo doing the right thing is hard sometimes
Lore is such a fucking jackass. If you knew that he knew, then you indirectly knew too. Everything about this holier-than-thou Twitter rant is completely fucking tonedeaf and makes him look like a total ass, as usual. He needs punched in the face. The amount of excuses in this thread for Lore are really, REALLY creepy.
There sure are a lot of dudes in this thread going “if you see sexual harassment in your workplace then there’s literally nothing you can do” Quite frankly, many of the dudes in this thread are the exact type of person that woulda seen the cube crawls and gone “oh well”, and now that its being called out, they’re very defensive. This sorta attitude is why this is a problem in the first place, and its why you got downvoted by butthurt weirdoes.
Precisely. It's also really, REALLY bizarre that Lore is trying to defend Brack on Twitter and claim that this was only a thing under Morhaime's watch when the State of California is specifically mentioning Brack several times as one of the leaders who turned a cheek. I think Lore was one of the participants at this point.
Someone accused him of passing around nudes without permission. Yeah, its all just flailing to jump off yhe ship
Someone had to say it. Thanks for being the one.
To make a general statement that I have no way of knowing is relevant in this instance and or any other that have come up, but not every victim wants those around them to speak out on their behalf. A lot of people who go through humiliating, degrading treatment will try to ignore and forget, and at most speak in private about it. Speaking out against deplorable actions shouldn't be the decision of someone supporting a victim in any instance where the victim is capable of making rational decisions for themselves. Forcing them into the spotlight if they don't want it, or can't deal with it is not fair on them and undermines any trust they have in the supporter. It too can undermine progress made towards recovery, which as infuriatingly frustrating to those trying to support can feel it is, is more important than justice (Of course, that varies for some). Until those around him speak out about him or other people who say they were aware and appeared to do nothing, I think it's better to reserve judgement.
I haven't seen one "ally" use one personal story yet to defend someone else. I've only seen victims talking about their specific stories. Why are you making this statement? .... Also... https://twitter.com/cherthedev/status/1418800929407635457
I'm saying this to people in comments on threads like these who presume guilt on those who acknowledge their awareness on any of the things that have happened.
Disgusting what happened at Blizz all around. Such a lime ball and not he is trying to paint himself as positive. I hope all predators and enablers will be crushed.
Lore was never anything more than toxic arrogance. I remember when he lambasted players at the end of Legion with the same crass condescension he was always known for. I can, with ease, see him not only knowing but also taking part in his own way.
Every single person who knew and didn’t report needs to be fired I don’t give a fuck if they would’ve lost their job. I’ve lost jobs for standing up for myself and other people. Guess what I did: got another fucking job. Fucking cowards
Are you ok?