Activision Blizzard CEO, Bobby Kotick, has sent a letter to all employees and it was published to the Activision Blizzard investor relations site. The letter calls the initial response from leadership "tone deaf" and provides insight into the path going forward for the company.
We have the full letter down below, but here is a recap of the important points:
- The initial response to the issues at the company was tone deaf.
- Bobby apologizes for the company no providing "the right empathy and understanding".
- WilmerHale, a law firm, will be conducting a review of Activison Blizzard policies and procedures to "maintain best practices to promote a respectful and inclusive workplace".
- Effective Immediately:
- Employee Support. They will continue to investigate each and every claim and will not hesitate to take decisive action.
- Listening Sessions. They will be creating safe spaces, moderated by third parties, for you to speak out and share areas for improvement.
- Personnel Changes. They are immediately evaluating managers and leaders across the Company. Those found to be impeding the integrity of processes will be terminated.
- Hiring Practices. They will be adding compliance resources to ensure that our hiring managers are in fact adhering to this directive.
- In-game Changes. Removing content that players and employees find inappropriate.
Quote From Bobby Kotick A Letter From CEO Bobby Kotick to All Employees
July 28, 2021
SANTA MONICA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jul. 27, 2021– Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) CEO Bobby Kotick today sent the following letter
to all employees.July 27, 2021
This has been a difficult and upsetting week.
I want to recognize and thank all those who have come forward in the past and in recent days. I so appreciate your courage. Every voice matters - and we will do a better job of listening now, and in the future.
Our initial responses to the issues we face together, and to your concerns, were, quite frankly, tone deaf.
It is imperative that we acknowledge all perspectives and experiences and respect the feelings of those who have been mistreated in any way. I am sorry that we did not provide the right empathy and understanding.
Many of you have told us that active outreach comes from caring so deeply for the Company. That so many people have reached out and shared thoughts, suggestions, and highlighted opportunities for improvement is a powerful reflection of how you care for our communities of colleagues and players – and for each other. Ensuring that we have a safe and welcoming work environment is my highest priority. The leadership team has heard you loud and clear.
We are taking swift action to be the compassionate, caring company you came to work for and to ensure a safe environment. There is no place anywhere at our Company for discrimination, harassment, or unequal treatment of any kind.
We will do everything possible to make sure that together, we improve and build the kind of inclusive workplace that is essential to foster creativity and inspiration.
I have asked the law firm WilmerHale to conduct a review of our policies and procedures to ensure that we have and maintain best practices to promote a respectful and inclusive workplace. This work will begin immediately. The WilmerHale team will be led by Stephanie Avakian, who is a member of the management team at WilmerHale and was most recently the Director of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement.
We encourage anyone with an experience you believe violates our policies or in any way made you uncomfortable in the workplace to use any of our many existing channels for reporting or to reach out to Stephanie. She and her team at WilmerHale will be available to speak with you on a confidential basis and can be reached at [email protected] or 202-247-2725. Your outreach will be kept confidential. Of course, NO retaliation will be tolerated.
We are committed to long-lasting change. Effective immediately, we will be taking the following actions:
Your well-being remains my priority and I will spare no company resource ensuring that our company has the most welcoming, comfortable, and safe culture possible.
You have my unwavering commitment that we will improve our company together, and we will be the most inspiring, inclusive entertainment company in the world.
Yours sincerely,
Bobby
Comments
Kotaku today posted an in-depth investigation about the goings-on related to the "Cosby Suite", which was a hotel room used by Blizzard employees during BlizzCon 2013.
Up to now, no one on the Hearthstone team had been mentioned in the allegations. This is no longer the case:
This makes me profoundly sad. I had hoped Team 5 wouldn't be involved in this affair because it was too small and isolated in its early years, as well as being led by Ben Brode (can you imagine Ben condoning ANY kind of demeaning behaviour? Neither can I).
I hope people don't confuse this as a corporation caring. Corporations do not care. Corporations exists to make money and shelter the people who profit from them from scrutiny. They do not make decisions based on any morals or ethics only what they believe will affect their profits.
It's just another cynical PR move to appease people rather than any virtuous intent.
the thing is...if workplace conditions actually do improve then that's a good thing. The point isn't to inject moral fibre into Bobby Koticks gelatinous spine, it's literally just about having the workplace actually be a safe environment, and if the only way to get there is to hold the company's profits hostage then so be it.
Judge the consequences, not the intent.
Better than nothing still...
Compare and contrast the employees' demands to the actions announced by the CEO. Employees' demands:
CEO's Promises:
A) Removal of arbitration clauses vs. promises of more internal investigations. This should be self-explanatory. You can usually sue your employer if they grossly violate your rights, but arbitration clauses funnel everything into unaccountable internal investigations.
B) Hiring and diversity. A company-wide, participatory DEI organization vs. literally "I sent an email."
C) Accountability. The employees want a third party firm to evaluate "reporting structure, HR department, and executive staff" vs. a threat from the CEO to fire anyone who impeded with an internal investigation. Reflect deeply on the wording of that last part because it could easily be used for retaliation against staff who actually brought legitimate complaints.
D) Publication of hard data on promotions and salary vs. listening sessions.
E) Removal of in-game content vs. ??? - No way to evaluate this right now, but I have some more thoughts.
We're all familiar with the backlash (real or troll) to the real efforts of people in the gaming industry to make it genuinely a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive place. The term SJW gets thrown around a lot, and I'd say it's similar in concept to the term "virtue-signaling." The idea that "keyboard warriors" simply want to pontificate on the "politically correct" issues, get some upvotes, but don't care about the real-world. And typically the people invoking these terms have been dismissive of the civil complaint, and angry that we're still talking about it instead of the game. But I hope a close reading of these statements allows people to realize that the employees are very much making concrete, real-world demands, and corporate is the one invoking a lot of good language (I would defend large parts of Kotick's letter if I thought it was remotely sincere or in good-faith) in the service of making themselves look good.
Which brings me back to that letter E) above. There's a good argument to be made about in-game representation, hyper-sexualization, the broader culture in games etc., but... that's not the argument the employees are making. To me, including that in THIS letter, the day before the ActiBlizzWalkout over real-world working conditions, is red-meat for the cultural backlash. It's the CEO of the company hoping to provoke a reaction in the community and player-base so they get pissed at the employees for demanding, I don't know, artwork or NPC changes?, when they're actually demanding to not be bound by feudal arbitration contracts. Don't fall for it.
I agree with your points but I feel like I have to add to the last part.
I really think that a lot of people are extremely suspicious of the idea of "removing offensive in-game content" because time and time again this kind of stuff leads to completely innocuous stuff being axed only to appease a vocal minority of moral busy-bodies (not unlike the ultra-religious outragemongers of the past). Basically, there is a real chance (even if it might not happen, we don't have enough evidence as of now) that it might lead to pointless censorship whose only purpose is to appease a small section of the public while not actually achieving anything of value.
Removing the very concept of cleavage from a game where characters dress in the stupidest gear imaginable is not only hypocritical but also doesn't actually help women in the real world in any way and if that is indeed something that results from all of this it would be an extremely disappointing and disingenuous outcome.
My stance is this: Everything that comes out of this should concern the actual employees, the work environment at the company, and how these things are handled internally, not the honour of fictional women in a videogame. That is a different conversation and it needs to be seperated from the present issue as not to undermine it.
Edit: I just learned that WilmerHale, the outside firm they’re contracting with, is known for helping companies fight unionization. That certainly puts a disturbing spin on this issue.
My original comment:
Thank you. Those are very good points. I had interpreted this all as a good sign - yes, I’m cynical about anything a large corporation does, but this is the rare situation where morality, laws, and profit motive line up pretty well. I saw this as the first step in a process that I could expect to go well. But you’re right - it can definitely be read as the CEO staking out a position that doesn’t go as far as it should.
I will make two points about what you said:
1) Just because a group of employees made demands, the company doesn’t have to agree immediately. It’s ok for them to stake out different public positions, and then work towards a compromise. And though I like every one of the demands made by the employee group, you generally ask for more than you expect to get. It’s not necessarily a travesty if Blizzard gives in to most but not all of the demands.
2) As others have pointed out in this thread, the reference to changing characters and in-game items is probably because some things in WoW are directly named after abusers. That’s a good change. I don’t think that this is an excuse to censor artwork or anything. I just don’t see that being a successful PR gambit.
Definitely agree with a lot of the analysis, just one thing you forgot to mention. According to Bobby, they will be hiring a third party firm, it's call WilmerHale:
It's something, and I hope it's in good faith. It's not the same as a firm selected by a company-wide DEI organization (my own workplace - a non-union medium sized NPO - just did this - both the democratic employee org and their selection of the third party firm), and it's not clear that the firm is there to look at HR enforcement and upper management or if they'll simply be the third party facilitating "listening sessions." I will hope for the best, while recognizing the performative politics that people detest are most likely to come from corporate.
Good analysis.
This guy is a real hero. Letting others in the company reply first and see how it goes. And then he finds it save to reply himself. Very brave.
And what is his role as CEO in all of this? He must have (shared) responsibility for this company and the people in it right?
"In-game Changes. We have heard the input from employee and player communities that some of our in-game content is inappropriate. We are removing that content."
This is probably the statement that might get some flak. For me personally, for now I am going to assume this means: We are removing NPC's that are homages to employees who have harassing people.
There is a chance that it is trying to turn a particular percentage of the players against the employees.
They may be hoping that the ones that were upset by the "Jaina nerf" or boo'd this question with start defending them.
That's exactly what I thought, since it has 0 to do with the demands of the employees. Such a dirty move.
Wonder if the stock taking a dive yesterday had any influence on this statement.
That's nice and all but it's not like they had much of an option to say anything else if they wanted to save face. This coming from Kotick of all people doesn't mean jack. I'm sure one of the most overpaid CEOs in the world that gets millions upon millions in bonuses every year while his staff goes underpaid for the hard work they put in and then get jettisoned, hundreds at a time, so that the company can boast record revenues, is very much in touch with what is happening at the ground level, understands his workers (barf) and is fully capable of enforcing whatever lofty policies he thinks up to look good in the news. And yeah, they can "terminate" the offenders. But there's unceremonious, disgraceful firings and then there's the Ubisoft way of handling sexual predators. I'd be surprised if they didn't go for the latter. Pick a few scapegoats to axe (getting severance and getting to keep their options in the company) while the perpetrators on the executive level get to play dead for a while until it blows over.
Bobby Kotick and I agree on something. Tone deaf it was.
Worried what this might mean. Don't let this thing be used as a Trojan horse to play identity politics. Although as someone pointed out, NPCs named after employees involved in this shitshow might be what they are talking about....at least I hope it is.
Yes, I'd like to see some examples of this content employees and players deem inappropriate. I hope nobody is planning on changing all female characters that are showing too much skin or something.
If you're hoping to keep them away from scantily-clad, big boob characters, just remember: porn still exists.