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Description
Wow, guess who's mad about the games industry? it's me!

As a long time fan of two of the franchises acquired by Activision, Crash Bandicoot & Spyro, as someone who is aspiring to work in the Games Industry myself, I am heartbroken & I am angry. I won't stop loving these two things & I don't expect other fans to do the same, however I refuse to support Activision. I will be joining the boycott.
I will still be drawing Crash & Spyro & I will still likely be crediting them to Activision Blizzard, though from now on these credits will also be linking to these articles as a reminder & condemnation of the horrific abuse people have suffered.
I will only support work from independent artists & fans from now on.

I support the right for workers in the Games Industry to unionize & you should as well. Unions won't fix all these problems, but it is a good way to start & to build solidarity between workers & give them the power to fight for their rights to work in a non-abusive environment regardless of who they are.

For the TL;DR watch this video , touches on pretty much all the same things as I do below

Content Warning Below for Sexual Harassment & Assault, Misogyny & Suicide.

I'm sure you're probably at least a little bit aware of what's been going on with Activision Blizzard lately, if not, well allow me to illuminate it for you.

On the 20th of July this year in 2021, the California Department of Fair Employment & Housing filed a lawsuit after an investigation spanning across years from reports of women having been harassed & abused while working for Blizzard & to some extent, the parent company Activision.

Women working for Blizzard saw unequal pay & difficulties progressing their careers through promotions. Women were also terminated from working for the company much more frequently than that of men. However this only scratches the surface of the problem women have faced on the job.

Activision Blizzard has also been caught being discriminatory toward pregnant women working for them, this has been known publicly from a kotaku article from 2019 where Activision Blizzard prompts women to use a pregnancy tracking app, which they then monitor. Activision Blizzard has been known to ignore medical restrictions for pregnant workers & giving negative work evaluations for workers taking maternity leave. One woman working on a game team in a manager position asked to be payed a fairer wage or promotion, but was denied as it was assumed she might one day become pregnant & enjoy being a mother too much to do her job. Women would get criticized for needing to leave work early to pick their children up from day care.

Women of colour were especially targeted in which several African American women say they were micromanaged to an unfair standard as their male co-workers would get to slack off. One Black woman being told that she was to present a one page summary for what she intended to use the time off for, where as none of her other co-workers were asked to do the same. She would also get criticized for her body language in the work place while other co-workers would be allowed to slouch in business meetings, & she would get scolded for needing assistance with her work while other workers in similar situations would get that assistance without issue.

When women went to HR with their complaints, they were often told that it was an issue with their performance, or have their issues outright dismissed or given an empty promise of a follow-up. This was from everything from pay discrepancies & promotion issues to reports of sexual misconduct from co-workers. A lot of these complaints to HR were also non-confidential, in which regularly information about these issues would leak into the workplace causing co-workers to further mistreat the complainant. This created a great level of mistrust toward the Human Resource team & an environment that discouraged victims to speak up about their abuse.

The work environment at Blizzard has been called "frat boy culture", as a reference to how the men in the work place would spend most of their days playing video games, getting drunk, harassing, making unwanted sexual advances & comments, groping & other unwanted physical touching of women workers during what they'd call "cube crawls". One woman complained about male workers commenting on her breasts. Another woman working on WoW would often be subjected to sexual harassment, being hit on & rape jokes. This was known to supervisors & rather than being shut down, was instead often encouraged, one supervisor telling a male worker to "hire a hooker" to fix his bad mood.

One of the more tragic events is that of one woman committing suicide on a business trip due to a sexual relationship with a male supervisor who was found to have packed buttplugs & lube. It was found that during a holiday party before her death, co-workers had been passing around her nudes without her consent. It was also said this woman had faced a lot of other sexual harassment up till her death.

This is all just from the law suit itself. The response from Blizzard itself has been less than stellar as well in which they responded to the suit by saying DFHE was "irresponsible behavior from unaccountable state bureaucrats", claiming all these instances of abuse of women in the workplace are "distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard's past." But then going on to bring up the suicide of one employee as though it doesn't have any baring on the actions of Blizzard's employee's who sexually harassed & abused her to death. Blizzard's response can be read here in this article.

Since this news dropped, many workers of Blizzard, of Activision & of Activision's acquired studios & companies, as well as other game developers of other game companies have spoken out. Bungie, the studio behind Halo & Destiny came out writing a thread of support for workers in the games industry. Ubisoft workers speak up of their own abuse within the industry as Ubisoft is another well known toxic work environment.
Many online streamers of Activision Blizzard content have stopped streaming those games in support. Many fans of Activision, Blizzard & King have stopped playing the games, stopped purchasing micro-transactions & stopped buying licensed merch, boycotting the brands.
Workers of Activision Blizzard & King put together a petition to condemn Blizzard's public response to the lawsuit which gained upwards of 2,000 signatures from employees in just 2 days.
On Wednesday the 27th, Activision Blizzard employees went on strike , walking out on the job to protest the poor conditions of women & other marginalized workers.

Blizzard's response, particularly that of the CEO Bobby Kotick has been seemingly supportive, however deceptive as under the guise of "reviewing policies procedures to help promote a more respectful and inclusive workspace", the company hires the law firm WilmerHale, which is well known for its work union busting Amazon workers. I would treat this seemingly good will from Bobby Kotick & Activision Blizzard with a lot of skepticism. Especially when employees are saying that what Kotick & the company is doing isn't in line with their demands for a better workplace.

There is so much more I could write about but this is already a massive wall of text so better to just link this collection of steadily updating articles as more news unfolds.

Art belongs to me
Characters belong to Activision Blizzard

Description
Wow, guess who's mad about the games industry? it's me!

As a long time fan of two of the franchises acquired by Activision, Crash Bandicoot & Spyro, as someone who is aspiring to work in the Games Industry myself, I am heartbroken & I am angry. I won't stop loving these two things & I don't expect other fans to do the same, however I refuse to support Activision. I will be joining the boycott.
I will still be drawing Crash & Spyro & I will still likely be crediting them to Activision Blizzard, though from now on these credits will also be linking to these articles as a reminder & condemnation of the horrific abuse people have suffered.
I will only support work from independent artists & fans from now on.

I support the right for workers in the Games Industry to unionize & you should as well. Unions won't fix all these problems, but it is a good way to start & to build solidarity between workers & give them the power to fight for their rights to work in a non-abusive environment regardless of who they are.

For the TL;DR watch this video , touches on pretty much all the same things as I do below

Content Warning Below for Sexual Harassment & Assault, Misogyny & Suicide.

I'm sure you're probably at least a little bit aware of what's been going on with Activision Blizzard lately, if not, well allow me to illuminate it for you.

On the 20th of July this year in 2021, the California Department of Fair Employment & Housing filed a lawsuit after an investigation spanning across years from reports of women having been harassed & abused while working for Blizzard & to some extent, the parent company Activision.

Women working for Blizzard saw unequal pay & difficulties progressing their careers through promotions. Women were also terminated from working for the company much more frequently than that of men. However this only scratches the surface of the problem women have faced on the job.

Activision Blizzard has also been caught being discriminatory toward pregnant women working for them, this has been known publicly from a kotaku article from 2019 where Activision Blizzard prompts women to use a pregnancy tracking app, which they then monitor. Activision Blizzard has been known to ignore medical restrictions for pregnant workers & giving negative work evaluations for workers taking maternity leave. One woman working on a game team in a manager position asked to be payed a fairer wage or promotion, but was denied as it was assumed she might one day become pregnant & enjoy being a mother too much to do her job. Women would get criticized for needing to leave work early to pick their children up from day care.

Women of colour were especially targeted in which several African American women say they were micromanaged to an unfair standard as their male co-workers would get to slack off. One Black woman being told that she was to present a one page summary for what she intended to use the time off for, where as none of her other co-workers were asked to do the same. She would also get criticized for her body language in the work place while other co-workers would be allowed to slouch in business meetings, & she would get scolded for needing assistance with her work while other workers in similar situations would get that assistance without issue.

When women went to HR with their complaints, they were often told that it was an issue with their performance, or have their issues outright dismissed or given an empty promise of a follow-up. This was from everything from pay discrepancies & promotion issues to reports of sexual misconduct from co-workers. A lot of these complaints to HR were also non-confidential, in which regularly information about these issues would leak into the workplace causing co-workers to further mistreat the complainant. This created a great level of mistrust toward the Human Resource team & an environment that discouraged victims to speak up about their abuse.

The work environment at Blizzard has been called "frat boy culture", as a reference to how the men in the work place would spend most of their days playing video games, getting drunk, harassing, making unwanted sexual advances & comments, groping & other unwanted physical touching of women workers during what they'd call "cube crawls". One woman complained about male workers commenting on her breasts. Another woman working on WoW would often be subjected to sexual harassment, being hit on & rape jokes. This was known to supervisors & rather than being shut down, was instead often encouraged, one supervisor telling a male worker to "hire a hooker" to fix his bad mood.

One of the more tragic events is that of one woman committing suicide on a business trip due to a sexual relationship with a male supervisor who was found to have packed buttplugs & lube. It was found that during a holiday party before her death, co-workers had been passing around her nudes without her consent. It was also said this woman had faced a lot of other sexual harassment up till her death.

This is all just from the law suit itself. The response from Blizzard itself has been less than stellar as well in which they responded to the suit by saying DFHE was "irresponsible behavior from unaccountable state bureaucrats", claiming all these instances of abuse of women in the workplace are "distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard's past." But then going on to bring up the suicide of one employee as though it doesn't have any baring on the actions of Blizzard's employee's who sexually harassed & abused her to death. Blizzard's response can be read here in this article.

Since this news dropped, many workers of Blizzard, of Activision & of Activision's acquired studios & companies, as well as other game developers of other game companies have spoken out. Bungie, the studio behind Halo & Destiny came out writing a thread of support for workers in the games industry. Ubisoft workers speak up of their own abuse within the industry as Ubisoft is another well known toxic work environment.
Many online streamers of Activision Blizzard content have stopped streaming those games in support. Many fans of Activision, Blizzard & King have stopped playing the games, stopped purchasing micro-transactions & stopped buying licensed merch, boycotting the brands.
Workers of Activision Blizzard & King put together a petition to condemn Blizzard's public response to the lawsuit which gained upwards of 2,000 signatures from employees in just 2 days.
On Wednesday the 27th, Activision Blizzard employees went on strike , walking out on the job to protest the poor conditions of women & other marginalized workers.

Blizzard's response, particularly that of the CEO Bobby Kotick has been seemingly supportive, however deceptive as under the guise of "reviewing policies procedures to help promote a more respectful and inclusive workspace", the company hires the law firm WilmerHale, which is well known for its work union busting Amazon workers. I would treat this seemingly good will from Bobby Kotick & Activision Blizzard with a lot of skepticism. Especially when employees are saying that what Kotick & the company is doing isn't in line with their demands for a better workplace.

There is so much more I could write about but this is already a massive wall of text so better to just link this collection of steadily updating articles as more news unfolds.

Art belongs to me
Characters belong to Activision Blizzard