“It’s like staring at two totally different worlds,” says Chris Metzen, Blizzard’s former senior VP of story development. In the wake of the Activision Blizzard lawsuit, Metzen and many other former corporate personnel are voicing their thoughts on the crisis at Twitter and other social media hubs.
“But it’s not. It’s just the one world, and the yawning disconnect between my perception from the top and the crushing reality many of you experienced fills me with profound shame.”
From the Top
“We failed too many people when they needed us,” Metzen further reflects, “because we had the privilege of not noticing, not engaging, not creating necessary space for the colleagues who needed us as leaders.”
The fallout from the ongoing Activision Blizzard lawsuit has seemingly awakened the consciences of more men than Chris Metzen. While Metzen’s name is perhaps the most celebrated among World of Warcraft‘s vast fandom — his narrative contributions to the game from its foundations until his departure in 2016 are among the chief reasons some players no longer believe the game is as grand as it was five years ago — voices are emerging from even higher up the totem pole.
Shock, Disgust, and Anger
Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime is ashamed.
“It feels like everything I thought I stood for has been washed away. What’s worse but even more important, real people have been harmed, and some women had terrible experiences.”
Morhaime acknowledges that “these are just words,” and in the interest of full disclosure, I should personally note that at no point in his statement does he say whether or not he was aware of any incidents of harassment during his impressive 1991-2019 tenure with the company. But at the very least, he does take direct responsibility for a matter that was, no doubt, overlooked or ignored by hundreds of people who would have been closer to the ground while toxic workplace culture persisted. Ideally, the Activision Blizzard lawsuit will progress more, preferably thanks to his words and the words of others in his field.
“After reading so many of the experiences that have been shared over the past few days, a lot of common themes scream out,” considers Chris Metzen. People were conditioned to think the abuse was normal. They never spoke up for fear of reprisal. HR was not trustworthy; nothing was going to change either way, “on and on it goes.” Voices are being heard now through not just the lawsuit but from Activision Blizzard associates past and present on Twitter, Instagram, and beyond.
“I’m left feeling the same shock, disgust, and anger that many of you are.”
The Activision Blizzard Lawsuit
I realize that not everybody here will be up-to-date on the various unfortunate incidents surrounding the video game industry; besides, it’s easy to turn a blind eye and say, “it sounds like everywhere sucks, so this is hardly news” in the wake of ongoing catastrophes at other major publishers, such as Ubisoft and Riot.
For those who wish to know more about this sensitive subject, I would first ask that you understand there are some very difficult details. You won’t want to venture into the lawsuit’s official court document’s allegations against Activision Blizzard without steadying yourself beforehand, as this lawsuit includes well-founded accounts of some truly terrible behavior. Put another way, here is a formal content warning for descriptions of sexual assault.
We won’t go too deep into the matter here, as much of what can be said has been said, and you might not have visited us today to read a grim (if at times woefully unsurprising) account of people acting atrociously and hurting others carelessly. That said, we do have a detailed piece up already covering the broad strokes of the Activision Blizzard lawsuit. We’ve also reported on Morhaime’s comments in particular. And while we understand you might not want to check out The Nerd Stash for a deluge of bad news, we’ll do our best to cover any major motions with the lawsuit going forward.
But if you know of anybody in the same situation as these hard-working women at the center of the Activision Blizzard lawsuit, I would encourage you to speak up for their sake, as if there’s one thing clear from Chris Metzen’s and Mike Morhaime’s Blizzard statements, it’s all too easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees.