Cognition Dissemination: Burn the Video Game Industry to the Ground

Devastating news emerged from the video gaming world this week: The state of California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing is suing Activision Blizzard over what it alleges is a frat boy workplace culture that exists within the company. This has led to, among plenty of other actions, years of harassment and abuse of largely-female employees perpetuated by coworkers. The suit is a culmination of a two-year investigation by the department, which detailed their findings in a whopping 29-page document describing the accusations in excruciating detail. It’s worth reading through the entire thing, but it’s understandable if anyone sensitive to the downright vile actions detailed within can’t.

[Content warning for sexual harassment, assault, and suicide. These aren’t for the faint of heart.]

One such accusation describes how female employees have needed to tell off sexual advances from their male counterparts. Worse, among them were high-level executives who saw no repercussions for their actions. In another accusation, men would come to work drunk and hung over and crawl through cubicles to nonchalantly harass women sitting at them. Women of color were, of course, subjected to the worst discrimination. An African-American woman in particular described being passed up for a promotion to full-time employment while several men who joined the company after her were promoted in a quicker fashion.

The most stomach churning and infuriating accusation involves a female employee who was harassed to the point that she committed suicide during a company trip, one where her male supervisor had taken a butt plug and lubricant with him. Another employee confirmed that images of the victim’s vagina had been passed around during a Christmas party before her death.

These reports unsurprisingly fell on deaf ears at Activision Blizzard’s Human Resources department, in another example showing how HR exists to look out for the company and not the employees. They likely did the same when they desired to monitor pregnant employees like a Big Brother.

The lawsuit is stuffed to the brim with several more terrifying accusations. If that’s not enough, more former employees and friends of them have posted their own stories on Twitter. Most accusations are focused on the Blizzard Entertainment side of Activision, which could partially explain the sizable number of departures at the company in recent years. They weren’t all simply pursuing creative interests elsewhere.

It's been 2.5 years and I still carry a lot of pain from my time at Blizzard. I stayed too long (7 years) clinging to the "Blizzard" label.

I'm finally at a company where I'm paid/treated fairly, and I want the same for my old teammates. Don't wait ladies, you deserve more. ♥️

— Nicki Broderick (@alaurei) July 22, 2021

I left Blizzard after my boss gaslit me so badly my hair started falling out. My profit sharing, which I relied on to make ends meet, was docked due to “underperforming”, and when I went to HR to fight it with proof against his claims, I was told “maybe you are underperforming”

— Alex 🐺 (@alex_frostwolf) July 22, 2021

I’m going to come out and say it.

I was one of these women. My incident happened in 2013 at BlizzCon. I didn’t say anything officially until I decided to leave the company last year, because of the name recognition and fear of retaliation. https://t.co/gzcjQUxMFp pic.twitter.com/BOMNxEm79u

— 💖💛💙Stephanie “The Vaxxed” Krutsick🏳️‍🌈🇺🇸 (@skrutsick) July 22, 2021

This is certainly LONG overdue.

I would be hard-pressed to find someone that wasn't witness to sex in the game lounges, coke in the bathrooms during a cube crawl, or a woman who wasn't sexually harassed at least once.

I am so proud of these women.https://t.co/YXc7wV3Ce4

— Cher Scarlett (@cherthedev) July 22, 2021

(There’s more in the Twitter threads.)

This news has led to a chorus of well-meaning people discussing reforms that need to happen within video game companies to protect vulnerable workers from the sex pests hovering around them. This will not be enough. Activision Blizzard is only the latest example of a company with rampant sexual harassment culture, helmed by executives who’ve allowed it to fester if they haven’t participated in it directly. This is not an industry that can be reformed. The only surefire option is to set it all ablaze and watch it burn to cinders.

Again, this company is far from the only one where rape culture has been allowed to pervade within a company and its subsidiaries. The largest prior example was Ubisoft, where multiple instances of sexual harassment were found to have occurred through reports made public a little over a year ago. These happened at their biggest development houses within Ubisoft Montreal and the main headquarters in France. It’s a prime example showing how reforms will not work.

The employees accused of harassment were fired or resigned shortly after the reports were made public. But it’s since been confirmed that Ubisoft hasn’t made enough internal company changes to prevent history from repeating itself. The day-to-day employees who engaged in the terrible behavior are gone, but the executives who let it happen remain in their positions, including CEO Yves Guillemot. It was clear a year ago that he and his closest cohorts considered themselves untouchable, and they bet correctly. The weak harassment protocols were only implemented in districts where they were previously reported to have occurred, while it’s been allowed to continue in worse forms in other subsidiaries like Ubisoft Singapore.

Sexual harassment allegations against Quantic Dream were also made public around three-and-a-half years ago, and have recently made headlines again as the case works its way through the French court system. The key excerpts of the court testimonies involve company CEOs David Cage (also the main game director) and Guillaume de Fondaumière embarrassing themselves, crying and asking whether they could lie in court. And though it’s comparatively minor compared to everything that’s happened since, let’s not forget how THQ Nordic employees did an AMA on 8chan, of all places, well aware of the heinous content that’s been posted on the place. I could go on here, but you get the point.

Consider those and the accusations still undoubtedly unknown. This is not an industry that should remain as it is. Tear it down before it’s allowed to spread to other companies. That is, assuming it isn’t already prevalent in many of them.

Someone will see the title and proposal in this post and think I’m being naïve, knowing full-well there’s no chance of a whole multibillion dollar video game industry being charred. I’m well aware, so please spare me. But anyone thinking this should also know that purportedly easier reforms are similarly naïve, and not because the biggest audience will never hear of these accusations in the first place. Consider the number of gamers who won’t care about any of this, willing to avoid the stories of “politics” within companies as long as they can still play their games. Consider the number of gamers within the internet’s largest hives of scum and villainy who read the allegations and thought they were hilarious, and would like to see more of them.

The most ideal solution here its to burn the whole goddamned thing down, and rebuild and reestablish an industry that empowers the workers, giving them the rights to fight back against garbage employees and executives. Even if that won’t happen, no one should hesitate to say it is what needs to happen. Activision Blizzard knows they’ll survive this largely unscathed, given the shitty response essentially calling the allegations fake news from activists within the state of California following this. The subsequent statement sent to Activision Blizzard staff from Chief Compliance Officer (and former Bush White House counterterrorism official) Fran Townsend suggests this is the road they’re fully going down. This company and others are beyond reform, and we should be willing to do what needs to be done, however difficult.