Like many, I've been watching the unfolding story of Activision Blizzard's crisis of failed leadership and resulting employee abuse with horrified fascination. From:
- the moment that the details of the court papers were reported out, complete with butt plug business trips and at least one employee harassed to the point of suicide;
- through the abhorrent, insulting initial responses to the lawsuit from ATVI's leaders, who mostly seemed to think they could bluff their way out of this one;
- to the apparent reasonableness of Bobby Kotick's official response to the whole mess, which initially tried to at least strike the right tone, although it later turned out to be the announcement that he'd hired union-busting law firm WilmerHale to staunch the bleeding of ATVI's legal liability, and didn't appear to be much concerned with actually improving the situation for employees at all;
ATVI's flailing responses have demonstrated, as clearly as anything could, that the leadership of that company see employees as interchangeable and essentially disposable and easily replaced, and care only for limiting their own costs. That shouldn't have been a surprise; the aforementioned Bobby Kotick just finished pocketing $155 million USD in bonuses following a year in which he also laid off nearly a thousand employees, not because ATVI didn't need people doing those jobs, but rather because they wanted cheaper people doing those jobs.
I've avoided commenting on the situation though, simply because I didn't feel like I really had much to add to the conversation. What does one say? Yes, the details are horrifying. They are also not surprising; women in the video game industry have been complaining about these same problems for a long time now; only specific details were missing, details which we now have.
It seems to me that ATVI is a fish that's been rotting from the head down for a long time now. The fact that so many more lurid, damning details are still coming out, now that the press has actually started digging, would seem to indicate that there's basically no end of this insanity. Seriously, guys, a
Cosby Suite? One company demanded a
Misogyny Tax before doing business with you, and told you why,
and had you barred from Black Hat, and you still didn't see any reason to actually take a real look at yourselves until
now?
And the failures of leadership just keep coming! Fran Townsend, now billed as "Activision Blizzard's Torture Apologist Executive," has responded to Bobby Kotick's promise that leadership were listening to employees by blocking those same employees on Twitter. Not a good look.
And so, with all of this swirling, and with ATVI's share price dropping by 12% and counting in less than a month, the next thing that I expected to see was for rats to start fleeing this obviously sinking ship. It's too late for them to avoid having the stench of this follow them to other gigs; even people like Mike Morhaime and Chris Metzen, who'd left ATVI before the scandal broke, have seen their legacy indelibly tarnished by the failures of their own leadership here; after all, most of the behaviour described in those court filings happened while they were in charge.
But still, I was waiting for someone with a greater sense of shame than Fran, or maybe just less intestinal fortitude, to decide that it was time to "spend more time with family," or to "pursue new opportunities," or some similarly meaningless PR pablum phrase. The only remaining mystery was: which rat would flee the sinking ship first?
Well, today we have the answer to that question, and it turns out to be no less a person than Blizzard president J. Allen Brack. Yikes.
From Blizzard.com's own announcement:
Starting today, J. Allen Brack will be stepping down as the leader of the studio, and Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra will co-lead Blizzard moving forward [...] The following is a message from J. Allen Brack:
“I am confident that Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra will provide the leadership Blizzard needs to realize its full potential and will accelerate the pace of change. I anticipate they will do so with passion and enthusiasm and that they can be trusted to lead with the highest levels of integrity and commitment to the components of our culture that make Blizzard so special.”
There's also a lot of investor-friendly boilerplate about how Oneal and Ybarra are totally qualified to do this job, and how they'll do a great job, so there's no reason at all for shareholders to be taken aback by the fact that Blizzard's president resigned suddenly with immediate effect in the midst of a leadership crisis; you can read the full text there if you like. We'll "hear more from Jen and Mike soon," apparently, and I for one can't wait to hear how they plan to set about "rebuilding [our] trust."
But for the moment, let's ignore them, and focus on the fleeing rat du jour. Brack is not, apparently, being fired for having done a terrible job leading Blizzard, although he would appear to have done a terrible job leading Blizzard. He's not resigning to take responsibility for his failures to ensure that Blizzard employees had a safe and inclusive place in which to work, although he's clearly failed on that front, too. No, according to reporting from Jason Schreier, Brack is leaving to "pursue new opportunities," as per an internal email announcing his departure. Not an email from Brack, though; the email came from Daniel Alegre, who is apparently Activision Blizzard's president (Brack was only Blizzard's president).
As Schrier points out, it's noteworthy that Oneal and Ybarra are designated as "co-leaders" of Blizzard, not "co-presidents" of Blizzard. Apparently, they've been given a typically corporate bullshit opportunity to take on more responsibility, but without actually having any more authority, or more pay, or even proper titles, for their trouble. It's pretty clear that "Bobby" will be the one issuing marching orders to his new Blizzard hench-people. I am not sanguine about the possibility of meaningful reform happening, but I suppose we'll see.
The other noteworthy detail here? Brack hasn't, apparently, penned or posted a proper farewell letter to Blizzard's employees, or even Blizzard's fans, the way Morhaime and Metzen both did when they left. I wonder why that might be?
One thing seems clear. WilmerHale have a row to hoe if they're to stop the bleeding here. Because Activision Blizzard's ongoing scandal has become exactly the type of scandal that someone embroiled in the scandal hates to see: one being kept alive, and in the headlines, by a steady drip-feed of new, lurid, details.
Drip. Cosby Suite. Drip. Misogyny tax. Drip. Blizzard's president suddenly resigns, but without actually speaking about the scandal in his resignation statement, and without bidding a proper farewell to Blizzard employees and fans. Drip, drip, drip.
UPDATED:
Activision Blizzard's"Senior People Officer," Jesse Meschuk, has also stepped down. As reported by Bloomberg:
A human-resources executive, Jesse Meschuk, also left the company this week, according to an Activision Blizzard spokesperson. Meschuk was the senior people officer at Blizzard and the unit’s top HR representative.
There are no specific details as to exactly when or why Meschuk stepped down, and no statement was issued at the time, but it appears that Meschuk may actually have beaten Brack out the door.
Drip, drip, drip...
