#actiblizzwalkout

[i3utterflyeffect]

Just FYI, I think the #ActiBlizzWalkout stuff is from 2021? All the articles I can find on it were written around that time and they don't seem to mention a repeat in 2022

Oh, huh. The og post didn't show a date and I also probably should've been looking harder. Thanks for letting me know, I guess

#still think blizzard sucks ass #i haven't followed any news abt those companies bc i don't play any of their games #pitch posts

[cloudselkie]

!!!!!!!!DON'T CROSS THE PICKET LINE!!!!!!!!

🚫🚫TODAY, JULY 28TH, 2021, DO NOT LOG INTO THE FOLLOWING GAMES🚫🚫

Overwatch

World of Warcraft

Hearthstone

Heroes of the Storm

Diablo

StarCraft

Call of Duty

Any other Activision Blizzard games

Here is the statement of intent from the striking employees and ways you can support #Actiblizzwalkout

#actiblizzwalkout #Activision blizzard walkout #strike #overwatch #world of warcraft #blizzard #gaming

[thevaudevilledemon]

sharing because it should be seen by as many as possible.

#activision #blizzard #activision blizzard #actiblizzwalkout

[nessa-harp]

Please, just for today.

#Overwatch #call of duty #world of warcraft #heartstone #diablo #actiblizzwalkout

[volixia669]

So! Some of y’all might remember the Riot Games walkouts from a couple years ago. This time it’s Activision Blizzard. For those who are unaware, Activision Blizzard is being sued by the State of California for discriminatory practices. Content Warning for the link below for brief descriptions of sexual harassment, suicide, and rape mentions. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-blizzard-sued-by-california-over-frat-boy-culture There is a full document that was released that I won’t be linking due to its contents but its bad at Blizzard. This isn’t just women. Minorities were also specifically discriminated against. Today, July 28th 2021, the employees of blizzard are staging a walkout, with specific demands. From Kotaku’s publishing of their statement of intent: Statement of Intent Given last week’s statements from Activision Blizzard, Inc. and their legal counsel regarding the DFEH lawsuit, as well as the subsequent internal statement from Frances Townsend, and the many stories shared by current and former employees of Activision Blizzard since, we believe that our values as employees are not being accurately reflected in the words and actions of our leadership. As current Activision Blizzard employees, we are holding a walkout to call on the executive leadership team to work with us on the following demands, in order to improve conditions for employees at the company, especially women, and in particular women of color and transgender women, nonbinary people, and other marginalized groups. 1. An end to mandatory arbitration clauses in all employee contracts, current and future. Arbitration clauses protect abusers and limit the ability of victims to seek restitution. 2. The adoption of recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and promotion policies designed to improve representation among employees at all levels, agreed upon by employees in a company-wide Diversity, Equity & Inclusion organization. Current practices have led to women, in particular women of color and transgender women, nonbinary people, and other marginalized groups that are vulnerable to gender discrimination not being hired fairly for new roles when compared to men. 3. Publication of data on relative compensation (including equity grants and profit sharing), promotion rates, and salary ranges for employees of all genders and ethnicities at the company. Current practices have led to aforementioned groups not being paid or promoted fairly. 4. Empower a company-wide Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion task force to hire a third party to audit ABK’s reporting structure, HR department, and executive staff. It is imperative to identify how current systems have failed to prevent employee harassment, and to propose new solutions to address these issues. After the announcement of the walkout, the CEO Bobby Kotick made a half assed apology, and claimed he would bring in a law firm to improve practices. The devs have stated that his words do not address their demands, and will still be walking out. Those who work at offices are doing a physical walkout, while those working at home are not working today. If you are on Twitter, you can support the walk out by tweeting #ActiBlizzWalkout with a blue heart emoji, along with a message of support. The Kotaku link above also includes links to the organizations the strikers want you to donate to. So support these devs! Because its with walk outs and movements like this that game dev becomes a safer place for all! Which means more diverse and inclusive games! IMPORTANT NOTE: A lot of gamers have been sending messages of ‘don’t cross the picket line by not playing ActiBlizzard games’. To my knowledge, none of the Activision Blizzard devs have requested this. So it is up to you. Personally, I haven’t touched their games since they banned (then after backlash, suspended for six months) a Hong Kong esports player for activism. (Link to the Wiki Page on that Incident)

#activision blizzard #world of warcraft #overwatch #call of duty #hearthstone #candy crush #actiblizzwalkout #diablo #diablo 2 #diablo 4 #(rubs hands together) so how many hate anons am i gonna get for THIS post #YEP CANDY CRUSH AND KING GAMES ARE OWNED BY ACTIVISION #this is not the only game studio with problems #but let's see if a difference can be made so marginalized genders and minorities don't have to deal with this bullshit #anyone else remember the esports debacle? where the player used his platform to make an important human rights (and political) statement? #and then blizzard banned him and took away his winnings #got changed to a suspension after the backlash #still bs

[noonmutter]

You Are Not The Problem

Because I've seen it come up a few different times today...

The actions of the total scumbags at Activision/Blizzard do not reflect on you as a player or consumer. You are not a bad person for having supported them or their franchises, and the allegations coming to light have no bearing on you as a person.

Do not let good memories, many of us who have years and years of them, be ruined by what this tiny number of people did. The overwhelming majority of the people who made the games and material you love are good people who love what they do and enjoy making something cool that people get so attached to.

You as a player did not know, could not have known, and cannot be held or hold yourself responsible. You cannot stop what you never knew was happening, and unlike what some of the aforementioned scumbags have claimed, we actually did not know. Every high-horse-riding nitwit who comes along and says "well you should have because it's everywhere" can just sit down and shut up right now. That's not how it works. Assumption is not knowledge. Suspicion is not knowledge.

Now we know. Now we point our collective crosshairs at the people who actually deserve it. Not ourselves, not each other, and certainly not the employees trying to make it better.

#actiblizzwalkout #💙

[ultrainfinitepit]

Sarvael for verdant.succubus! I did the linework traditionally and it was a lot of fun.

[ charity art requests ]

#angels #body horror #charity requests #actiblizzwalkout

[punprincess321]

So apparently the Jesse McCree our beloved cowboy is named after is tied into the controversy... BREAKING NEWS! JESSE MCCREE IS NOW NAMED AFTER THIS GOOD BOY JESSE THE DOG A STRAY FROM MEXICO! HE'S A GOOD BOY AND IS NOW THE NAMESAKE FOR THE COWBOY!

Look at this. This dog is now the one you think of about where McCree's name came from, not that asshole human. My doggo will be your new McCree namesake.

#jesse mccree #overwatch #mchanzo #mccree #mama mccree #blizzard #fuck blizzard #actiblizzwalkout

[ow-anteater]

I feel it is at this point appropriate that I share some of my thoughts about the news about activision blizzard. First I want to make it very, very clear: the important part of all this is and will always be the women, especially women of color, who have for so long suffered in the gaming industry. Any and all conversation about this should center them and make it explicitly clear that their comfort - and the creation of a culture in the industry that doesn’t rely on the violent victimization of minorities - is the center issue here

I urge everyone able to do so, to consider following the wishes of the striking blizzard employees and donate. Links and general resources can be found in this post.

My intent in making this post is not to detract from any of that, nor should this be taken as any sort of public grande statement on the situation, I simply made the realization that most of my processing and discussion of how to continue from here, have taken place in a discord server that the majority of my audience here can’t see. I feel like I, as an adult man in this particular fandom space, must make my reasoning for how to act within the Overwatch fandom public and transparent

For the time being my response has will be to no longer monetarily support the company in any way, while still engaging in the fandom. I’m not saying this is the correct way to go about it, nor am I saying this is necessarily the stance I will stand by forever, but for now that’s what I’ll be doing, and for transparency’s sake I want to explain my reasoning for it here.

My reason here is two-pronged: first, there is the - I think - main point that I feel like a full on, publicly performed boycott of blizzard might incorrectly signal that this is a problem with this particular company and their properties. It’s not. Blizzard is grossly mishandling the situation and I cannot repeat enough how much I do not support them, but this is still an issue of an entire industry that is ripe with abuse and bigotry. We cannot meaningfully change this culture by freezing out the company currently being exposed and let the rest of the industry go unexamined: I’d rather engage critically with this property than disengage fully from the conversation

Secondly, my feelings on overwatch are complicated by the fact it isn’t the product of a single, now-revealed-to-be-bigoted creator, but of a huge team of developers, some of who were the victims of abuse. I have before, at length, discussed the issues in overwatch (how it’s military propaganda, how the characters of color are sometimes flattened and their culture fetishized uncomfortably, the white washing and so on), but these aren’t - necessarily - directly related to the bigotry of the higher ups. I’d rather engage critically and remain vigilant about the icky themes and undertones present in the text than throw the whole thing away, because among those things are also the hard work, talent, passion and brilliant writing of the actual people who were victimized

I realize this is incredibly personal and it will vary greatly where different people draw the lines for how they want to engage in the media they’ve consumed, but for me, these are the factors that contribute to my stance: to firmly reject Blizzard as a company, keep supporting the workers in every strike (and hopefully unionizing) endeavor, stay vigilant about enforcing an open, non-bigoted space in any and all spaces that has to do with gaming, while still engaging in fan produced content

In general, I encourage anyone who is a fan of any Blizzard property to do what feels right. Keep the victims at the front of your mind always, and engage critically always, but please be compassionate both to yourself and the people around you. Nothing is comparable to what the actual women went through, but I sympathize deeply with any fan who finds this shocking, horrifying or even possibly (re)traumatizing to read about a work of fiction you enjoyed. My inbox is always open to anyone wanting to talk, and I encourage you to seek profesional help if you’re able and this is impacting you negatively

As a last, and a lot less consequential note, I have seen already in a couple posts around the fandom, posts trying to (however playfully) erase the undeniable fact that the character McCree is named after somebody who is - at the very least - indifferent to misogyny existing in his space. In my eyes this position is indefensible and comes from a place of (however well intentioned) ignorance and dangerous unwillingness to face the facts about the situation. I’m still undecided on wether i think the character should be fully renamed, but I think that engaging in ‘Miku gave him that name uwu’ types of jokes is distasteful and disrespectful to the women who had to see a beloved character they worked hard to realize, be named after a man who hurt them. I know this is a small point and again, one whose importance pales next to talking about the victims and where to go from here in the gaming industry as a whole, but I’ve already seen discussions about this character and their name propping up a lot of places and I wanted to make my stance 100% clear to avoid it becoming a potentially focus-stealing conversation later on

We cannot sweep this under the rug, we cannot deny the abuse that produced a product we ended up loving. I don’t want to police how anyone reacts but please, please, please do not try to erase or minimize the hurt caused or suffered - and do not try to paint any sort of fandom activity as comparable to activism.

Thank you, believe victims and fuck actiblizz 💙

#overwatch #blizzard #activision #actiblizzwalkout #long post #serious post #if anything is worded wrong please tell me #I’m fallible and English isn’t my first language #I truly do not want to detract but it also felt weird to not say something

[nehku]

8 done, many more to go. In honour of #ActiBlizzWalkout, several players are gathering to help me support the victims and the Devs that walked today by showing solidarity using the characters we’ve created. These are our stories and designs, they will not be taken away.

#actiblizzwalkout #my art

[wyrmguardsecrets]

#ActiBlizzWalkout

#mod post #ActiBlizzWalkout

[cloudselkie]

***NEW ACTIVISION BLIZZARD STRIKE***

This is a full work stoppage until demands are met. Follow the link to donate to the ABK Worker's Alliance Strike Fund.

As always, don't cross the picket line and note this is not a short walk-out, but a full strike that could likely last weeks to months. If you were going to buy ABK games or products during this time, donate to the strike fund instead. This is our way to help take a stand and show those at ABK, and all video game companies, that this kind of behavior will no longer be tolerated by consumers.

#activision blizzard #actiblizzwalkout #actiblizzstrike #overwatch #world of warcraft #call of duty #StarCraft #hearthstone #heroes of the storm #blizzard #video games #strike #work stoppage #union #worker's rights

[leahdarkspear]

Give ‘em hell, y’all. Make them remember the words they chose:

💙It’s time for the #actiblizzwalkout! Know that we the players will be there with you in spirit.💙

#actiblizzwalkout #no WoW today #solidarity #azeroth belongs to us #💙

[holy-human-freak]

I haven't seen as much of this on tumblr as I have on game-dev Twitter but reminder that the activison blizzard strike is today

#actiblizzwalkout

[spacelingart]

#ActiBlizzWalkout Charity Portraits

In support of #ActiBlizzWalkout 💙 I am offering portraits to those who donate to charities. I have them all linked in the form as well as the statement of intent from Blizzard employees. https://forms.gle/KRxqroz89w9pbr9T6

#actiblizzwalkout #blog #world of warcraft

[noonmutter]

On the evening before our employee walkout, Activision Blizzard leadership released a statement apologizing for their harmful responses to last week's DFEH lawsuit. While we are pleased to see that our collective voices -- including an open letter with thousands of signatures from current employees -- have convinced leadership to change the tone of their communications, this response fails to address critical elements at the heart of employee concerns.

Activision Blizzard's response did not address the following:

The end of forced arbitration for all employees.

Worker participation in oversight of hiring and promotion policies.

The need for greater pay transparency to ensure quality.

Employee selection of a third party to audit HR and other company processes.

Today's walkout will demonstrate that this is not a one-time event that our leaders can ignore. We will not return to silence; we will not be placated by the same processes that led us to this point.

This is the beginning of an enduring movement in favor of better labor conditions for all employees, especially women, in particular women of color and transgender women, nonbinary people, and other marginalized groups.

We expect a prompt response and a commitment to action from leadership of the points enumerated above, and look forward to maintaining a constructive dialogue on how to build a better Activision Blizzard for all employees.

Today, we stand up for change. Tomorrow and beyond, we will be the change.

#actiblizzwalkout #💙