Blizzard Walkout

 Today, the staff at Blizzard is doing a walk-out - an act of protest against the policies that allowed for the abuses detailed in the recent lawsuit. I suspect that any direct invitation to players to join them in this protest by not playing Blizzard games might be considered a serious offense - generally you're not supposed to actively encourage people not to use your company's products.

The video game industry is one without any major union, which would normally serve as a protection against retribution for an act like this, so what they're doing is very brave (to their credit, higher-ups at Blizzard have announced that the employees won't face any disciplinary actions for this protest.)

Other than briefly logging on to leave a message for my guild yesterday, I have been avoiding WoW. I've considered the possibility of canceling my subscription (though as I'm a 6-monther, it wouldn't actually expire until November.) I don't really know what my plans are in the longterm. It's really tough when you're emotionally invested in something that is, on a technical level, the product of a profit-seeking corporation. Just as with any commercialized art form, you have passionate artists who work on the project while there are executives who are all about profit-maximizing, and often the desires of the former get overruled by those of the latter.

It would be reassuring if we could blame all of these problems on the people with the purse strings, though as we've seen, some of the abusers were high-ranking members of the creative side of the studio. There's some examination to be had about how the casual, "we're just a bunch of fun-loving nerds" culture that had endeared Blizzard to so many fans fed into the very toxicity and abuse. But additionally, the people who abuse their power usually do so with the advantages of seniority and seeming indispensability.

This is more complex than merely blaming this all on Activision and retaining an image of purity for the actual Blizzard studio. The rot was from within.

And what also makes it complicated is that we don't know who every abuser was and who every victim was. I don't really have a great sense of the hierarchy within the company or each game team, and while I've seen a lot of prominent men from the WoW team expressing their support for the people coming forward, at the same time I've seen women working at Blizzard say that they've seen their own abusers speaking out in false solidarity, as if they are one of the "good guys" when they're in fact the problem. Again, we don't know who is who.

The secrecy here is in part to protect the victims, which is a paramount priority, but it does mean that those of us who know Blizzard only from the outside are left to wonder to what extent our enjoyment of the game(s) is the celebration of horrendous people and to what extent it is the celebration of the work of a much larger number of passionate nerds who have only ever tried to make great games.

And there are sliding scales of culpability, the proportions of which are a matter for debate and investigation.

WoW, as I've said in my previous post on this subject, is important to me. I'm invested in it. There's a sense of community to it, many very fond memories from my time playing it. I've said many times that Azeroth and the broader Warcraft cosmos is one of my favorite fantasy worlds in fiction, and that feeling doesn't get erased by these disturbing stories. That's what makes this all so heartbreaking.

I want to be able to return to WoW, to see the remaining story of the Shadowlands and what comes next. But at the same time, I want that return to be one I can feel comfortable with, in which the victims have gotten their justice, and in which Blizzard's internal culture has transformed into one in which people who don't have the privilege of being white, straight, cis men can feel an equal sense of ownership of Blizzard's beloved properties, where their voices are heard. And that means that we need some change in leadership. We need women and people of color and LGBTQ+ people, and of course people who fall into multiples of those categories, to get a chance to lead the teams, to be the authorities.

There's a reason people love Blizzard. And it's so sad to learn how bad it's been there. But I hope that that love can transform the company into something better. Again, while the news has been a shock for those of us who did not know what was going on there, the exposure of the truth that has happened over the last week is actually a good thing. The bad stuff has been there all along. Now there's a chance to do something about it.

So, I applaud the brave employees for their protest. And I celebrate the bravery of the people who came forward with the stories of the abuse they suffered. It is easy, in the moment, to just shut down and endure these problems. No one wants to have to confront them. But in the long run, ignoring the problems makes things worse, and as we've seen in this case, even led to the death of one employee. That is unacceptable. Change must come.