It’s been a difficult couple of years recently, a worldwide pandemic, the attempted destruction of western democracy, the shocking increase in stupid fucking idiots who, not only don’t believe in vaccines, but who now have decided that modern idiocy isn’t enough! NO! Now they have hurtled back in time a few centuries and have now decided that the earth is fucking flat! And the cherry on this shit flavoured sundae? The complete dismissal of the loss of human life directly caused by inconsiderate fuck-mouths who refuse to cover their fucking mouths.
But just when you think you have a handle on how fucking awful the world has become, the video game industry says “hold my beer”.
In case you were unaware (and it is shocking how readily I would believe that given how little major coverage it seems to be getting) a lawsuit (here’s a link) has been filed against “Activision-Blizzard” due to their apparent (which I only say for legal reasons, but anybody with even a tertiary understanding of their history and the video game industry as a whole would believe it no questions ask!) toxic “Frat boy” culture. But before we get into the details let’s first debunk the term “Frat boy Culture”, that implies that this is a group of young, drunk, dumbassed, eager to please teenage boys. THEY. ARE. NOT.
⇐ These are Frat boys, young, dumb and drunk!
These are grown fucking men, who are fully aware of how disgusting and abhorrent their behaviour is, they just don’t care. ⇒
Before we go any further, I’d like to offer a “Content warning”, this article will include topics like sexual harassment, assault and suicide, so if you’re sensitive to these issues, you may want to skip this article.
So the first thing the lawsuit alleges is Sex Discrimination: Pay, Promotion, Termination etc. etc, basically if you don’t have a dick that likes women then you don’t get treated like a human being. If you look at the graph below you will see that the sole female executive’s (Claudine Naughton) highest salary is almost less than the lowest paid male’s lowest salary.
And woe fucking betide you if you gave off even the slightest hint about potentially wanting a child, because you would be blacklisted for promotion in case “you liked being a mom too much”!
And if you happen to be a new mother (you monster) don’t think that you can use the rooms designated as “lactation rooms” for their intended purpose because if a “man” (and I use that term very fucking loosely) needs to use it, you’re out to fuck! There are many…so many, more horrible things recorded in this section, but it’s making me sad to list them, and this is the tamer stuff (Jesus fucking Christ) so we’ll move on.
One of the more disturbing accusations in the lawsuit is the staggeringly common sexual harassment, because of course there’s sexual harassment, why wouldn’t there be? Hmm? What’s that? Because it’s disgusting and shameful, and it takes shockingly little effort to not be a sleazy prick? Well you just sound silly. Apparently a woman doing their job is enough to warrant sexual harassment from these dick-heads, female workers would be the targets of “Cube Crawls”. Now I can’t find what this specifically means, but in my mind it means these gross shit-bags crawl on the floor between desks…(shudders).
And it still, somehow, gets worse from there, Alex Afrasiabi, one of the men named in the lawsuit (a man so sleazy that his 2013 BlizzCon hotel suite was called “The Cosby Suite) “would hit on female employees, telling them he wanted to marry them, attempt to kiss them, and put his arms around them”. It would get so bad that “other male employees, including supervisors, had to intervene and pull him off female employees”! Really think about that, that in a group of sexual harassers, this guy’s sexual harassment was so bad that other sexual harassers had to intervene. And this sex pest was never disciplined, in fact it became an in joke, don’t believe me? Check out this image (courtesy of Kotaku) of their group chat, were they all laugh at his abuse.
(“Ha ha ha, isn’t it funny that we make women feel unsafe? Ha classic Alex”)
Now, you might be thinking, “why would they post screen shots, what if this leaks out?” they don’t care! Getting “caught” means nothing to these bastards! They have an entire HR department paid to protect them, not the victims like you would think, but the sex criminals. Battle for treasures with the mighty black knight demo play .
One heart-breaking example of HR not protecting the people they are supposed ended in tragedy, when a female employee took her own life while on a company trip. Apparently she had been in a sexual relationship with a male supervisor. Now the nature of said relationship isn’t elaborated on and there’s no evidence that it was anything other than a standard sexual relationship between two consenting adults….But, given the history and mountains of evidence against these dirt bags, I would have no doubt believing that the supervisor used his position to…. “make his proposition more appealing”, shall we say.
I wish I could say the horror ends there, but unfortunately it doesn’t. This poor woman was also being sexually harassed and humiliated by another group of Neanderthals dick bags, who thought it would be a great laugh to distribute nude images of her at a holiday party. Presumably while all patting each other on the back, congratulating each other because they had all seen a naked woman. Seriously!! What the actual Fuck? What kind of human being thinks that that is okay?
And what, has Activision-Blizzards response been to these atrocities? Well, their initial response delivered from executive “Fran Townsend” (who used to work for President Bush to smooth over torture allegations….yeah) was to call the accusations “distorted and untrue”. Which I think perfectly encapsulates the mind-set of these human skid-marks! They think they can deny mountains of evidence and testimony, shift blame to “feminist witch hunts”, plug their ears and lie low and expect it to blow over. And they think that way because they’ve done it for years and the sad part is….it’s worked for years. It’s sad to say that a number of gamers in years gone by have been happy to ignore it and focus on games, and without pressure from the customers, it will, inevitably, blow over.
But we cannot let this blow over, in the past I’ve accepted people’s choice to focus on the “art and not the artist” but this isn’t the homophobic “Earthworm Jim” creator “Doug TenNapel”, or the shockingly conservative “Five Nights at Freddy’s” creator Scott Cawthorn. This is a company, no, an industry that is infested with sexual harassment, prejudice, bullying and a list of other crimes that I didn’t include because it was actually, legitimately, making me depressed just to read them. We cannot let these crimes continue to go unpunished; we must hold these people accountable, which is why we at “N For Nerds” will no longer be covering any games connected with Activision in any way. I personally will no longer be buying or playing any of their games and I urge, no, I BEG you all to do the same, because there is only one thing these fucks understand, money. The second they start to feel the pinch in their pockets, then, and only then, will these utter…utter bastards take notice.
This last part is directed squarely at Activision Blizzard CEO “Bobby Kotick”, the man who sacked scores of workers just so he could maintain his bonus, the man who boasted that he would charge far more for games if he could get away with it and the man who has been perfectly happy to ignore abuse, harassment, discrimination within his company because he is an amoral greed-filled shit-bag!
FUCK YOU!! You retched, money hungry, abuse enabling, harassment defending piece of human shit. Your complete indifference to human suffering is nothing new, its par for the course for men like you, but your initial silence says everything about your priorities. The only reason you EVENTUALLY made a statement was because it was clear you COULDN’T ignore it, which is clearly what you would’ve preferred to do. I encourage you, J Allen Brack and everyone who knew about the wretched shit these bastards were doing on a daily bases, to eat a bag of dicks, you rat fucks!
