"He Knew. He Did Nothing." Asmongold on Blizzard's Response Over Scandal

we're gonna start at the beginning here okay now obviously there's been a massive event you know blizzard has gotten sued and jay allen brack the individual himself you think you do but you don't unfortunately at blizzard it was you think you don't but you do hello blizzard i personally have a lot of emotions coming out yesterday and i know you do too the allegations of a hurt of the hurt and current former employees are extremely troubling i know that many of you would like to receive more clarity and while i can't comment on the specifics of the case as it's an open investigation what i can say is that the behavior detailed in the allegations is completely unacceptable it goes without saying that it's completely unacceptable for anyone in the company to face discrimination or harassment it goes without saying that everyone should feel safe working here whether we are on campus at blizzcon or working from home it goes without saying that it takes courage to come forward and all claims brought to the company are investigated by internal when needed external invest and when needed external investigators yes that's right despite your lack of cooperation that is true uh we take these claims very seriously claims can be made without fear of retaliation and many times i attend to them personally well that's how you patted down the alex afrosabi things you talked to them personally and you thought you solved the problem and you didn't so uh that that is true that part actually is true um along with our other leaders absolutely when i talked with bobby about taking his job one of the first things that i mentioned uh was a revered saint of the black household gloria steinem i don't know who this is i'm going to be comply who is who is glorious i don't even know who this is um american feminist journalist and social political activist who is nationally recognized as a leader of an american spokesman movement okay so all right it i don't know really what to say it's kind of random like it's kind of random yeah sure but it just seems like it doesn't really matter growing up the value of women as equal is understanding the work that had to be done for equal treatment and the fact that there was still much to do were common themes this is just one of the reasons why the fight for equality is incredibly important for me people with different backgrounds views and experiences are essential for blizzard our teams and our player community i disdain bro culture and i have spent my career fighting it bro culture can mean a lot of things it does not necessarily have to mean molesting women at the workplace i understand that this is some sort of uh of like bad thing or whatever yes of course it is the this is bro like bro culture here's why i don't like this phrase bro culture is it's a phrase that means something different for everyone for some people bro culture means living in a frat house and getting drunk all night and for other people it means going and like you know being really hands-on with women etc this is a this is a [ __ ] statement bro culture is not what people really have a problem with people really have a problem with touching and trying to kiss women without their consent bro culture is just a word that you're attaching to it talk about the actual thing rather than creating this effigy that you can act like you're going up against and putting up a feminist icon towards male versus female because there's a lot of these circumstances that affect men too not just with this but with the bad conditions of customer service etc and they're just ignoring that because that was a huge [ __ ] component to it and it's being completely ignored with this idea that this is a complete like this is not a a feminism issue only and of course obviously it seems like it primarily is but that doesn't mean it's the whole thing integrating on our culture with the same intensity that we bring to our games is imperative and with our values acting as our north star this is some of the most important work we do both as professional and human beings a company is more than a legal construct that exists as a piece of paper in a filing cabinet in delaware the people that work at the company also make it what it is through their actions and creations each of us plays a role in maintaining a place of safety for one another and it is also up to each of us to continue to craft the blizzard that we want and to commit to doing our part in keeping boise great but always aspiring for more that's nice i mean these are these are nice statements right but whenever whenever you have the juxtaposition of the people that work at the company make it what it is and then people get fired from the company in mass numbers then what's the company you see what i'm saying and you have people leaving lead developers and obviously it seems like yes some of these people have been leaving for sexual harassment and things that are completely legitimate they shouldn't be leaving the company they should be leaving public life into jail however that does not necessarily mean that many other people do not leave for other reasons the leadership team and i will be meeting with many of you to answer questions and discuss how we can move forward in the meantime i want you to know that you can talk to any manager any hr partner any member of the legal team or to anyone on the executive team including hey jay okay it's him if you feel more comfortable talking to someone outside of blizzard or prefer to be anonymous anonymous you can contact the way to play integrity line i feel angry sad and a host of other emotions i also feel grateful to work alongside a set of leaders and thousands of employees who will join me in their commitment to continuous improvement thank you blizzard jab yes thank you blizzard thank you so much so i i think this statement could have uh it could have been better let's just say that it could have been better i think that if i was to rate this statement like if there was a warcraft logs for this statement it would be a pretty much like a low tier green parse would not be very good and i obviously here's really what i believe okay and this is really the truth this is what i really believe about jay allen brack i have never really met a person that has really really long hair and they're [ __ ] 50 years old who is like a super corporate piece of [ __ ] [ __ ] i actually don't think jay allen brack is a huge [ __ ] i don't think a lot of this really i don't think he is a really bad guy i think that the truth is that the odds are this is this what i'm expecting he is in over his [ __ ] head he he inherited a bunch of problems because a lot of this stuff and i hate to say it but a lot of this stuff happened under mike morheim and a lot of these people were hired from there and he's taking the fall for a lot of this now obviously some of it is his fault and it's his responsibility absolutely but a lot of this [ __ ] did happen under mike morheim now how much did mike know about it i don't know i probably he probably knew too much and he did too little that's what i'm assuming now he made a statement too we're gonna read that he was also complicit i think that obviously i'm not going to say that somebody was complicit because i don't know that i i don't know what happened i have no idea uh the report said that he knew i know that he knew but what i'm saying is that the person that he knew did the thing wrong that was wrong no longer works at the company i don't know why that person does not work at the company but what i do know is that heat like the this is the alex afrosabi thing he knew this was happening and that person no longer works at the company did jl and brack have something to do with that i don't know that but i'm just saying based off of the way that he's acted and the things that he's said and the things that i've heard from people that work there it does not seem like jaylen brack is this uh evil corporate uh overlord that is doing all this i think that he's in over his head he's inherited a huge mess mike let me let's just think about this jaylen brack uh yeah october 4th 2018. so this was um a little bit over two years ago the reality is that he inherited almost all of this stuff this investigation was started probably right about the same time no think about it this investigation started whenever he [ __ ] had brown hair and now he has white hair imagine inheriting the company you get promoted at the [ __ ] president and within probably six months of you getting promoted up the [ __ ] president immediately you have a [ __ ] investigation by the state of california that's telling you that people are getting [ __ ] molested and people are going to jail yes literally black and white you're goddamn right his hair is gray you're goddamn [ __ ] right it's two years this guy's aged in 20. uh the [ __ ] was happening all the way back in diablo two days he should resign uh i don't necessarily know if he should resign uh the reason why i think that he pro i think that there is a high probability that jl and brack will step down as president or potentially leave the company i think that's a very very high probability so let's go back up here and there's also been another activision blizzard executive now usually i want to say this this is very common uh whenever things are in uh whenever things are like this having two messages from executive leadership is very common this one right here so this right here is what happens because whenever you're having you're having two executive leadership people giving similar but different statements almost always whenever a company does something like this they put out one large statement and that's about it so this does kind of worry me it definitely does so this is a statement made by newly hired activision blizzard executive fran townsend sent out an email which called the sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit meritless and irresponsible distorted or untrue i'm going to read this one and then i'm going to read the post from mike morheim everyone as an executive sponsor of the abk employee women's network and our chief compliance officer i want to reach out to you i know this has been difficult for many of us a recently filed lawsuit presented a distorted and untrue picture of the company including factually incorrect old and out of context stories some from more than a decade ago the activision companies of today the activision companies that i know are great companies with good values when i joined executive leadership team i was certain that i was joining a company where i would be valued treated with respect and provided opportunities equal to those afforded by men of the company to me this has been true during my time as a leader i am committed to making sure that the experience that i have is the same as the rest of the organization we have the same leadership team that is committed to these principles in every way she didn't work at the company whenever these things happen so she's clearly going off of what people are telling her because she wasn't there when it happened you see what i'm saying so this this seems a little bit odd she she came in wait she came in four months ago wait she's she's been in she's been in there for four months wow well thank god thank god we have her to set things straight yeah that's great yeah well you know in these four months that i've been at the company i haven't been molested no i guess that means it never happened i mean i i mean obviously right i mean it because if it would have happened it would happen at first like day right i mean it had to be like the first week or so like at what level oh my god that's what i call damage to control yeah exactly i have no doubt that she was probably treated exactly fairly and just given every opportunity as possible absolute [ __ ] lutely i mean she worked for the [ __ ] president back in 2004-2007 right to homeland security adviser george w bush of course they're gonna treat her with [ __ ] respect no [ __ ] she'd bomb them if they didn't let's go ahead and look at this other stuff i'm so proud to be a part of a company that takes a hard-line approach to inappropriate or hostile work environments and sexual harassment harassment issues our speak up campaign reinforces our zero tolerance for retaliation against those who do speak up we've made significant investments to foster our inclusive behaviors and to reflect greater diversity within our leadership teams including investing in strengthening and dii employee networks bring together all of our business units yeah yeah yeah yeah um introducing learning and development programs including inclusive hiring uh training amplifying internal programs such as way to play heroes and recurring speak up campaign reinforcing channels for employees to report violations including the ask list introducing an employee relations team dedicated to investing employee investigating employee concerns continuing to require all employees take equality and diversity training including anti-harassment training so this is pretty much the kind of stuff that you would expect that you expect people to say yes anti-harassment training um this is usually the reason why a lot of these companies do anti-harassment training uh it's not really because they um it's not because they believe in it it's because so they can have plausible deniability and they can remove accountability from themselves and legal uh uh they're not as legally liable whenever something bad happens because if they have an anti-harassment campaign and they have this training then they can only say well we did this so we're actively working against us in the company so it's not as much our fault whenever it happens so i i don't i don't believe this [ __ ] at all we put tremendous effort in creating fair compensation policies that reflect our commitment to equal opportunity we review compensation regularly and feel confident that we that we pay all employees fairly or equal substantially uh or substantially similar work we take proactive steps to ensure that pay and advancement are driven by merit reward performance and conduct extensive anti-discrimination trainings including uh including for those who are part of the compensation process i think this is obviously a good thing to say but i mean it just seems like that's not what's been happening this is the compensation process is getting honor points 100 they also get gold stars and sometimes they get a second break or actually sorry i mean a first break let's go over here and we're going to look at the last glass comment we work at a company that truly values equality and fairness rest assured that leadership is committed to continuing a uh to maintain a faith uh god damn i'm so bad at this uh a safe fair and inclusive workplace we cannot let egregious actions of others and truly meritless and irresponsible lawsuit damage our culture of respect and equal opportunity for all employees we aspire in our company to do great things in our games and in our impact in society and in our work environment we continue to hold firm in our principles and invest in what we have we remain committed to leadership that a team is doing what's right so what do people think about this individual uh making this comment this is a person this is the guy this is one of the guys that writes the story for a while i'm gonna read his comments about it like many of you our team's been going through a mix of outrage and sorrow and hurt been listening to one another looking after our friends and finding new ways to support and care for each other now we've got to roll up our sleeves and fix this [ __ ] as a company and as an industry i'm not talking about platitudes and corporate [ __ ] statements i'm talking about friends and colleagues working together to pull out evil by its roots it's important to you and it's important to us but right now i gotta get back to my friends so he actually yeah i mean a pizza that is actually a good pizza i would i would eat that pizza well one last thing i'm saying to defend i'm not saying this to defend any company or industry facade don't speak up for companies speak up for people and our team is amazing wonderful people and support right now that's what i'm going to focus on today that's great so there are a lot of people who work for blizzard who are even saying that this is [ __ ] there are people who who work there who are like this is [ __ ] yeah [ __ ] right so anyway um i i want to go back and i'm going to look at the next comment here now this is also a uh this is a small aside here warcraft 3 reforged but the project was never a priority for the company in part because the remaster of an old strategy game has little chance of becoming the type of billion dollar product that activision wanted according to people who asked not to be named because they weren't authorized to speak on company matters with blizzard pressured to focus on its biz biggest franchises warcraft 3 reforged couldn't get the ambitious budget that its leaders wanted so this is lit this literally seems like activision blizzard primarily activision leadership literally [ __ ] suck the life out of warcraft 3 and that's why it's reforged or sorry that's why it's refunded and not reforged that's sad man it really is it's a business decision come on man no i i disagree with that i think that if you're going to release a product like this you should um it should be a business decision here here's what should be a business decision the business decision should be that you are [ __ ] blizzard you have a 30-year history of bringing out absolute [ __ ] amazing games yeah you've had some fuck-ups but the the overall majority of the games that you brought out are amazing [ __ ] games and the reality of this is that every time that a game like this comes out people can say accept this do you want people to say accept this whenever they're talking about all the good things about your company absolutely not you shouldn't do it if you're not willing if you are a company a triple a developer you should not invest money into something if you're going to go half dick on it you have to go full dick blizzard chose to plow ahead with a premature release of warcraft 3 reforged largely because it had been already taken pre-orders from players according to people familiar with the decision the company couldn't bump the game too much more without potentially being forced to send out refunds and risking that fans wouldn't buy the game again higher-ups went so far as to remove re-recorded voice acting and revised scripts and intended to put warcraft 3's characters in line with the current war of world of warcraft original warcraft 3 developer david frayed who'd been brought back on the team to help with development resurrected clearly sees activision as the driving force of failure i'm deeply disappointed that activision would actively work against the interests of all players in the manner that they did the internal team purse mortem source by schreier goes on to blame blizzard leadership for the project's failure not allocating resources etc this is actually really not this is not particularly exciting here uh this is basically uh the parent company uh rammed this uh this project through uh they had no [ __ ] idea what they wanted to do with it and then they put it out even though it wasn't ready because they didn't want to lose the pre-order money that that's basically where we're at uh it's not that exciting it's not really that much of a point of view there's nothing unique about this there's no uh discussion about this at all it's just that blizzard [ __ ] up that's about it now let's look at the mike morheim statement former blizzard and co-founder mike moreham shared his thoughts on activision blizzard lawsuit apologizing for his failings of all employees so this is the statement that was made by uh by mike by mike morheim himself i've read the full compliant uh complaint against blizzard activision activision blizzard and many other stories it's all very disturbing and difficult to read i am ashamed it feels like everything that i thought i stood for has been washed away what's worse but even more important real people have been harmed and some women have had terrible experiences i was at blizzard for 28 years during that time i tried very hard to create an environment that was safe and welcoming for all people and genders and backgrounds i knew that it was not perfect but we are clearly we're very far off from that goal the fact that so many women were mistreated and uh were not supported means that we let them down in addition we did not succeed in making it feel safe for people to tell their truth it is no consolation that other companies have faced similar challenges i wanted us to be different be better harassment and discrimination exist they are prevalent in our industry it's the responsibility of leadership to keep all employees feeling safe supported and treated equitably regardless of gender and background it is the responsibility of leadership to stamp out toxicity and harassment in any form across all levels of the company to the blizzard women who experience any of those things i am extremely sorry that i failed you i realize that these are just words but i want to acknowledge that the women who had awful experiences i hear you i believe you and i am so sorry to have let you down i want to hear your stories if you're willing to share them as a leader in our industry i can and i will use my influence to drive positive change into combat misogyny discrimination harassment wherever i can i believe that we can do better and i believe gaming industry can be a place where women and minorities are welcomed included supported recognized reward and ultimately unimpeded from the opportunity to make the types of contributions that all of us joined this industry to make i want the mark that i leave on this introduce something that i'm proud of mike um i do think that this definitely has a different vibe now obviously because these two people work at the company they probably cannot actually admit fault based off of just the way that the company works right you just can't you can't say that you did certain things wrong that's just the reality of these types of uh of situation right pr versus pr well this is more personal pr and i think i do think that it's good that he's taken uh he's taken accountability for it right obviously it doesn't mean that it's okay right a lot of this stuff happened under his watch i'm sure he was aware of a lot of it and he let it happen he [ __ ] up absolutely but it's definitely better than saying that the people that are saying it are lying okay that's all i'm really trying to say it is slightly better i think mike probably did sweep some of this stuff under the rug i do i think he probably uh downplayed it and he seems like the kind of guy to think oh well you know my friend would never do that oh that's not what happened oh there's no way it's that bad right and try to like you know you know convince himself that it wasn't like that and obviously that's just not the right approach to have and even if it is the right approach to have you have to have that counterbalance by somebody who actually is unbiased right uh you can't have that be the only approach to have so i think that he was complicit in some of this absolutely you see the person doing it no but again it's his responsibility for these things not to happen so uh josh allen one of the uh the community managers for wow this is what he said if i'd known this was happening i would have stopped it says the man who was told repeatedly that it was happening and did nothing to stop it i've refrained from giving my own comments on the situation and active boys because frankly there are more people you should more important people should be listening to but that statement from a certain former leader was 100 [ __ ] and i'm furious about it he knew he did nothing don't get me wrong current leadership is [ __ ] up uh hard right now too but please don't for a second uh think that the culture that uh followed the loud all the snapping for the last couple of decades was somehow built by the guy who's been in charge for three years and he's right he's right [Music] it it like jay allen brat like as i said man he inherited such a mess that in two years his hair went from this to this two years okay yeah he inherited a [ __ ] mess that doesn't mean that he wasn't responsible for some for not cleaning it up but we're comparing three years versus 28. so let's go back over we're going to look at mike moorheim sweet people said some of the replies are important taking responsibility and apologizing for your role as paramount mike and i really appreciate when things got really bad and bnet many of us felt abandoned by you and what's worse we got threatened but physical harm and panic cc'd you about it i was later reprimanded for doing that completely ignoring how terrified i was for uh that my trying to save someone's life and somehow put my job in jeopardy and i was going to be exalted at a work event because of it i felt like i was never given any grace many men in leadership positions uh being repeatedly excused for their behavior and not being made to feel that sexual harassment was oh being made to feel that sexual harassment was totally normal and not that bad and even a compliment because of how normalized it was in bnet and wow uh when i think back specifically on how many women after sabi harassed and assaulted myself included jesus christ this guy gets around holy [ __ ] and how many people are traumatized by uh this individual i don't know what is i i can't say his name uh talks about pierce's ea had for so many years uh it's hard for me to think that you couldn't have enabled it the investigation's been ongoing for two years you have the company two years ago how did you not know of course you knew of course he knew everybody knows that there's no way he didn't know i'm gonna i'm gonna play this real quick and i want to talk about this just for a few minutes and there's some other things that i want to talk about as well okay let me pause the music here i felt dirty playing the wow music it's weird man like it's like i almost don't want to play the wow music because of the uh because of the situation i i don't know how long i'm going to feel that way for maybe a little bit longer it kind of just depends man but like that's really the way that i feel it it sucks i've been seeing some [ __ ] today on twitter and i wanted to make a quick video true obviously there's been some disgusting despicable sad disappointing [ __ ] absolutely blizzard and many people in the most disappointing way have used this information as a means to have a weapon to harass current blizzard employees and people that are content creators at blizzard there are people disgusting saying that you should quit your job you should stop streaming world of warcraft and i'll be honest i feel like these opinions and these things that they're saying and the fact that they use this as a rationalization to harass these individuals is the pinnacle of the word that i hate to use it's the pinnacle of privilege true i do people relocated sometimes very true family across the country to go work at blizzard entertainment they might not have had a single [ __ ] thing to do with the stuff in this in this court case and you expect them to quit their job especially some of these women that actually the victims of this expect them to quit their job because of this situation absolutely not that's ridiculous i understand if you want to boycott it i understand if you don't want to buy blizzard products or support blizzard stuff i totally get it but the reality is that whenever you take that lack of support and you turn that into an abundance of harassment that's whenever you are the problem that's please let the government let the people that have done a two-year investigation on this deliver justice absolutely not you and your twitter account writing mean tweets to somebody that doesn't [ __ ] deserve them true the reality about the twitch streamers the content creators is that many of these people for wow especially these are one game andy's these are people that are barely making a buy streaming world of warcraft they go to another game their stream's going to be [ __ ] dead and you know what i know it everybody [ __ ] knows it and i don't think that it's fair to ask and expect somebody to throw away their career because of something that they had nothing to [ __ ] do with please let these people let the people that are actually doing the investigation that actually have the power to enact actual justice do this job for you don't need to go on there and go on your own [ __ ] personal crusade you don't know crusaders you believe is the right decision guys i have to say this because i know that a lot of people in my community know this of course they do because i've been talking about it all day but the reality is that there's a lot of other people that are bad actors that look for any excuse to harass somebody anything and the saddest thing is they're looking at this [ __ ] at this court case about women being taken advantage of and they're using it as an as an excuse to take advantage and harass women so guys please don't do that it is it's disgusting uh let people make their own decisions and don't harass them into anything uh if you want to boycott do it personally but don't force that on other people anyway it's just a video i had to make had to say and it's pretty much all i've got so uh peace [Music] you

Channel: Asmongold TV

Views: 585,970

Rating: 4.9052062 out of 5

Keywords: asmongold, asmongold reacts, asmongold wow, asmongold highlights, world of warcraft, asmongold tv, asmongold final fantasy, asmongold FFXIV, asmongold blizzard, blizzard lawsuit, blizzard harassment, blizzard sued, blizzard investigation, blizzard exposed, wow lawsuit, blizzard asmongold, blizzard drama, activision blizzard, final fantasy xiv, final fantasy 14, mike morhaime, blizzard response, blizzard mike morhaiem, blizzard, blizzard scandal, blizzard entertainment

Id: JZZUkjvtUfU

Length: 28min 47sec (1727 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021