Blizzard president J. Allen Brack resigns, Jen Oneal & Mike Ybarra to co-lead
Oneal was originally the head of Vicarious Visions while Ybarra came over from Xbox in 2019. Both will be leading Blizzard operations in Brack's stead.
There’s been a major shift in leadership at Blizzard Entertainment. Following the ongoing issues of sexual harassment allegations and workplace toxicity that have resulted in a lawsuit being launched against Activision Blizzard, president J. Allen Brack of Blizzard has resigned and will be stepping down from his position today. Fellow leads Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra will be taking up the reins of Blizzard Entertainment in Brack’s place.
Blizzard Entertainment formally announced this transition via its official Twitter and a website statement on August 3, 2021. Effective immediately, J. Allen Brack will resign from his position as president and head of the studio while Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra take his place as co-leads. Oneal previously served as a longtime producer and, eventually, studio lead of Vicarious Visions before moving over to Blizzard to oversee the Overwatch and Diablo franchises in January 2021. Meanwhile, Ybarra was with Xbox for 20 years, becoming Corporate Vice President of Gaming in his time there and heavily overseeing the Xbox Insider Program before jumping ship to Blizzard in 2019. He became vice president and general manager of platform and technology and was overseeing the improvement of Battle.net.
New leadership at Blizzard.
— Blizzard Entertainment (@Blizzard_Ent) August 3, 2021
📝 https://t.co/536WzIJLJv
This move follows the recent events in which the state of California filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard for what were described as reprehensible workplace conditions and sexual harassment. Brack and Activision’s president Rob Kostich would released their own company emails addressing the allegations as “deeply disturbing” and promised change. However, current Activision Blizzard chief compliance officer and Bush-era torture apologist Frances Townsend went aggressively defensive, calling the allegations “distorted and untrue” and the lawsuit “meritless and irresponsible”.
These events eventually culminated in an employee walkout at Activision Blizzard in solidarity with the victims and prompted a response from CEO Bobby Kotick (which many employees saw as an attempt at placation).
With former president J. Allen Brack’s exit at Blizzard and Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra stepping into the studio leadership role, it remains to be seen if this will provide real improvement. Kotick and Townsend still hold executive positions over Activision Blizzard, just to name a few. We will continue to follow this story as further details come out.
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replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack resigns, Jen Oneal & Mike Ybarra to co-lead
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Blizzard president, J. allen Brack, is leaving
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/blizzard-president-j-allen-brack-is-leaving-the-company/1100-6494696/-
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Well, I mean, there's loads of speculation that Mike M. did a lot of good work trying to insulate Activision's power from Blizzard directly, but couldn't hold that off forever. Brack took over for him, and while Brack appeared to be less aggressive about allowing Activision to control Blizzard, he still seemed to try to fight that.
Now whether these two people are more friendly to Activision or seeking to protect Blizzard from its corporate oversight, it is unclear. Yes, they are still owned by Activision and Activision will get what they want from it, but it did seem like some of the changes in the last year (bringing VV to Blizzard, Diablo 2 Remastered given the go-ahead after the mess of Warcraft 3, etc.) was still of Blizzard's own volition. That's what I hope these two try to maintain.
But yes, Blizzard's still whipped by Activision, for all purposes regardless of what happens.-
The kind of Activision influence they care about is already clearly there in WoW and has been for years and years. Shop mounts, paid services but mainly selling gold for real money which Blizzard had always been massively against before the merger.
I'm hoping we don't see any deterioration in quality from these two being in charge. I hope they're not the kind of yes men who will sell the company short to promise things to corporate overlords. But there isn't much more greed and microtransactions they could fit into WoW compared to what is already there. -
Nehvrook’s take is more accurate.
The only thing I would add was Blizz didn’t need to be shielded. At the time of the merger, Blizzard was already under corporate ownership by Vivendi. It was a merger of Activision and Vivendi Games, more easily allowing Blizzard to become part of an American corporation trading on a US stock exchange.
Activision was making plenty of money at the time with big sellers like Call of Duty and Guitar Hero. Their interest in merging with Vivendi was also to position themselves more solidly for stock trading.
Afterwards, Activision thought Destiny would keep bringing in the bacon and Blizzard started making some wasteful moves too- precisely because their higher ups were making their money via the investor end of the operation, through stock performance bonuses as well as via the value of their own shares. It’s no wonder R& D, new IPs and the overall functioning of both Activision and Blizzard started going down the tubes. Why bother if the numbers presented to the shareholders are acceptable?
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On his way out, he reportedly said to his secretary: “now that I no longer work here, want to fuck? It’s okay, it’s not harassment since I don’t work here anymore. I have plenty of room in my Land Rover if you’re worried. I’ll leave the lactation room to let you decide.”
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Don't worry he brought a mask of Gloria Steinhem for her to wear.
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Also from last night, but not yet confirmed, TMobile may have pulled its sponsorship of OWL and Call of Duty League over this suit
https://www.pcgamer.com/t-mobile-branding-removed-from-overwatch-and-call-of-duty-league-websites/-
More confirmation (but not yet directly from T-Mobile), that they went out of their way to tape over the T-Mobile logo on player outfits.
https://www.polygon.com/22607861/activision-blizzard-t-mobile-overwatch-league-call-of-duty-cod-league-esports
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Damn. Blizzard is going to be a completely different company after this all plays out.
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Probably but they will be losing a ton of good people (as if they haven’t already lost a lot, like Kaplan)
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Pretty sure this has been the case already since Blizzard North quietly sailed into the great beyond over the horizon.
It didn't bother me in the Starcraft 2 era because the game was engaging and had a solid community. Same with Overwatch. Diablo 3 was probably their most ambitious modern era launch. Real money auction house, extremely rare legendary items, inferno mode....all things they eventually walked back to get the game to an actual fun place.
I would love to consider Heroes of the Storm here, but that game was abandoned and placed on life support long before HGC was murdered in its sleep.
I'm finished with them for the foreseeable future. Uninstalled all their games and the launcher even though I want to play the latest Diablo 3 season with my friends and I enjoy playing Lucioball. I was very much looking forward to buying the d2 remaster, and probably also D4 and Overwatch 2 and whatever RTS they are developing and going to call Warcraft 4, but I don't see any of that happening anymore.
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What has JAB done for Blizzard though, besides giving a half-assed public apology for the Blirzchung ban (that Hearthstone pro gamer who got banned for protesting against the Chinese dictatorship) and pretending he didn't know and doesn't approve of the sexual harassment at Blizzard (even though he was Afrasiabi's bro, knew exactly what was going on, and even defended him).
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Too little to late. Also, how big is his going away compensation package? I might feel better about this if he wasn't walking away with $20 million. Btw, I have no idea if that is the real figure. I am just pulling a number out of the air.
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You can't. But you can deny any bonuses and try and claw back bonuses.
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Can I preorder D2 Rezd now?
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https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23706475/new-leadership-at-blizzard
Actual press release with new leaders -
The new guy is apparently a pretty serious WoW player:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/ox3cbz/new_blizzard_coceo_actually_plays_the_game/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf-
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I don’t think it was possible to get the achievement until after 9.1?
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I don’t think it was possible to get the achievement until after 9.1?
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That’s a good sign.
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Ion does seem like a computer-brain kind of guy rather than a creative type. Generally, you do want any organized kind of person running a big project, but whoever they have doing the creative parts seem to be producing a pretty stagnant experience.
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Steve Danuser is the narrative lead. I actually like a lot of the new stuff they’ve built lore wise for shadowlands.
People give him a lot of shit because they either love or hate the Sylvannas arc.
I think in general there’s a section of the playerbase that is just going to be unhappy with the story developing past Azeroth. Once the players started offing god left and right, the story had to expand.-
The story just feels incredibly bland and inoffensive, which is pretty stunning considering they recently had Sylvanas commit genocide. I guess every character has to be a wooden caricature when they’re all just living legends, but it would be nice if they toned that down somewhat.
There actually is a lot of lore going around this expansion, but aside from being uninteresting, it also just feels like yet another grind to churn through. The campaign quest takes like an hour a week, and you can’t even do it until you’ve filled a bar. I’m probably just creating pain for myself by trying to play two characters in an expansion that’s hilariously alt-unfriendly, but the chores are just overwhelming me.-
I’ve already quit. Was considering coming back for 9.1 but then all this shit came out.
I think the dungeons just stink this expansion so they’re not fun for m+ and as a casual raider, there was a pretty hard roadblock in getting decent weapons in the first tier. Pugs just couldn’t down heroic council consistently for months. Felt like I was wasting my time every raid.
Not to mention that I’ve been a rogue and warrior main for years and they dumpstered both classes at launch.-
FWIW, warriors are very strong now!
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Act-Blizz shareholders file formal lawsuit that their past SEC filings, in light of the lawsuit, contained patently false claims
https://www.polygon.com/22607870/activision-blizzard-sex-harassment-shareholder-lawsuit-class-action-
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Good. This was all under Kotick's watch.
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A thing to keep in mind that only 54% of the shareholders agreed to award Kotick a nice big bonus last month. I think that will not be happening again.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/activision-shareholders-vote-to-keep-paying-ceo-bobby-kotick-a-ton-of-money/ar-AALhFA8-
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^^^ultimately, I think this is why they didn’t bother to settle out of court with the state when they were offered the chance. They’ve got theirs and this is probably a strategy they’ve arranged with TenCent to lower the valuation enough to make a merger/buyout acceptable, plus sew chaos in state political circles during a time where right wing forces are hoping to grab back overt power in the state by any means necessary.
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Can you elaborate on the political connection?
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They probably see themselves as a large employer in CA, and are trying to leverage that behind the scenes for anything from tax breaks to facilitating a merger/buyout.
There’s been renewed efforts by conservative money and the national GOP steering teams to use what they see as a chink in the blue armor of California state government to gain more power again. There’s a recall movement against the governor right now, for one serious example.
It’s very easy to connect Activision’s decision not to settle this out of court with these larger political maneuvers, considering how politicized their initial response to the state declaration of the suit and also based on the hardball right wings teams they’re employing to “deal” with the situation.
Whether it’s logical or wise for them to play politics around this is another question, which I don’t have any answers for, but it seems pretty clear that their leadership has embraced this strategy, for whatever reasons.
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shareholders can't vote out a CEO. that only can be done by the board itself. yes, shareholder;s vote for board members - but it's like the electoral college. most of this comes down to the quarterly results tonight and this next quarter. if it's bad, they could vote in new people at their next yearly mtg who could try to rally and push for the CEO's exit.
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Internal studios reject management's choice of WilmerHale as the lawfirm to investigate the AB problems internally, form a coalition to get a different firm to do this.
WilmerHale is know to be a opponent of unionization and was part of the work to try to stop Amazon workers from unionizing.
https://www.ign.com/articles/activision-blizzard-employees-abk-coalition-reject-bobby-kotick-law-firm-
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No they don't but this ABK Alliance is making sure they have put a stake in the ground that if company refused to come to their demands and these conditions continue to persist, they can bring other lawsuits against the company. Particularly if AB management tries to come down on collective bargaining.
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I don't think they Alliance will have any grounds if they say they reject the law firm and AB goes forward with them. It's a corporate choice - the CLO or Chiefl Council - who gets to decide what outside law firms are used. Just because they don't like them doesn't give them grounds to either reject them or block their use.
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I'm just thinking if this employee alliance is going "you're hiring a lawfirm known to hostile to unionizing efforts", management says that won't happen, and then down the road, lo-and-behold, Activision is denying employees from engaging in unionizing efforts (which in CA is pretty much something you can't do), they have warnings and evidence that the company clearly ignored employee concerns. That's no so much a lawsuit there itself, but its more towards what the shareholders could take action, or fuel for the state's own suit.
It's documentation, rather than word-of-mouth that its harder to prove that employees tries to take action.-
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Oh, certainly. But right now, there is some alignment of shareholders wants and employees wants. While the shareholders probably don't want to see unionization in the long run, they absolutely do not want to see employees being treated like shit as to inflate AB's bottom line (due to potential litigation that will fall out from that).
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It could go in a lot of directions, depending on which of the many people with hats in the ring to take over push forward if the recall vote passes.
I just can’t believe ATVI turned up the chance to quietly settle this for this three ring circus unless they had larger expectations for what they want out of the state.-
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The investors likely won’t care if ATVI does something like sell Blizzard off or merges with TenCent, but the company would need some support from the state (as a first line in gaining support from the SEC).
The company would also need some optics of “having no choice but” if they want to do mass layoffs or move offshore.
Like I’ve said above, I don’t think these would be the wisest choices, but I could see ATVI operating in some extreme ways, for extreme goals, based on the fact they chose this public mess instead of a quiet settlement in the first place.-
It was a public mess already, the stock tanked 7% on initial news even before the walkout. The reaction had to be this public in order to instill confidence. Axing the old president and head of HR says “we’re handling this” and “we don’t want labor to organize so we’re defusing this energy before it can really gain steam”
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If you read the state filing, the state worked privately with ATVI for months and only filed a lawsuit when the negotiations went nowhere.
ATVI refused to comply privately and said ok sue.
It’s in section 19 on page 9:
https://aboutblaw.com/YJw-
Yup. They thought they'd call the state's bluff and that failed. Everything since then has been a logical reaction to that blowing up in their face.
I honestly believe they didn't think the state had a case or that they would actually follow through. Its too far-fetched for me to believe that ATVI's advisement under executive members like Fran Townsend were thinking that far ahead in light of their completely boneheaded initial response. Enough of the executive members thought this would blow over, probably like lots of this has blown over in the industry in the past.-
How could they not know the state had a case against them?
I actually don’t think we are in disagreement. The only difference is that I think they knew there was a case there but huge hubris as a major employer in the state led them to feel it was worth it to not make a deal. Whether the strategy was to “squeeze” the state, or some other agenda that was likely only in the best interests of a very few, we’ll have to wait and see, but I think there’s more pride and greed there than simply blindness.-
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Absolutely.
I had a full time position with benefits at Activision, my direct coworkers were of much better caliber than I’d previously encountered in my other game industry employment and I still gladly said “toodle-loo” and didn’t look back, while I saw my female friends all dragged through pointless HR multiple times.
They knew.
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This thread, and this article, are making me think change might actually happen in the company. But I'm also extremely jaded when it comes to AB, so I ain't holding my breath.
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There was a story from a mainstream source earlier on that noted that if his had happened in any other entertainment industry, *everyone* would be all over them and would make sure some light at the end of the tunnel was seen before backing off. But for some reason, video games have been generally ignored when it comes to the whole Me Too problem within it, and this is being held as possibly the landmark/watershed moment that will wake not only the vg industry but other media to getting actual change made within the industry.
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Blizzard head of HR is no longer there
https://mobile.twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1422653540774907907-
He was out of humans to resource
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Axios reports on several stories from employees that HR was very much complicit in this, either refusing to do anything, protecting those accused, or even telling employees that it wasn't a fight they wanted to fight.
https://www.axios.com/activision-blizzard-harassment-lawsuit-hr-da4f678a-510c-4975-9d64-f5d744aa5c02.html
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Kotick's latest words today suggest (if it wasn't already hinted) that Brack's resignation was from pressure to clean house: "People will be held accountable for their actions," Kotick said. "That commitment means that we will not just terminate employees where appropriate, but will also terminate any manager or leader found to have impeded the integrity of our processes for evaluating claims and imposing appropriate consequences."
https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-blizzard-ceo-bobby-kotick-people-will-be-held-responsible-for-their-actions/-
SUCH AS *YOUUUUU*, KOTICK!?!?!?
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*except me
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This nails it btw: https://twitter.com/timjungdev/status/1422664143497093120
"we acknowledge employees may unionize and are taking action to protect the investors from this" -
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Wow, apparently at the AB earnings call, only TWO questions were asked pertinent to the lawsuit. I realize that the shareholder class action only dropped today and the shareholders may not be fully informed of all the issues, but this still seems rather sad and/or predictable from wealthy shareholders just looking to protect their bottom dollar.
https://www.ign.com/articles/what-activision-blizzard-shareholders-asked-first-earnings-call-harassment-lawsuit-
shareholders have every reason to believe this will blow over and much more reason to wonder about things like how Activision will increase monetization with looming legal risks to loot boxes or whatever else
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All of these moves so far seem to ignore the previous leadership who by several accounts were all in on similar abuse.
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