Almost all of Blizzard’s social accounts go silent after lawsuit allegations

[ad_1]

Monitoring 2

Snow storm

If you’re looking for a sign that Activision Blizzard is struggling to respond to recent allegations of mistreatment of women at the company, look no further than the fact that their social media accounts have been almost entirely silent since. ‘announcement of the news more than a week. there is July 22.

Blizzard in particular, at the center of many of these allegations, has gone completely black.

The Overwatch account hasn’t tweeted since July 21. The Diablo account hasn’t tweeted since July 20, despite the arrival of Diablo 2: Resurrected in just under two months. Heroes of the Storm and StarCraft don’t tweet a lot these days, but they haven’t posted anything since the trial either. The official Blizzard account only retweeted the statement from Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, posted on the investors page. The World of Warcraft account tweeted once and is the only team to have released an actual statement on the allegations and the actions they are taking, although the statement has been criticized for its odd wording, as if it had been submitted to multiple levels of management approval, and it focuses on removing NPCs from the game itself (like those based on actual employees accused of harassment).

It’s unclear why the Overwatch and Diablo teams haven’t said anything, but perhaps they are speaking through the general employee response that was released last week, which led to the walkout and a certain number of requests that have not yet been processed by management.

On the Activision side, Call of Duty has tweeted only once since the story broke, not a statement about the allegations, but just to post game updates. This is currently the most long that Call of Duty has been waiting to reveal its new fall game, which is supposed to be announced in an upcoming Warzone event, but they haven’t done so yet.

Everything I said above on Twitter is also true on Facebook. Presumably, the idea is both that it would be unhealthy to just resume business as usual (which many employees don’t want) while all of this is still going on, and that there are probably some concerns. regarding the comments they would receive on social media if they did so. In the last week alone, stories have been posted of a Blizzard employee arrested for installing cameras in employee toilets and a woman sexually harassed with inappropriate questions at a job fair by recruiters from Blizzard.

Blizzard’s statements come from former executives like Mike Morhaime and Chris Metzen, who apologized and said they let women down during their tenure there. But most of Blizzard’s current executives haven’t said anything, likely related to the fact that this is an ongoing lawsuit, and it’s extremely likely that Activision doesn’t want individuals to apologize specifically for anything, given that their position is that this lawsuit contains distorted and false allegations.

Activision Blizzard shares fell as a result of this story, but they are holding relatively stable now, and are still up from their annual low, so this is not some sort of calamitous crash. . It’s unclear what the next management or employee decision will be, but for now, its odd radio silence on most platforms.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Subscribe to my free weekly content summary newsletter, God Rolls.

Pick up my sci-fi novels, the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also in audiobook.

[ad_2]