Blizzard, developer of major franchises such as Diablo e Overwatch, has been in the eye of a legal storm since the state of California sued parent company Activision Blizzard last summer for harassment and a toxic work culture. Just in the past few hours the Blizzard boss, Mike Ybarra, published a post detailing the actions the company is putting into play to regain the trust of the public.
Blizzard against harassment
One of the first adjustments mentioned by Ybarra concerns the company’s management teams, which will begin to be evaluated directly according to the working environment: the more inclusive and safe this is, the higher their compensation will be. For this reason, a new job position has also been activated, that of the so-called Culture Leader, who will go on to join the human resources department.
With a view to increasing efforts in this sense, Blizzard has also “tripled” the size of its investigative and compliance teams, shared the representation data internally, set goals to improve these metrics and created a program of feedback for employees designed to evaluate managers and their relationships with the team.
Probably all these initiatives are also to be included in the recent acquisition of Actvision Blizzard by Microsoft; not by chance Phil Spencer he sent an email to the staff on this very topic: “we are convinced that creative success and autonomy go hand in hand with the dignity and respect guaranteed to each person. We look forward to extending our culture of proactive inclusion to the great Activision Blizzard teams. ”
The road to Blizzard’s redemption is undoubtedly still long and winding, but undoubtedly it is a good start and a positive initiative. On the other hand, the software house has not yet finished dealing with the legal problems that emerged this summer.