Multi-Millionaire Activision CEO Signals Virtue With 99.9% "Gender Equality" Pay Cut - Tyler Durden’s Gamergate

Multi-Millionaire Activision CEO Signals Virtue With 99.9% "Gender Equality" Pay Cut | ZeroHedge

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Before President Trump rode down the golden escalator to destiny, before Twitter exploded into an online battle between free speech and wokism, there was GamerGate.

Beginning in early 2014, GamerGate was a backlash against what many (mostly male) supporters saw as the growing influence of a handful of female game developers and game journalists, whom - the GamerGaters' insisted - were trying to force video game culture to become more progressive in fit in better with their far-left ideals.


Given that most gamers are men (few of whom would identify as radical feminists), the backlash against game developers such as Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu, and feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian - to name a few, quickly escalated to online bullying, threats and doxxing, according to Bloomberg.
Since then, 'woke' gaming studios that hired an army of 'protected class' employees to avoid public scrutiny have been grappling with sexual misconduct scandals, transgender scandals, and other issues that arose thanks to years of walking on eggshells. It's also resulted in a glut of big-budget games falling flat on their faces thanks to a forced diversity agenda that left the overwhelmingly male gaming demographic with a bad taste in their mouth. (If only Obsidian would make a Fallout 4 sequel)...
Some have even criticized GamerGate as the seed corn from which the world-shaking events of 2016 grew - namely, Brexit and the election of President Trump. Which is perhaps why so many Gamer CEOs are taking such dramatic steps to prove that they're doing everything in their power to give women a "fair shake" in an industry where lawsuits are still being filed over "frat boy culture" where women don't feel comfortable.
To wit - Activision-Blizzard, the maker of the popular Call of Duty franchise, has found itself in a tough situation after its lawyers failed to convince a California court to temporarily halt an ongoing sexual harassment and discrimination case against the firm that was fired by a small group of female workers.
On their behalf, California’s civil rights agency sued the video game maker in July, accusing it of fostering an uncomfortable environment for female employees. In response, Activision denied some claims while firing or nearly 2 dozen workers and cancelling an annual event.

"Activision denied some claims while taking steps to punish those accused. It recently ousted 20 employees, it said, and called off an event for its biggest annual convention in February." -Bloomberg

Now, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has announced perhaps the world's most text book example of virtue-signaling.
After receiving a massive $154.6 million in compensation last year, which follows $30 million earned in 2019, Kotick has gregariously agreed to take a 99.96% pay cut.
In a speech to Activision Blizzard employees, Kotick apologized that he hadn't kept "the guardrails in place" when it came to the company's culture, and that fixing the 'frat boy' culture is now his responsibility.

"The guardrails weren’t in place everywhere to ensure that our values were being upheld," Kotick said in a letter to employees dated Oct. 28. "In some cases, people didn’t consistently feel comfortable reporting concerns, or their concerns weren’t always addressed promptly or properly. People were deeply let down and, for that, I am truly sorry." -Bloomberg

According to the report, Kotick is instituting the following changes:

• His pay will be reduced to the lowest he's legally allowed to receive among California Law, and has asked to receive no bonuses. This represents a 99.96% rate cut.
• Before Kotick can get his old pay package back, his company will need to increase the percentage of women and non-binary people to its workforce by 50% and invest $250MM to accelerate opportunities for diverse talent.
• He also plans to launch a 'Zero Tolerance' policy for harassment.
• And take steps to increase the visibility of pay equality
• While also waive required arbtrage for sexual harassment and discrimination claims.

We're sure this will improve the quality of games, and totally won't ruin them further like the most recent season of Rick and Morty.

 

[HumanHive]

Imagine actually taking “Gamergate got Trump elected” seriously.

 

[NigKid]

• Before Kotick can get his old pay package back, his company will need to increase the percentage of women and non-binary people to its workforce by 50% and invest $250MM to accelerate opportunities for diverse talent.

because hiring based of qualification is soo 2010

 

[WeWuzFinns]

The upside of big corporations turning gayer and gayer is that the indie devs can release an alternative non-gay product. With movies this isn't really an option due to the high capital needed to produce and market a movie. With games it is closer to a free market scenario so meritocracy plays a bigger role.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Maybe they should fix Warcraft Reforged first.

 

[Overly Serious]

If you got paid $150million last year, you can afford to take a pay cut to $60,000 this year. Instead, call it what it is which is an annual salary of $75million.

 

[gaystoner]

invest $250MM to accelerate opportunities for diverse talent.

Basically "Screw up and coming white guys"

 

[Lone MacReady]

Remember kids, Activision =

and for good measure, here's EA

Oy vey, almost feels like there's a revisionist historical narrative ongoing.

 

[Dona Morte]

Oh boy.
I can HEAR the bloviating coming from Sterling.

 

[Screw Danlon]

• Before Kotick can get his old pay package back, his company will need to increase the percentage of women and non-binary people to its workforce by 50% and invest $250MM to accelerate opportunities for diverse talent.

So to increase their women by 50% they’ll need to hire a second woman. To increase their non-binaries by 50%, they’ll have to double the size of Bioware.

 

[Fomo Hoire]

Lol yeah, I'm sure this is what the gender warriors wanted. They didn't want their salaries raised, they wanted a single other dude's salary lowered.

I know he's got enough savings that he's not actually living the sub-million-dollar lifestyle. But I like imagining that now he's not even worth milking the lazy way with a sexual assault allegation anymore. Which would be a smart move, now that I think of it, considering all the diversity hires they're supposed to be adding...

 

[Haramburger]

The upside of big corporations turning gayer and gayer is that the indie devs can release an alternative non-gay product. With movies this isn't really an option due to the high capital needed to produce and market a movie. With games it is closer to a free market scenario so meritocracy plays a bigger role.

Praise Gabe, blessed GOG, and tolerance for pagan itch.io

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Remember kids, Activision =
Ver archivo adjunto 2675465
and for good measure, here's EA
Ver archivo adjunto 2675464
Oy vey, almost feels like there's a revisionist historical narrative ongoing.

Don’t forget the fact that female soldiers in the Battlefield series were portrayed as the only kinds of soldiers that existed during the World Wars, and were not allowed to question it.

 

[TowinKarz]

"Man with millions in bank already graciously refuses another $499.99, says it's "for the females" "

Maybe they should fix Warcraft Reforged first.

You ask the impossible, good Sir.

The upside of big corporations turning gayer and gayer is that the indie devs can release an alternative non-gay product. With movies this isn't really an option due to the high capital needed to produce and market a movie. With games it is closer to a free market scenario so meritocracy plays a bigger role.

Reviewing the last 4 or so games I've played on my Steam account...

-Indie
-Indie
-Small Studio release
-90's game
-90's game

I haven't touched a AAA studio's product for almost 20 years, and that's not going to change from the looks of it. They have nothing I want, woke political messaging, pay-to-win and endless microtransaction business models, stale franchise releases with no original ideas, buggy as hell.... (but at least the online shop for buying gun camos at $8 a pop works flawlessly!)

 

[NerdShamer]

Any bets that the pay cut was forced onto him?

 

[DelusionTree]

Cutting executive salary doesn't mean anything unless they start taking stock, profit sharing and whatever else is in his contract away.

 

[Wallace]

Conspicuously absent from Kotick's mea culpa is to simply fire the offending parties. Because that's clearly not enough, now that the woke protection racket has ActiBlizzion squarely in its sights.

When you read the suggested remedies for what is wrong at Blizzard, they actually have very little to do harassment. Though harassment is claimed to be a problem, the solution is not for men to stop harassing women, it is for Blizzard to do a whole other slew of things, such as instituting quotas for female promotion, to adopt race and gender-based hiring quotas, to increasingly ”center the voices” of women and trans people in the narratives of the games they develop, and so on. Firing the offending employees is not a solution. In fact, the only ”real” way forward is for them to simply hire more people, perhaps even many more people, most of which will have skillsets completely orthogonal to the development of video games.

Put another way, Blizzard is being asked – at the point of a loaded gun – to subsidize the employment and career advancement of certain classes of employees, at the direct expense of other employees. Harassment, insofar as it is a problem, is to be solved through the creation of new alternate HR structures, with the people employed therein having wages paid by Activision-Blizzard, but who will then have some sort of semi-independent existence as a cadre of office commissars who exist to serve the revolutionary tenets of Equity and Inclusion, rather than something as pedestrian as the company’s bottom line.

 

[Billy Beer]

Remember kids, Activision =
Ver archivo adjunto 2675465
and for good measure, here's EA
Ver archivo adjunto 2675464
Oy vey, almost feels like there's a revisionist historical narrative ongoing.

Just wait until they and Acti remake all of their ww2 games and replace those in the ghettos and camps with black and gay people.

 

[NerdShamer]

Put another way, Blizzard is being asked – at the point of a loaded gun – to subsidize the employment and career advancement of certain classes of employees, at the direct expense of other employees. Harassment, insofar as it is a problem, is to be solved through the creation of new alternate HR structures, with the people employed therein having wages paid by Activision-Blizzard, but who will then have some sort of semi-independent existence as a cadre of office commissars who exist to serve the revolutionary tenets of Equity and Inclusion, rather than something as pedestrian as the company’s bottom line.

You know, there's an game called "ValiDate," which is an VN being made by SJWs and it's aimed at SJWs. It's been roughly an year and a half since it was announced and there's hardly any progress going on. It's mostly from the lead dev posting memes on Twitter and grifting donations, nowadays. There also might be some infighting, but we'll never know. Bear in mind that a VN doesn't take a lot of work for it to run and they had, like 8 people on the team, mostly artists.

Can you imagine what would happen if you let people like these make the next AAA FPS clone?

 

[Marissa Moira]

The company recived so much bad press that they removed the activision logo from COD: Vanguard advertisements hoping that people wouldn't realize that it's an Activision product.

That's how stupid they think people are.