It has been over three weeks since the employee walkout at Blizzard and leadership continues to ignore the demands of their employees:
Activision Blizzard Employee Demands
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The end of forced arbitration for all employees.
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Worker participation in oversight of hiring and promotion policies.
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The need for greater pay transparency to ensure equality.
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Employee selection of a third party to audit HR and other company processes.
Today’s walkout will demonstrate that this is not a one-time event that our leaders can ignore. We will not return to silence; we will not be placated by the same processes that led us to this point.
This is the beginning of an enduring movement in favor of better labor conditions for all employees, especially women, in particularly women of color and transgender women, nonbinary people, and other marginalized groups.
We expect a prompt response and a commitment to action from leadership on the points enumerated above, and look forward to maintaining a constructive dialogue on how to build a better Activision Blizzard for all employees.
Today, we stand up for change. Tomorrow and beyond, we will be the change.
A recruiter for Activision Blizzard requested an employee tone back their messaging about how bad it’s been at Blizzard because the recruiter is having trouble acquiring new talent.
Jessica Gonzalez tweeted a picture of an email she received that reads:
Hey Jessica,
I am on the front line as a Recruiter. Some of the articles that you are sharing freak candidates out. :p Can you please share what we are doing as a company to eliminate such toxic behavior? ABK has made many strides to head this off. Your updates don’t seem to address this.
Outside of news that some problematic people in high profile positions have been removed from the company, we actually don’t any details about the so-called strides Activision Blizzard has taken to eliminate toxic behavior. We know that employee walkout demands haven’t been addressed yet and an anti-union busting firm friendly with company leadership has been hired as the third-party investigator of claims.
The Countdown Cup, the final regular season tournament of the 2021 season, has begun!
From the East are Seoul Dynasty and the Chengdu Hunters, and from the West are the Atlanta Reign and LA Gladiators. As I write this, LA and Atlanta have moved on through the Winners bracket while Seoul and Chengdu face off tonight [Friday], to see who will be completely knocked out of the tournament. The Finals are tomorrow evening.
Full Countdown Cup schedule from Overwatch League.com.
Pirate Ship Bastion
In a total nod to the pirate ship meta, Bastion now has a new Pirate Ship skin for the Countdown Cup. For 200 OWL tokens you can grab this through Monday, August 30.
- In sad news, Christiane Louise, the Brazilian voice actor for Mercy, was murdered. The man who confessed to the murder claimed self-defense. Louise also voiced other characters for the region such as Bayonetta and Cortana. (PC Gamer)
- Atlanta Reign DPS player Pelican had an emergency surgery last weekend for a collapsed lung. After surgery he said he would not be going to Hawaii to play in the Countdown Cup, but that plan changed as he helped the Reign defeat the Dynasty last night.
- Voting for the OWL 2021 MVP is up for another week! MVP Voting
- There have been a few incidents reported to Reddit of ne’er-do-wells crashing game servers. So far two videos have surfaced. (One) (Two)