Work has resumed on World of Warcraft. Last week, senior system designer Jeff Hamilton confirmed that “almost no work is being done on World of Warcraft” as the team came to grips with the lawsuit leveled against Activision Blizzard by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
The suit accuses Activision Blizzard of having a “frat boy” work culture where female employees are regularly discriminated against, sexually harassed, and often excluded from fair compensation or promotions. Activision Blizzard immediately denied the allegations, calling them a “distorted” and “false” view of Blizzard’s past.
Following the lawsuit, dozens of Blizzard employees took to social media to share their stories, with experiences very similar to those listed in the suit. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick recently admitted that his initial response to the suit was “tone-deaf” and promised several immediate changes within the company to address the allegations.
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One of those changes was to remove content in Activision Blizzard’s games that players and employees deemed “inappropriate.” World of Warcraft players have already identified several such NPCs named after former WoW creative director Alex Afrasiabi who had a full paragraph devoted to his inappropriate actions at a past BlizzCon. Besides repeatedly harassing female employees while drunk, “attempting to kiss them, and putting his arms around them," Afrasiabi's hotel room was nicknamed the "Crosby suite" [sic] after accused rapist Bill Cosby.
"While we turn to our team for guidance in our internal work to protect marginalized groups and hold accountable those who threaten them, we also want to take immediate action in Azeroth to remove references that are not appropriate for our world,” wrote the WoW development team on social media. “This work has been underway, and you will be seeing several such changes to both Shadowlands and WoW Classic in the coming days."
The WoW team added that it would be working to "rebuild trust" with the community over "the weeks and months to come."
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