Blizzard lead Mike Ybarra: Company is working to ‘rebuild your trust’
This is how Blizzard is working to improve its work culture and environment.
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What you need to know
The video game industry was shocked on Tuesday, withMicrosoft announcing that it’s acquiring publisher Activision Blizzardin a monumental deal worth nearly $70 billion. The announcement comes during an era of rapidly declining trust in Activision Blizzard, following a lawsuit and innumerable reports that the company’s culture is one of sexual harassment and misconduct, unfair treatment and pay for employees, and more. On Thursday, Blizzard Entertainment’s head, Mike Ybarra,detailed how the company is making changesto improve its culture and workplace environments.
According to Ybarra, Blizzard’s current top priority is “the work we are doing to rebuild your trust in Blizzard,” namely its efforts to protect employees and hold management responsible for any misconduct. Ybarra then went on to discuss some of the exact changes Blizzard is making, including:
Ybarra asserted these moves are only the beginning of Blizzard’s effort in the area, and hopefully signifies a real shift in culture for the company. Still, many, including our own Jez Corden, are looking to the pending acquisition ofActivision Blizzard by Microsoft to effect real change and do right by the employees. There’s undoubtedly a long road ahead of Activision Blizzard to restore itself in the eyes of the gaming community and to better care for its employees. If you want to catch up on everything that has happened, we’ve kept track ofthe entire Activision Blizzard lawsuit timelineand everything you need to know.
In Ybarra’s conclusion, he also mentioned how Blizzard is aware it can improve the rate at which it updates and improves its titles, as well as how it innovates on new and existing projects. While no details were shared, he then teased that exciting things are coming, starting with an announcement next week. Blizzard is currently working on several new games, includingDiablo 4andOverwatch 2, both of which strive to join the vaunted list ofbest Xbox games.
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Zachary Boddy (They / Them) is a Staff Writer for Windows Central, primarily focused on covering the latest news in tech and gaming, the best Xbox and PC games, and the most interesting Windows and Xbox hardware. They have been gaming and writing for most of their life starting with the original Xbox, and started out as a freelancer for Windows Central and its sister sites in 2019. Now a full-fledged Staff Writer, Zachary has expanded from only writing about all things Minecraft to covering practically everything on which Windows Central is an expert, especially when it comes to Microsoft. You can find Zachary on Twitter@BoddyZachary.
