* Activision Blizzard studio Proletariat recently withdrew their upcoming union election to determine if they will unionize or not. In an official statement, the Communication Workers of America blamed Proletariat CEO Seth Sivak for why the union election will no longer be taking place. Had the vote gone on as planned and the studio voted for unionization, it would have become the third studio under AB's umbrella to unionize over the past year.
Link:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/prolet...equest-dropped ,
https://www.destructoid.com/activisi...ithdrawn-news/
* Activision Blizzard longtime employee and manager Brian Birmingham reportedly recently left the company, according to Bloomberg. It was reported that the reason was due to Birmingham's issues with the company's current employee appraisal system that he felt unfairly hurts employees due to how the grading curve system is used by company management.
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Originally Posted by Destructoid
A veteran software engineer at developer Activision Blizzard has quit his role at the studio after reportedly being unable to reconcile with what he calls a “toxic” stack-ranking staff appraisal system.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Brian Birmingham, who has worked with Blizzard Entertainment on titles such as World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Warcraft III: Reforged, departed the company after 17 years of service when faced with the appraisal system, which he says grades teams on a curve, and thus forces the manager to “downgrade” certain employees for little reason other than to maintain said curve.
Birmingham claims that he was asked to change a team member’s status from “Successful” to “Developing”, an act which Birmingham says what done to “squeeze” performances out of his team members. The Bloomberg report notes that around 5% of a team’s staff were required to be “low-scoring”, which would inherently hamper their chances at receiving promotions or bonuses.
“This sort of policy encourages competition between employees, sabotage of one another’s work, a desire for people to find low-performing teams that they can be the best-performing worker on, and ultimately erodes trust and destroys creativity,” wrote Birmingham in an open letter to his team. “If this policy can be reversed, perhaps my Blizzard can still be saved, and if so I would love to continue working there. If this policy cannot be reversed, then the Blizzard Entertainment I want to work for doesn’t exist anymore, and I’ll have to find somewhere else to work.”
Following Bloomberg’s report, Birmingham also took to Twitter to clarify his stance, pointing the finger directly at upper management of Activision Blizzard King (ABK), while praising the talent and work ethic of the hundreds of colleagues that he has worked alongside for the best part of two decades.
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Link:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ranking-system ,
https://www.destructoid.com/report-a...an-birmingham/
* Riot Games confirmed that a recent hacking attack on the company resulted in hackers stealing the source code for League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics. It was also announced that code for a legacy anti-cheat system had also been among the stuff stolen. It was also announced that the company rejected demands by the hackers to pay a ransom in order for the stuff to not be leaked online.
Link:
https://www.destructoid.com/riot-lea...erattack-news/