A new insider report about the conditions at Blizzard has surfaced. An employee recounts that her first day at Blizzard in 2011 as an intern with Diablo 3 began with a row of shot glasses set up at her workspace, which she then emptied with her boss.
Who reports this? The Fortune magazine spoke with 29 current and former Blizzard employees and published a report.
The story about the whiskey is told by Nicki Broderick. She interned at Diablo 3 in 2011. In July 2012, she then started full-time at Blizzard and stayed with the company for almost 7 years. She was, among other roles, an analyst and project manager in the ESports department for the title Heroes of the Storm. Since 2019, she has been working at Second Dinner, the company of Hearthstone guru Ben Brode.
Drank liquor for the first time – and on the first day at Blizzard
Broderick recounts: The former employee states that she had her first day at Blizzard on her 21st birthday, June 13, 2011. According to her Linkedin resume, she completed her internship as a game tester for Diablo 3.
At the start of work, she found a row of shot glasses set up in front of her keyboard, apparently to celebrate her birthday. She says she had never drunk liquor before, not even in the evenings. However, she already downed Fireball whiskey in the morning with her manager, which is a type of whiskey liqueur with cinnamon flavor.
According to Broderick, it was the first time she felt that she had to drink at work, but not the last time. At an event in Korea with a partner company of Blizzard, she was told she had to drink, otherwise the partners would be offended:
‘They made me drink so much that I had a blackout. I don’t even remember how I got back to the hotel that night.’
Nicki Broderick
“Hotness” list about women
What do other women say? Fortune reports that women at Blizzard repeatedly experienced sexual harassment:
- New female employees were overwhelmed at onboarding by so many men wanting to ‘check out the harvest’ that they practically overshadowed the women
- There was also a table to rate women on a ‘hotness scale’ from 1 to 10 based on their physical attributes and whether they were ‘available’ or not
- Women learned to hide their relationship status – otherwise, men would stop working with them or stop helping them
The stories from the new report fit into known stories about working conditions at Blizzard:
‘Cocaine in the bathroom, sex in the lounge’ – scandal around WoW developer Blizzard escalates
