The lawsuit of a California agency against Blizzard is making waves. Even in World of Warcraft, protests are underway and hunts for “Afrasiabi” NPCs are being conducted.
A few days ago, new accusations against Activision Blizzard surfaced. The company is said to have a culture of misogyny and sexual assault; a California state agency has now filed a lawsuit. This is causing a stir in the World of Warcraft community – hundreds of players are demonstrating.
This is how players are protesting in WoW: On the RP-realms “Wyrmrest Accord” and “Moon Guard”, the guild “Fence Macabre” organized a protest action that hundreds of players participated in. They gathered in Oribos and all sat in front of the tavern, where they sat for hours discussing the allegations.
During this, there were also discussions about how players believe the incident should be handled. Many regret having had a subscription for many months and would prefer to quit immediately or have already canceled their subscription. Others appear to have said their goodbyes permanently and have uninstalled World of Warcraft and other Blizzard games.
This is the discussion on reddit: The negative atmosphere is also reflected in the subreddit of World of Warcraft. There are numerous threads where the topic is being hotly debated – most other topics are currently being overshadowed by this.
The moderators of the subreddits have also published a statement regarding this (via reddit/r/wow) explaining that they do not work for Blizzard and allow such discussions because they are important. In the WoW subreddit, they even went a step further and incorporated the dissatisfaction into the user display. Instead of statements like “There are this many members here in the subreddit”, it reads:
“2,150,710 players are fed up with Blizzard.
12,311 subscribers cancel every minute.”
NPC from WoW developer feels the wrath of the players
Players express their displeasure at this NPC: Many players are particularly upset about former developer Alex Afrasiabi. He left Blizzard last year without much fanfare: Afrasiabi is specifically mentioned in the agency’s complaint as someone who has behaved particularly poorly toward women. He is accused of having regularly sexually harassed female employees – it was supposedly so severe that his office was internally referred to as the “Cosby Suite”, named after actor Bill Cosby, who has been accused of sexual assault by over 60 women.
Many are particularly annoyed that Afrasiabi has a whole range of NPCs and items in World of Warcraft named after him – especially Field Marshal Afrasiabi, who stands at the entrance of Stormwind. On many realms, Horde players have taken it upon themselves to kill the Marshal.
There are also reports that Blizzard has already begun despawning the Afrasiabi NPC, but this seems inconsistent and not happening on all realms (via reddit).
Incident fits into a negative series: The latest incident is just another on a long list of scandals – albeit perhaps one of the most severe so far. Blizzard has faced criticism many times over the past few years. This has often involved the dismissal of hundreds of employees, huge bonus payments for executives, the notorious “Blitzchung” affair, or simply the disastrous state of Warcraft III: Reforged.
Many players now seem to be drawing a final line and expect drastic changes from Activision Blizzard, or are completely turning their backs on the company and its games.
How will you handle this? Do these reports and accusations leave you cold? Are you waiting for the final result? Or are you already drawing your consequences from the incidents?
