Following the California sexual harassment and workplace discrimination lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, World of Warcraft's developer of World of Warcraft, the World of Warcraft team has pledged to remove inappropriate references from our world within the next few days.Tuesday's statement by the World of Warcraft team didn't include any specific details about what references they would be removing. It is possible that NPCs or items named after Alex Afrasiabi, former World of Warcraft senior creative Director, may be removed from the game. However, Afrasiabi appears to have left Blizzard in June 2020. Kotaku reported Thursday that his stamp on the game still remains.Afrasiabi was the focus of the lawsuit because of his horrific behavior. According to the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), this included blatant and inhumane sexual harassment that had little or no repercussions.In an egregious example of defendants refusing to deal with harassers because of their seniority/position at Blizzard Entertainment Alex Afrasiabi was allowed to engage in blatant sexual harassment without any repercussions. Afrasiabi was known for attempting to kiss and hugging female employees at a company convention, called BlizzCon. Afrasiabi was doing this in plain sight of male employees and supervisors. They had to intervene to pull him off the female employees. Afrasiabi was known for harassing female employees. His suite was named the Crosby Suite in honor of Bill Crosby, an alleged rapist. Afrasiabi also called female employees derogatory names at company events. Blizzard Entertainments executives knew about Afrasiabi's conduct, but they did not take any effective remedial steps. J. Allen Brack was the President of Blizzard Entertainment. He allegedly spoke to Afrasiabi several times about his drinking, and that he had been too friendly with female employees at company events. However, he gave Afrasiabi a slap on both wrists (i.e. These incidents were addressed with verbal counseling. Afrasiabi made more unwelcome advances toward female employees. He even grabbed a female employee's hand and invited her to his hotel room to grope another woman.The suit also claims that World of Warcraft encouraged and allowed for extremely disturbing behavior towards women. According to the complaint, female employees of the World of Warcraft team reported that their male supervisors and employees would make demeaning comments about women, hit them and make derogatory remarks about rape and engage in other demeaning behaviors.The complete statement from the World of Warcraft team is available here. It was also posted on Twitter.
