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Mike Ybarra wrote about the changes on Thursday.
Alex Castro is the illustrator for The Verge.
The developer of huge franchises like Diablo and Overwatch has been under intense scrutiny since the state of California sued the parent company over alleged fostering of a culture of harassment and discrimination. In an attempt to assure employees and fans that the company is making positive changes, Mike Ybarra published a post detailing what it is doing to rebuild your trust.
At the top of the list is that executive and management teams will be measured directly against culture improvement, which means that their compensation will depend on our overall success in creating a safe, inclusive, and creative work environment.
New full-time roles have been created to help improve culture.
A culture leader who will help us maintain the best aspects of what we have today, and change and evolve where needed to ensure everyone brings their best self to Blizzard.
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A new organizational leader for Human Resources will build trust, empower our teams, and help foster a safe, positive work environment for everyone.
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A leader focused on our progress across multiple efforts in this area.
The size of the compliance and investigation teams has been tripled, the team's representation data has been shared internally, and an upward feedback program has been created for employees to evaluate managers.
We are committed to more open dialog with the amazing player communities, not just from me but from all of our incredible teams.
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Mike Ybarra wrote on January 20, 2022.
Ybarra has a blog about these initiatives, which is under the shadow of the Microsoft deal. Microsoft appears to have gone into the deal with open eyes, and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer even nodded to culture changes to come in an email to staff:
Creative success and autonomy go hand-in-hand with treating every person with dignity and respect. All teams and leaders are held to this commitment. We are looking forward to extending our culture of proactive inclusion to the great teams.
Ybarra had been with Microsoft for nearly 20 years before he joined Blizzard.
There is still a lot of work to be done to address the concerns of employees. Ybarra was put in place as a co-lead after Oneal took the role, but he stepped down just three months later. According to a Wall Street Journal report from November, Oneal sent an email to a member of the legal team at the company, stating that she lacked faith in the leadership of the company.
Several dozen workers at Raven Software have been on strike for weeks to protest layoffs. Ybarra doesn't address demands from the ABK Workers Alliance, as Kotaku reporter Ethan Gach pointed out. Some employees of the company are optimistic about the Microsoft acquisition.
It sounds as if we could learn more about the studio's games sometime next week, as Ybarra tacitly acknowledged the studio's lack of recent big releases. Ybarra said that they need to deliver content to their players on a more regular basis. We have some exciting things to announce, and I will be sharing more next week.
The board of directors of The Verge's parent company is chaired by a man who is also on the board of directors of a different company.
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