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    Game developer abuses

    As we have known for a while game developers have been treating staff pretty poorly and in some cases criminally.

    The story's coming from Activision aren't new and they aren't contained just to them unfortunately.

    I figured we needed a place to put stories and discuss what the hell is going wrong in the world of game development?

    #2
    It's an industry with salaries and deadlines. Im sure magazine writers will attest to similar.

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      #3
      Every industry is an industry with salaries and deadlines.

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        #4
        I can’t speak for the magazine industry but I am in a business with salaries and deadlines and I can safely say the stuff we’re seeing in the games industry is not normal. Although I can think of at least one business sector where at least some of what’s going on would have been pretty normal around 20 years ago. It’s basically a childish bro culture given money and power.

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          #5
          The defence industry is pretty male centric, we have salaries and deadlines, but even in the worst company I've collaborated with (when there's this guy that at the beginning of each day got into every office and farts, then sat at his desk and went "let's see how can I pass time today"), I've never experienced anything like the mildest report that ever came out on the news.
          I'd say that not being constantly humiliated in the workplace is a pretty low bar to set.

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            #6

            Apparently men at Blizzard would walk in to the breastfeeding room to stare at the women.

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              #7
              Sorry, I thought we were talking about "crunches ", not perving!

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                #8
                Originally posted by Cassius_Smoke View Post
                Every industry is an industry with salaries and deadlines.
                Yes, but games development especially has been ruined by deadlines. Every game should have a "when it's finished" approach in an ideal world.

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                  #9
                  If you work in the Construction Industry then at the wrong side of the spectrum this type of behaviour has been going on since day dot…

                  It’s the ‘unprofessional’ side of the working world, and from my experience, it mostly stems from the top down. This type of behaviour will always be around unfortunately…

                  112

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                    #10
                    It will only be around as long as it’s tolerated and allowed to become systemic. Many past industries had incredibly sexist default states and then changed and it was no longer tolerated. You get the odd creep but it can’t then become systemic. It is seemingly systemic in games, or at least in certain corners of the industry.

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                      #11
                      My partner was touched inappropriately some years back on one of her past jobs, one day while she was on her own in a back room the resident creep came out of nowhere and tucked her knickers in the back of her jeans. When she pressed a complaint with the md he said he would warn the guy but in fact did nothing, there old friends, the day after the complaint the guy just grinned at her all day as creeps do, apparently he’d been doing this for years.

                      3 days later he quit the job and moved, turns out someone had nocked a tooth out and threatened to break his legs one night in mysterious circumstances.
                      Last edited by fishbowlhead; 31-07-2021, 14:42.

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                        #12
                        I heard a similar story many, many years back in my own business. And then only a couple of years ago a couple of bullying creeps (bullying often seems to come with the package) got outed and booted and yet they had got away with their behaviour for more than a decade each. And really what that shows is that they’ll only get away with it if the environment lets them. And that needs to be people at the top or near the top because it’s too much pressure to put on people just hanging on to their jobs or new people who aren’t confident.

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                          #13
                          There was a manager (not mine), who I quite liked, who used to give deaf arms to everybody. One day in the server room he decided to give me a "friendly dead arm" and I said I'd prefer it if he didn't do it again. So, of course, he did.
                          So I asked the other bloke in the room to bear witness but he said he didn't want to know and scarpered.
                          So we started wrestling and I intended to pick him up and smash him onto the floor, but as I lifted him, he wrapped a leg around mine and we fell forward and I smashed him onto the server keyboards, sending keys flying and keyboard buffer overflow beeps screeching and filling the air.
                          The other bloke had run to my boss and he burst in and started screaming at us and pulled us apart.
                          He sent the other bloke off and started going on at me about unprofessional conduct, so I explained what had happened, to which he said, "So what?! He hits everyone, even me!".
                          I said "Well, if you're happy to be his punchbag, that's your lookout. I'm not having it and as my boss, it is your duty and the also the law, that you prevent it from happening".
                          He told me not to be ridiculous and I said that if it happens again, one or both of us are going home with teeth missing.
                          He told me to clear up the keys on the floor and go back to work and that he'd speak to me later.
                          The next day I was called to a meeting with my boss and the other guy's boss and they told me that I was right to object but couldn't go around fighting with people at work and I said that if he doesn't touch me again I won't have to.
                          They said ok and that was it. Never spoke of again, never disciplined and he never gave dead arms to me or anybody else.
                          I was young and living at home, knocking it out of the park at work, so could afford to be bolshy, but basically this 50 year old guy used to punch people in the arm for years and years and everyone just put up with it and his and my management used to be punched by him too, without complaining!
                          Last edited by gunrock; 31-07-2021, 21:24.

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                            #14
                            Good example of how **** like that just gets ignored.

                            Now I'm not a fan of Activision/blizzard games and I don't really care for ubisoft stuff either, so I can easily not buy their games in protest. The difficulty would be if something I was really looking forward to was made during questionable behaviour.
                            Is anyone here less likely to buy their games based on what we are hearing?

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                              #15
                              I don't really do EA and I don't do a lot of Ubisoft outside of Just Dance. I haven't really dug Activision since the VCS, C64, Amiga days and certainly not the Call of Duty guff.
                              Treating people **** and women like objects in a multi billion $ industry with mega HR departments is not acceptable (not that it's acceptable in small time, cottage industries either).

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