It really is baffling to me how people are relentlessly hostile and venomous towards Bobby Kotick online, especially given his track record, but when someone at the company only offhandedly disses him and bobby has an overreaction, then they’re like “Hey that’s rude. You shouldn’t be mean to your boss”.
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so if you had an employee you would let them break policies and mock you in front of others? you realize that that behavior spreads and pretty soon you are having a hard time with the majority of your employees right?
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I am not sure why you are so interested in moving the goal post. Yachts are a thing in WoW and they are something owned by the redicolously wealth(and sometime greedy and evil) goblin corporate overlords.
The goblins were ALWAYS mocking the ultra rich/capitalism/industrialist. It wasnt toward a specific person/entity. But nowadays its not exactly hard to compare them to Blizzard itself.
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yet another person that doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a direct insult and an indirect jab meant as a form of comedy.
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Imagine being a literal multimillionaire CEO of one of the biggest gaming companies in the world, and being so swooningly, hyperventilating thin-skinned that you can’t take even a slight ribbing in a line of text in one of the games that your company puts out - so much so that there’s not even an edit and a discussion, but an outright firing of a long-term employee who was otherwise doing solid work by all estimations. Because you’re a grown man who holds all the money and all the power and your fee-fees get hurt, and you demand retribution as the first-line response, like a liege-lord wanting the hands of a peasant in his employ who told a joke about him.
And then imagine defending that kind of behavior. Although it’s pretty hilarious seeing a lot of the same people who are like, “You can’t even tell a JOKE in the GAME anymore because the woke SJWs are too WOKE and can’t take a JOKE” be the same ones sampling the fine flavors of Kotick’s boot.
It’s a failure of leadership, a failure of management skill, and a failure to look like anything but a petulant child. All it does is make Activision-Blizzard look like it’s being run by someone with the emotional maturity of a fifteen-year-old.
About three different members of SNL put direct parodies of Lorne Michaels in their other works, the most famous of which was Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies. There are lines in sketches that tease him all the time. No one got fired for any of it, he laughed along with them.
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This is what the guy wrote on Twitter:
According to the termination letter: “misconduct and harm to the Company by inserting inappropriate non-game related content into a game, which is also a violation of the Company’s Code of Conduct
So there seems to be a clear policy about being mindful of what kind of content you put in the game. As a 9 year employee, I’m sure he was well aware of this policy, tried to put the meme in there anyway and got burned by it.
Again, why risk your job testing out if your content breaks policy or not? Seems needlessly risky and for what benefits? To brag on Twitter about how you stuck it to the man? That’s what kids in their first jobs do, not working professionals.
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So by their own standards it’s an invalid reason to cite?
I have my doubts that this was the only reason he got fired.
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The only actual harm that was done to the company’s reputation was in Kotick’s melodramatic overreaction to a mild ribbing at best. I wonder if he’ll fire himself for it?
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It was merely observational.
We know that none of this had anything to do with pixelated seafaring vessels.
Writers for blizzard are not part of that union
Not exactly. He would have to prove he was not referencing the meme of bobbys yacht. Let’s be honest with ourselves, when you saw the line was the first thing you thought of the meme or for one quest 12 years ago there was a yacht in the game?
I doubt he even knew about it. I had forgotten those mobs were even in the game let alone seen all the lines. I’ve seen like one or two my entire time there.
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That’s the whole point of a double entendre. It’s telling a real life joke through it’s valid application to the game.
The line itself was meant to be comedic as it was given to a silly event npc and meant as a veiled attempt to poke fun at someone.
Can we at least draw a distinction between DIRECTLY “insulting” your employer and INDIRECTLY “poking fun at” your employer?
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The absolute mad lad.
someone is easily triggered… costs a lot of money to retrain employees versus progressive disciplinary discourse.
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It really doesn’t take a whole lot of prep time to kick someone to the curb.
Prepping for what comes after and how that person’s work is going to get done is usually what takes time and, from my experience, is usually not well thought-out beforehand by the butthurt manager doing the firing.
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I think you’re getting too hung up on this point when it ultimately doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is they felt it violated their policy regarding inserting inappropriate non game stuff into the game and if that sounds vague, it’s probably on purpose. If the employees wanted to find out which lines they can and can’t cross, one found out the hard way.
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Usually there’s like 2 weeks - 1 month notice so that you have time to inform payroll, start recruiting a replacement, and also give the employee time to handover things (or prepare documentation in case if there’s no replacement yet).
Although there’s no information in this case on whether he was instantly fired and told to leave the same day or if he was given some warning. But from the wording and the resentment he carries, it seems like not much was communicated to him.
Also I guess it depends on your countries laws. In my country the practice is to give 1 month notice if either the company or employee wants to terminate, and if either party fails to serve the notice period they will have to pay the salary due. So everyone (usually) respects the notice period lol.
We already know the line was crossed. Obviously. The guy was fired. Again, you’re doing this thing we’re you’re just pointing out stuff that happened without offering any introspection as to morality of what “it” is.
The guy offended the boss. There are two ways to look at it. Should the employee have not offended the boss or should the boss not be so easily offended?
If Bobby is so egregiously insulted by a veiled double entendre about a popular meme that he fires his employees at will because of it, I believe that warrants criticism.
I highly doubt the claim … Feels like there is more than these go to twitter to vent generation lead people on to believe. Either way itd be more likely theyd just remove the dialogue . Theyd be in for a huge lawsuit if this was the sole reason for the persons firing.