WoW Twitch Streamers Speak Out On Activision Blizzard Sexual Harassment Suit

Late Wednesday it emerged that Activision Blizzard is being sued by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing over a toxic workplace culture that’s allegedly led to years of harassment and abuse targeting women. Later in the week, a number of popular World of Warcraft streamers have publicly commented on the emerging lawsuit. Many others remain silent.To get more news about buy wow gold safe, you can visit lootwowgold official website.

The initial Bloomberg story showed that on July 20, after a two-year investigation by the CDFEH, the department filed a lawsuit against the Call of Duty, Overwatch, and Diablo publisher to force it to comply with California workplace laws and regulations. The suit contains allegations of some truly awful offenses committed by men at the company, including “constant” sexual harassment, frequent groping, and other examples of truly horrible behavior. In addition, it describes an institutional lack of help or support for the victims from management or higher-ups.

Since the story broke, fallout has been widespread, with developers and creators across Twitter and other social media sharing their disappointment, shock, and in some cases personal stories about harassment and toxic behavior they experienced while working in the game industry.

Some of the most popular World of Warcraft streamers explained how disappointed and sad they were to hear the news. Top WoW Twitch streamer Asmongold, in a public statement shared on Twitter, said he was “hurt” by the news as a longtime fan of the publisher.

“Shameful to hear about what’s been reportedly going on at Blizzard,” Asmongold wrote. “As a 20+ year fan it really hurts to see how things have devolved in such an awful way. Just makes me sad.”

He followed this statement up with a video on July 23. In the Twitter video, he explained that devs at Blizzard shouldn’t be harassed by players online over the details of the lawsuit. He also said it wasn’t fair for people to ask streamers who only played World of Warcraft to stop playing the game.

“If they go to another game, their stream is going to be fucking dead. You know it, I know, everybody fucking knows it.” Asmongold said. “I don’t think it’s fair to ask or expect someone to throw away their career because of something they had nothing to fucking do with.”

Naguura, a Twitch streamer who frequently plays World of Warcraft and has over 260k followers on the platform, said she was saddened by the “disgusting behavior” in a Tweet sharing an article covering the lawsuit. She also criticized the publisher’s statement.

“It’s so sad to read through all of this and knowing that it has been going on for years and years probably,” Naguura wrote, “Just absolutely disgusting behavior and seemingly so many higher-ups just ‘let it happen’. And this statement just isn’t it either.”

She followed up with an additional comment pointing out that this type of toxic behavior against women happens all the time, and asked for folks to “speak up” for women and not look the other way if they witness such “absolutely disgusting behavior.”

A popular World of Warcraft streamer, Towelliee, has even said they will no longer stream the MMORPG until they see a plan from Activision Blizzard to combat the accusations found in the lawsuit.

“I wasn’t planning on playing WoW on stream for the next week,” said Towelliee, “And now I won’t stream it afterward until there is some sort of statement with a plan of action and explanation. I don’t know how deep this rabbit hole goes and I am scared at the end result.”