Blizzard President steps down amid company discrimination scandal

**This story about changing the tone at the top, boiled down, in 2:01 minutes.**

What's the fuss?

The fallout from the discrimination lawsuit against a major developer continues with the departure of the company's President, apparently out of his own volition. However, reading between the lines tells us a different story.

The situation

Activision Blizzard continues to be the centre of an international fallout derived from a Californian workplace discrimination lawsuit against them.

Within this lawsuit, only two names are mentioned: President J. Allen Brack and ex-creative director Alex Afrasiabi.
Afrasiabi was reported to have received numerous complaints about inappropriate sexual misconduct against female employees "with little to no repercussions" and was terminated in 2020 as a result of a separate investigation.
Afrasiabi's direct superior was none other than Brack himself, who reportedly knew about the company's pervasive "frat boy" culture and only gave Afrasiabi "a slap on the wrist" as punishment for his sexual harassment incidents.

Blizzard recently announced that Brack will be stepping down as President to "pursue new opportunities".

In his stead, two industry veterans will act as co-leaders to hopefully steer the company in the right direction.

Boiling it down

Leaving "to pursue new opportunities" usually has the connotation that the person in question was actually let go.

Despite Brack's history of being passive towards improving workplace culture, using Brack more so as a sacrificial scapegoat to appease investors' concerns may have been the motivation to fire him.
This timing of this announcement is very particular, coming just before the company's quarterly earnings call.

The ongoing debacle has spurred employees from other major gaming companies to take up arms as well for industry-wide change.

The two new co-leaders, Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra, are said to be largely detached from the underlying situation given they are more recent additions to the company.
With accountability at the forefront of topicality, replacing one President with two co-leaders could effectively mitigate these issues from ever occurring again through segregation of duties.

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