Blizzard lead Mike Ybarra: Company is working to 'rebuild your trust'

The video game industry was shocked on Tuesday, with Microsoft announcing that it's acquiring publisher Activision Blizzard in a monumental deal worth most $70 billion. The announcement comes during an era of apace declining trust in Activision Blizzard, following a lawsuit and innumerable reports that the company's culture is one of sexual harassment and misconduct, unfair handling and pay for employees, and more than. On Th, Blizzard Amusement's caput, Mike Ybarra, detailed how the company is making changes to amend its civilisation and workplace environments.

According to Ybarra, Blizzard's electric current top priority is "the piece of work we are doing to rebuild your trust in Blizzard," namely its efforts to protect employees and agree management responsible for any misconduct. Ybarra then went on to discuss some of the exact changes Blizzard is making, including:

Evaluating management and leadership based on fostering an inclusive and rubber piece of work environment
Establishing multiple full-time positions and teams dedicated to improving civilization, including a Civilization leader, organizational leader for Hour, and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion leader
Expanding Blizzard'due south compliance and investigation teams to constitute clear rules and concur all employees accountable
Ensuring employees take a way to submit feedback to evaluate managers and leadership

Ybarra asserted these moves are only the showtime of Blizzard's effort in the area, and hopefully signifies a real shift in culture for the company. Even so, many, including our ain Jez Corden, are looking to the pending conquering of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft to effect real change and do right past the employees. At that place's undoubtedly a long road ahead of Activision Blizzard to restore itself in the optics of the gaming customs and to better care for its employees. If you want to catch up on everything that has happened, we've kept track of the unabridged Activision Blizzard lawsuit timeline and everything y'all demand to know.

In Ybarra's conclusion, he likewise mentioned how Blizzard is aware it tin meliorate the charge per unit at which it updates and improves its titles, likewise as how it innovates on new and existing projects. While no details were shared, he so teased that exciting things are coming, starting with an announcement next week. Blizzard is currently working on several new games, including Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2, both of which strive to bring together the vaunted listing of all-time Xbox games.

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