The mystery surrounding the stealthy departure of Warcraft Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi has finally been revealed. Contrary to some rumors, he didn’t willingly retire from Blizzard to spend his millions. Kotaku has just reported that he was terminated for misconduct in 2020. From the article:
An employee brought these 2013 events to our attention in June 2020,” a spokesperson for Activision Blizzard told Kotaku when asked about the “Cosby Suite” images and allegations against Afrasiabi. “We immediately conducted our own investigation and took corrective action. At the time of the report, we had already conducted a separate investigation of Alex Afrasiabi and terminated him for his misconduct in his treatment of other employees.
Was any illegal behavior going on in this suite? Was anyone harassed, raped, tortured, or murdered? Where is the crime? Or was this a bunch of developers trying to blow off steam at a BlizzCon after party and having a few drinks goofing around? After parties are common in Hollywood where celebrities drink heavily and make fools of themselves.
Why did the employee wait 7 years to report to Blizzard about the Cosby Suite?
Kotaku — a hardcore leftist woke gaming site — has published images of white male Blizzard developers who were in the Cosby Suite but has obtained other images of women that were in the suite but has decided not to publish them:
In one image procured by Kotaku, a group of women are sitting on a bed in the room with the Cosby portrait. One of the women appears to have a hand on another’s breast, which is cheered on by the men in the comments.
Were the women in the non-published photo also Blizzard developers? Were any of the women victims of rape or sexual harassment? If not, why has Kotaku not published all of the photos? Why the double standard here?
We all know the answer.
2013 events in 2020/21. The leaked images are cringy, Greg Street was apparently also part of the party. Hmm, how about removing the Death Knight Class he designed.
I was once forced to dance a waltz with a quite fat woman with massive breasts as every other new guy at the annual christmas work party. Not everybody was comfortable with that. So much about work parties. And yes, they are often abused to diss or promote people, too. Hope this isn’t news to anyone.
Rockstars, sports teams, high school kids, video game designers must apparently be politically correct even then? But are they, really?
I share your observation, photos of the women participating are of course excluded. Women just don’t do such things or participate in them, right…?
Alex A. was probably the most over the top of the bunch. But it is about time to figure out how much was just very bad taste and juvenile and what crime he committed.
So he did this “I want to marry you” thing with female employees, in front of other males/”boys”… that he was known of harassment of females… okay, now we are already down to harassment, no longer rape in the Cosby Suite.
Ex-dev Joshua Mosqueira had to share that at this point of time he didn’t know about Bill Cosby. Greg Street posted he was there but never noticed anything out of the ordinary.
The blame game is on. Will anyone join Alex as scapegoat for the others? It would be interesting to know who started this. Vengeful and petty revenge, the time is right to accuse men of such things. The accusation alone is already enough to destroy them. This isn’t right either.
100% spot on!
There is no justice in America now. We have the public court of Twitter that is run by blue haired “queer” and “transgender” creatures. If the mob thinks your guilty, the judges and juries of America will convict you. This is the beginning of the end.
Amazing point about the fact that Afrasiabi designed the Death Knight and the Death Knight starting area should also be removed.
This goes all the way to the top. I have some theories that I will be sharing in the next week when the dust settles.
Regarding theories and “that year 2013” that is often referenced: In November 2013 Ghost Crawler/Greg Street announced he would leave Blizzard. In January he became Lead Game Designer for Riot.
The move surprised people at the time, but it seemed like he just got a better deal. Theory now is that the was the first scapegoat for things to happen at BlizzCon 2013.
We might never get to know all the details why this or that happened, though.
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2555369-Xelnath-Zelnath-what-happened-to-that-guy/page2?p=52932712&viewfull=1#post52932712
Tom Chilton and others didn’t like what he did.
Xelnath made Warlocks pretty awesome but also overpowered in Mists of Pandaria, he was beloved by the Warlock player community, at least on the forum. I can’t comment much more as I didn’t play at that time.
He went to Riot and later and “I never repaired some of the broken relationships that happened around that point in time, but I am proud to say I recruited Ghostcrawler to Riot, who in addition to basically running creative, is also helping with a certain League-themed MMO.”
Now I can only hope that Riot has a more professional work environment, their game is competitive and their community as foul mouthed as fans in lower leagues of popular sports.
https://temp.wolfsheadonline.com/the-rehabilitation-of-blizzards-alex-furor-afrasiabi/
Your 2009 posting about Alex. Now it’s no secret, most of his co workers were exactly from the same guild and they shared the same terrible behavior and attitude. They got hired and people thought Blizzard mad for doing so. But they were not only foul mouthed, but also talented. It worked out. A mega hit to define a genre was born.
2020/2021. Nowadays ONE word, one comment people got wrong sends a flaming mob of people after you, gets you “cancelled” and your guilt is decided by an internet mob that influences courts, even if it should not. There were people killed and there was barely a trial, while others deaths caused riots and outrage and a vile person got declared a saint.
Furor, Tigole, Kalgan, Pardo … said more than just one offensive word. In 2021 it’s going to break their neck.
It is spitting into the face of victims of rape and abuse and people mobbed at work that supposedly the really awful and silly “marry me” stuff is the worst example they could give besides after work party stuff.
I don’t want to defend them for being awful and immature, but I don’t think it’s fair how Alex is treated nowadays either.
There was this often quoted female fan asking why all human females look like Victoria’s Secret catalogue models. First, they really didn’t. Funnily, they had no problems with Night Elves and Blood Elves.
The result can be googled: “Kul Tiran Female.”
Human females got adjusted to fit into modern views of not looking so good, while Troll females and Orc females got made more attractive and human around the same time.
The cangaroo court has already decided Blizzard as a whole is evil and guilty.
Given from what most people already knew for years, they are being accused for behaving the way they did for decades. Which was not professional, I would not love to work with such people to be honest either. But I dare to say nothing criminal happened. So far there is no evidence of that, only of questionable taste and cringy pics.
It reminds me of a not so known local mid level company in another industry elsewhere, were a woken and progressive young female was made head of HR. She added a lot of like minded people to the company. Key personnel didn’t get along with the new brood. Clashes ensued, the old guard that helped the company rise was mobbed or quit on their own. The company didn’t rise, it struggled to survive and not many want to work there anymore. The progressive forces by now left the husk and went elsewhere, of course.
Not a perfect analogy. But Blizzard fell victim to a similar clash of cultures. Go woke, go broke.
Let me say it again, Blizzard work culture wasn’t something I would have liked either and it definitely doesn’t fly nowadays anymore, which is a good thing. But criminalizing it and bashing people for it that much is grave injustice, too.
P.S. forgot that, just a minor correction: Ghost Crawler / Greg Street did the mechanics and balancing for the Death Knight class initially, not Alex, AFAIK. I don’t know who designed the starter zone. But it is pretty safe to assume that Alex was involved in the design of very many quests and quest chains. Jeff Kaplan was designing most of the raid encounters in early WoW. So if they want to remove references to them… people shouldn’t forget, what they are playing and what is often considered the best part of WoW was designed by a bunch of foul mouthed juvenile dudes with questionable attitude.
https://www.pcgamer.com/collected-works-jeff-kaplan/
Extremely interesting interview.