Blizzard claims to commit to improving work culture

In a new blog post Mike Ybarra, the leader of Blizzard, has put forward a road map for improving the work culture.

In a Blizzard blog post released yesterday, Mike Ybarra expresses regret at how some employees have felt treated at the company and outlines a road map on how to improve the toxic work culture. This mostly involves hiring new positions committed to investigating claims, with emphasis on this extending all the way to leadership.

Ybarra claims that compensation at the executive and management level, including himself, will be affected based on improvements. Though he neither outlines the effect nor his standards for improvement are outside of “creating a safe, inclusive, and creative work environment at Blizzard.”

Three new roles have been created to deal with concerns about the work environment, and staffing these teams have been noted as a “priority.” These roles include a “Culture leader who will help us maintain the best aspects of what we have today, and change and evolve where needed to ensure everyone brings their best self to Blizzard.”

There’s also plans to name “a new organizational leader for Human Resources who will build trust, empower our teams, and help foster a safe, positive work environment for everyone,” as well as “a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) leader solely focused on our progress across multiple efforts in this area.”

Ybarra also claims the company has tripled the size of its compliance and investigations teams and that it will investigate up to leadership and management level also. He also claims a desire to share more data with staff and implement a feedback programme to better evaluate management.

It is unclear whether this announcement is linked to Microsoft‘s £50million acquisition of the company.

In other news, Nintendo has announced that The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask will be the next game to come to the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack.