Harassment and statements from 14 years ago: why Blizzard and Respawn developers were fired

Several key Blizzard and Respawn Entertainment developers lost their jobs yesterday. We are talking, among other things, about the leading game designer Diablo IV, who was indirectly involved in the ongoing harassment scandal. Game designer Apex Legends has also resigned from his post. This is due to his statements of 14 years ago, in which racism and sexism were found.Dismissal of the leading game designer of Apex Legends

Daniel Klein announced his dismissal on August 11.

• He stopped working at Respawn last Friday and, according to him, now feels “broken and depressed.”The dismissal is related to several screenshots from Klein’s posts from 14 years ago, which broke out online last month.
• In them, the developer wrote several offensive things about women and representatives of other races.In particular, he called XX-chromosomes “idiots’ chromosomes.”
• Klein also wrote that women are not capable of making rational decisions.In one of the other posts, the developer allowed himself several statements about Africans.
• The publication said that they “should not be fed even bread crumbs, otherwise they will come back and make a mess of everything around.”Yesterday, Klein admitted that he did write similar things in 2007: “I completely agree that THAT guy should have been fired.”
• However, since then he has done a lot of work on himself and no longer allowed himself such statements.“Now I am very depressed because I feel that I will never be able to correct the mistakes of the past.
• I said racist and sexist things not because I deeply believed in them, but because I knew they could provoke a reaction from other people,” Klein said and clarified that this still does not justify his actions.He joined Respawn in early 2020 and began to work quite actively with the Apex Legends community.
• Klein was known, among other things, for his balance edits and the fact that he often ignored the opinions and wishes of the players. For this, some fans disliked him, and now some believe that the reputation of the developer has become one of the reasons for publishing old posts.Klein himself agreed with this.
• In Kotaku’s comment, he noted that someone really tried to harm him and purposefully searched for similar posts. “EA was aware of these allegations, and I specifically asked them to make sure that similar tactics are not used against other developers in the future,” Klein said.New layoffs at Blizzard

Over the past day, three developers have been fired from the company at once — Luis Barriga, Jesse McCree and Jonathan LeCraft.

• This was reported by Kotaku.Barriga has been working at Blizzard since 2006.
• A few years ago, he became the game director of Diablo IV.McCree joined Blizzard in 2005, where he worked as a lead level designer.
• One of the heroes of Overwatch, Cowboy McCree, is also named in his honor. Prior to his dismissal, he worked as a leading game designer for Diablo IV.Lecraft worked at Blizzard for 16 years.
• He held the position of senior game designer of World of Warcraft, and several NPCs are also named after him.A representative of Activision Blizzard confirmed that three employees no longer work at the company.
• They have already been replaced, but the official reason for their dismissal is not called.According to media sources, this may be related to the Activision Blizzard scandal and a lawsuit against the company.
• In particular, McCree and Lecraft were captured in a scandalous photo in the so-called “Cosby room“, where Blizzard employees hosted parties with alcohol and girls after BlizzCon.This hotel room is associated with the former creative director of World of Warcraft Alex Afrasiabi (Alex Afrasiabi).
• The lawsuit described numerous cases of harassment on his part. Afrasiabi left Blizzard last year long before the scandal, but the company did not publicly announce the departure of the developer.The departure of Barriga, McCree and Lecraft are not the first dismissals that occurred at Blizzard after the scandal broke out.

In early August, President Jay Allen Brack left the company, and Activision appointed two new top managers in his place.