Things haven’t been going well for Activision-Blizzard for some time: after the sexism lawsuit, the huge criticism surrounding Warcraft 3 Reforged and Diablo Immortal and the stalled takeover by Microsoft, there’s now the next excitement: Apparently a senior WoW developer was fired , because he didn’t want to adhere to the publisher’s questionable management practices.
Developer protests against management practices
What happened? Brian Birmingham was the lead software developer on Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: Classic. Like gaming industry insider Jason Schreier in one Article reported, he has now been fired for trying to protect his team from the company’s questionable management practices.
Specifically, this is the so-called Stack Ranking, which was introduced in 2021: In this procedure, the various department heads have to classify their employees on a Gaussian bell curve. This means that only a small percentage can get a very positive rating and also a small percentage is guaranteed to get a bad rating.
A bad rating according to this system is said to have many disadvantages, for example lower bonus payments and lower chances of promotion and salary increases.
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Will the Blizzard shock finally change anything?
While Birmingham and other senior developers have been able to circumvent this system for the past two years, this year management should force them to rate at least five percent of employees badly. According to the developer, the management gave up this requirement to put pressure on the underperforming employeesto make sure everyone keeps growing.
He and other team leaders wanted to give themselves a bad review instead of their employees, but management refused.
Birmingham then emailed staff, clearly expressing his frustration with the system:
This type of company policy encourages competition among employees, sabotage each other’s work, a desire to find underperforming teams in which to perform best, and ultimately undermines trust and destroys creativity.
Blizzard fires the developer before he can quit
In addition to his email, the developer was considering termination. After word got around, he was called by HR. While Birmingham didn’t want to quit his job immediately, he did tell the recruiter he wouldn’t work until the stack ranking system was lifted – at which point he was promptly fired.
link to Twitter content
Following the publication of Jason Schreier’s article, Birmingham has now taken the floor himself via Twitter and confirmed that he no longer works at Blizzard Entertainment. However, he would happily return to the company if he could, to fight the stack ranking policy from within.
The developer also explains that this policy was ordered by the management level through Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra and he does not believe that Blizzard is to blame for it. Instead, he describes the parent company ABK (Activision Blizzard King) as toxic. He claims that this constantly has a negative influence on Blizzard.
Lawsuit against Activision Blizzard
Activision Blizzard is currently facing a lawsuit alleging sexism and unequal treatment of female employees. If the grievances play a role in your purchase decision, we have summarized all the information on the sexism lawsuit in a detailed article for you. You can read our attitude and consequences to the processes in a leading article on the Blizzard scandal by GameStar editor-in-chief Heiko Klinge.
