Blizzard Entertainment’s President Issues End-Of-Year Update

Blizzard Entertainment posted a brand new blog today from company President Mike Ybarra, giving an End-Of-Year update on a few topics. This read, for the most part, like any other EOY statement a company would put out as he goes over the various achievements they have scored, as well as changes to the team. However, two big points need to be noted here. The first is that this one has some statements on the change of the workplace culture, which is one of the few official statements made by a higher team member following the string of issues the company had involving workplace harassment and more.

We have snippets below for you to decide for yourself whether or not the company is actually making progress. The other, which we’re surprised isn’t being discussed in any form, is the impending acquisition by Microsoft. Despite an FTC lawsuit, the merger is still a big deal and is expected to take place this Spring. The fact that there’s nothing about it in this blog with the company’s own president looking forward is pretty noteworthy.

“While we have full-time roles dedicated to culture, culture isn’t the work of one person or team. It involves all of us every day, and it requires perspectives and insights of different experiences, backgrounds, functions, and identities. To this end, we convened a culture team consisting of a wide array of functions across Blizzard who are helping us improve how we work, and create and sustain a culture that makes all of us better. One of the other major projects this year has been taking a deep look at the mission, vision and values upon which Blizzard was built. We have been talking about how these values are interpreted and lived, how they could be improved or modernized, and everyone at Blizzard had the chance to have their voice heard in this critical work. This is a project that our employees, as well as players, will see the results of in the new year.”

“We’ve also made solid progress advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I): we held a successful fourth Women’s Summit, we deployed DE&I-focused training across all employees, we’ve expanded self-identification options to be more inclusive, and over the past year, we increased the percentage representation of women and non-binary people within Blizzard from 22% to 25% while also increasing the percentage of employees from under-represented ethnic groups from 34% to 36%. While this is progress, our commitment is that our focus on culture and inclusion will be a core part of our everyday efforts at Blizzard. This work will never be done. For you – our players – our hope is that you are seeing it in our games, the way we communicate, and more. We’re learning along the way, and it’s all of you who are keeping us on the right track.”