Even Blizzard's attempt at damage control blew up in its face. Ybarra's August 2021 promotion to help right the ship was met with controversy when the first female co-leader of the company left amid reports of unequal pay.
"We're committed to changing our culture," says Ybarra, 47, who has the unenviable task of restoring stature to a firm whose atmosphere was forged long before he joined in 2019. Activision Blizzard has at various points been seen as dismissing the allegations, most recently in a mid-June Securities and Exchange Commission filing in which the company's board of directors stated they found no evidence that executives"intentionally ignored or attempted to downplay" harassment claims.
For example: a video from a 2010 Blizzard convention that went viral on social media in the wake of the lawsuit. In it, a female fan asked for women into not look like"they stepped out of a Victoria's Secret catalogue." A panel of Blizzard men, including former chief J. Allen Brack, laughed at the question, joking that they would look at other catalogues."It reminds me of how important the culture work we have is," he says.
"These games," Ybarra says,"have connected me with my best friends, lifelong friends. I have such incredible memories playing with guilds 10, 15 and 20 years ago. I saw an opportunity where Blizzard needed different leadership. Blizzard needed more transparency and a focus on culture. We needed, frankly, to serve our players with more content on a more frequent basis. When the phone rang, it gave me an opportunity to do that.
Ybarra has also committed to relaunching BlizzCon, the company's yearly fan-focused event at the Anaheim Convention Center. A digitally focused 2022 BlizzCon was axed shortly after the filing of the DFEH suit. ""We have taken two or three key people who identify as women, across every team, and I meet monthly with them," Ybarra says."We talk about what will make Blizzard great for women. Our hope is that employees recognise these changes, and people start feeling more safe and more comfortable here.""There's a brand-new hire in one. There's director-level people in there. I can still tell that emailing the president is a big deal.
Speaking directly of Blizzard, Ybarra says recent hires at the company — namely Disney veterans Jessica Martinez as vice president of culture and Makaiya Brown as diversity, equity and inclusion lead — are altering everything from its hiring practices to its approach to game content, ensuring games more accurately represent the breadth of the audience playing them.