Chris Sayers reveals why he left Blizzard; fake promotions, lies, and gaslighting
so, enough time has passed now for me to talk about why i decided to leave Blizzard. a mixed year with great teammates, but a management that mistreated, lied to me, gaslit me, gave me a fake promotion, and HR that refused to help.
buckle up friendos. πͺ
i wanna start by saying that all of the people I got to work with on Team 4 (Overwatch 2) were incredible. they were warm, welcoming, fun, friendly and just so goddamn talented. there were so many great people on my team championing for me and i am so grateful for their support
unfortunately however, i spent most of a year stressed out of my mind, working 4 peoples jobs at once, and having management make promises they had no intention of fulfilling and i ultimately felt like i had no choice but to leave for my own mental health.
in July of 2023, i was invited to a meeting by Art Leadership and production, to let me know they were interested in promoting me to Lead VFX Artist of the cosmetics team. (skins, emotes, POTGs, etc.), i had only been there 6 months and I told them basically "if youre sure?? lol"
but before accepting i was adamant, that we were all on the same page about the full role, what it meant, what i would be doing, and also, what the "promotion" would come with. (pay increase, title change) and confirmed all of those details before going further
these conversations included other Lead VFX, Art Directors, Associate Art Directors, Production Directions and also HR. and as we were all happy, i started the job effective immediately, with the details to come at the end of the week, in writing.
the new role was - all of my existing responsibilities and workload as a senior - becoming a line manager of 3 people immediately - managing our entire outsourced vfx pipeline in china - plus additional Lead things (planning, much more meetings lol)
friday of that week comes, nothing, but, the Production Dir does announce my promotion to Lead to the whole team on the thursday! its official! its happening! the whole team knows! i even tweet about it, because im so excited. we're all gucci!
on my first week as lead. my new manager, tells me that we are going to have to fire one of my new reports cus he wont RTO
me: "he is waiting for a medical accommodation because he is a carer for his parents"
them: "yeah [laughing] we're not gonna do that for a junior"
another lead on the team offers to deliver the news for me, because it is my first week as lead. and the person we are supposed to fire is one of my closest friends on the team. he is given until the end of the month to either relocate, or leave. we're all distraught.
im now doing my senior role, my lead role and now all the work that this great vfx artist was doing. they then refuse to hire an intern, another one of my reports, who is incredibly talented and we all love. so i add all the work they were going to do, to my plate.
a month goes by, and i have now sent an email or slack message, every other day to find out what is happening with the pay increase and title change.
im told i have to wait until August, because thats when all the promotions happen but "dont worry. its all happening"
i then discover that as I am earning less than 50% of every other Lead VFX Artist at blizzard, so much so, that as a Lead, my salary is lower than every person I am managing. i send more emails. im told its cus im in the UK, and my salary is based on market value, not my value.
i ask HR if they think that it is ethically okay to pay me less than 50% of every person for doing the same job?
they tell me "why would we pay you more than we have to? that doesnt make any business sense"
i realise i am talking to a person who doesnt give a shit about people
another month passes and i get to august and turns out, "no no, its actually september now" for some reason. but "dont worry, its coming. its definitely a promotion, and theres definitely a pay increase."
i continue to be overworked, and exhausted, but hopeful. (fool)
another few weeks pass, and its getting to 3 months being a lead. so i send an email out to everyone, directors, VPs, HR, leads, you name it, telling them that if there is no written information by Sep 1st, i will stop doing the role immediately.
SUDDENLY, people have something to say!
this entire time, HR have not responded once and they finally reply inviting me for a quick call. it is in this call that HR ask me "what promotion? i have no idea what you are talking about?"
at this point i raised a formal complaint.
i had months of messages, emails that i sent to HR to explain what i was talking about and they finally reply with
"you seem to be confused" ... "there is no promotion" ... "leadership is a lateral move" ... "its just a change of responsibilities" ... "there is no pay increase"
i was livid, naturally, and asked what any normal fucking rational human would "why would anybody want that promotion then?" which obviously they then did the old "i can see you're frustrated, i can see how you misinterpreted this".
the investigation from the formal complaint comes back after a few weeks and after some careful deliberation, decides that HR did nothing wrong, and followed all processes correctly. SO, i hand in my resignation about an hour later. but it doesnt end there!!!
because no!!!
HR then told me!!! that because of my role as a Lead!!! i had gained inexplicable knowledge that would put me at a business risk to work anywhere else!!! so they are activating a Non-Compete Clause that restricts me from working ANYWHERE AT ALL for 3 MONTHS!!!!ππ
and, you may be rightfully thinking "oh, so this is a paid 3 months, right? you cant stop someone from working at ALL for 3 months without paying the-..." INCORRECT that is exactly what they did, and unfortunately, completely legal, because get fucked, i guess???
i said I cant survive for 3 months without pay, I have a mortgage and they looked me in the eye and said:
"well, you probably shouldn't have signed the contract then π"
within a few minutes i was locked out of slack/email, and that was the end of my time at Blizzard. πππ
if anyone has continued so far, thank you for listening ππππ
idk what the point of this is, but, i needed to get it off my chest. blizzard had every opportunity to do the right thing, and they continually failed at that.
i also wanna sincerely thank everyone who purchased a mentorship session or portfolio review with me at the end of last year. it quite literally saved me, and meant that I was able to not go into debt and so i am hugely grateful, and hope you all felt like they were worth it!
Holy shit what a bunch of blistering thunder cunts. I hope Microsoft guts them.
Completely agree. I'd pay to see them gut blizzard. I miss when blizzard was top dog for video games, because they released terrific games. Ah well...
Blizzard and Westwood Studios (shit throw in Maxis) were great in their prime, but succumbed to the mergers and acquisitions craze and were shut down or became a shell of themselves.
It sucks because it seemed like they cared if a game is fun, not how much money it could make for the shareholders.
Coincidentally Ive gotten back in to Star Craft 2. Still a banger of a game! I hope that the franchise survives.
Working for microsoft is even more insane, source is me, used to work for them during the red ring of death era.
Working at Microsoft was great until Steve Balmer. The thing that did me in was a couple of teams were meeting to discuss how MS could improve or look to invest in places that MS was not normally a player. I made a argument that Linux was not going away and that Microsoft should really start looking at how it keeps older systems going and how much e-junk is created because we (Microsoft) artificially make hardware obsolete.
Embracing Linux and admitting to playing with it at home was the final straw. My career at MS was over. One of my friends told me he overheard and saw it in writing and suggested that I look for a job outside of MS because they were going to make my life hell.
And just the other fucking day Microsoft annoyances that they are introducing SUDO to powershell. Fucking LOL
I work in the public sector now because fuck corporate IT
Wish I knew if those who acted very business smart but very human bad were still around, post-layoffs. Would help inform me as to if it was ok to try Blizzard games again or not.
Holy fucking shit. I was infuriated just reading this!
The lesson I've learned in my past 20 years is that one does not start working at their new duties before the contract amendment is written and signed. If they say something you just reply "I'm just waiting for the written contract to come through and I'll start immediately". Put the ball on their side.
No way that non compete was enforcable
Unenforceable clauses in contacts should have penalties because they are an intimidation tactic.
What, and hold companies liable for being actively hostile to workers (and society as a whole)? Sounds like communism.
Yes. These things are unenforceable. Especially since you were never officially a lead on paper.
Depends on the jurisdiction and rulings that already exist, but try fighting it, and you'll likely come out stressed and at a loss.
He said he was UK based... 100% unenforceable, an employment tribunal wouldn't even bother hearing it
I feel like a lot of corporate bullshit is designed to exploit young and/or naive people. In my early 20s I happily worked until 10pm on projects in the office.
Late 20s I'd become a (junior) company director and helped hire people*.
After that I studied contracts with a fine-comb. Refused to sign for a surface-level great job with DRP Group cos they expected me to sign a contract without seeing the company employment manual.
It's why companies prefer employing younger people. They often don't know their rights. They won't know about thins like employment tribunals.
After people have been company directors or freelance they often don't want to go back into employment. There's a reason for that - they know it's a shit deal!
*The older director 'coached' me to look for younger employees (easily manipulated) and not women in their late-20s to early-30s. Because we "didn't want to have to deal with maternity". Is it sexist and ageist? Of course it is, but how're you gonna prove it?
Observing Blizzard from the outside over a 30-year period has been an interesting experience. These past many years have been disheartening. Their releases have been shit for a decade, and it gets worse every year. You couldn't pay me enough to load up the fluffy, inoffensively edgeless money extraction software they try to pass off as games these days.
Sad to think about what used to be. In its current form the company needs to die to make room for new projects and companies.
Christ on a fucking bike. Sometimes I forget how vile Blizzard was (is) run. How the fuck do they have any employees at this point??
The most heart wrenching for me is seeing the little tweet he posted when he was excited about his promotion. When he felt something good was happening for him, his talent and skill was being recognized, and his life was about to get better for it, only to have a sad reality crush him. :c
Definately an 'innocence lost' situation signaled by that pic.
MBAs, not even once.
Young people desperate to get a job in the gaming industry take a job at "The Company That Made The 90s Awesome". They know it's shitty, but it's a solid resumΓ© bullet point.
There's also the poorly-aging belief that if you work for a big company that grants you job-security. People will gravitate towards worse, more corporate jobs because of that, even if it's generally not true in the modern era.
The days of a career at a single corporation and getting a gold watch upon retirement are looong gone.
Best to maintain a savings (yeah, I know, but still), and move from one company to another every couple of years, to maximize your income.
And to NEVER trust the company you are working at, always get any potential promotions/deals in writing. Besides protecting you, that has a nice side effect of knowing right away if you're being b.s.'d or not, because corporations recoil from 'in writing' like a vampire from sunlight, if they don't want to do the thing they're telling you they are going to do for you.
Honestly it's not like the game industry is all that great, even holding onto a job at current Blizzard is above average. Especially with the huge recent layoff waves. The bosses know this and treat their employees accordingly as expendable resources that can be replaced anytime...
We're way past bike. This is pogo-stick territory.
How do they have any employees, scandal after scandal? Because as you said it yourself: People forget, apparently. Sure I feel bad for the mistreated employees. What happened to them and is still happening is inexcusable. Though, the irony of yet another ex-employee sharing their experiences after they themselves failed to listen to the exact same posts when they applied isnβt beyond me.
How is none of this a crime??? HR really is a useless thing.
Absolutely disgusting, won't say what I wish here.
Itβs called Human Resources because the humans are the resource. Theyβre not there for you, theyβre there to find which resources are going to cause problems for the company. Failure to understand this is failure to understand you and your company have opposing goals.
HR is a smokescreen to protect the company. The only time they ever helped me was in a racism & sexism issue against a former manager
In cases of sexual harassment and/or racism, HR is more or less there to protect everyone. If they can successfully manage to eliminate the sexual harassment, you win by not being sexually harassed, and the company wins because now you don't need to sue them. What everyone has to remember is that you have leverage when you walk into HR as a worker. You're letting them know that you have a grievance that is a violation of labor law. It's in everyone's best interest to let you speak.
They will get what comes to them at some point. I just hope not too many innocent people get hurt.
Ahahaha, what the fuck? This is simply perfect. Peak oxymoron. A work of art. *chef's kiss*
This is pretty common in tech that first level management and senior positions are equivalent levels.
"Common" doesn't mean "right" and it shouldn't be "acceptable" either. Burn it down.
I don't doubt that a lot of well established companies are trying to scam their employees out of what they are owed. I mean that's just reiterating the OP basically.
This shouldn't be downvoted. This is almost every tech company, even outside of the tech job categories. Typically the IC track is one level below the management track.
Is it right? No, absolutely not, especially since these companies allow senior people to transfer to non-senior IC roles, and vice versa. Some senior managers can transition into principal roles, which is absolutely wild, because it's a much harder role to land.
It seems like a pretty obvious lawsuit to me. They announced his promotion, and then never gave it to him, despite making him do the job for months. That alone is an easy win, IMO.
But then there was also a contract he signed? That super easy lawsuit time.
He just needs 75 grand to pay the lawyer. Then there would be a strong but not 100 percent chance of success.
π€
He is a UK citizen, are we sure those things apply?
That's the type of response that would get some people stabbed with the nearest pointed object available.
See this is why back to office is important...so when this guy "accidentally defenistrates" it's from the 19th floor.
The writing was on the wall with Diablo 3. Something happened with the corporate structure within Blizzard that transformed their game design philosophy from S-tier best experiences in the industry to half-cocked MTX funnels and over-promoted esports. I wonder what enshittified Blizzard.
Capitalism. If you are using the word enshittification, it's capitalism.
Our world economy no longer rewards innovation. We are at the stage where winnowing begins. The market is now just shareholders. They demand the line goes up, fuck the consumer.
So in place of innovation we have increasing minutaie.
From the finance sector (derivatives of derivatives of derivatives) to production (shrinkflation, shipping broken products, live service bullshit, subscription models, blah blah blah) only adding more kinks to the maze generates capital now, not increasing the size of the maze.
Capitalism driving innovation has always been a lie. Creation, exploration, and experimentation are basic human behaviors.
Driving yes, but the system at least used to pretend to reward innovations, now it just doubles down over and over on made up concepts to move money around.
"Reward" in this case was just "not punish" because we've made the right to life contingent on financial gains. The patent system is a failure and mostly serves to grant wealthy people more wealth by sponsoring the actual geniuses and creatives in exchange for legal ownership.
I said "pretend to reward"
My guess is the experience with wow gold farmers, character sellers, and boosters gave them an idea of how much money was to be made selling progress instead of making players play the game for it. So they designed and tuned D3 such that they could get a cut of that and that item auction house did make money but also killed the longevity of interest in the game (at a time when more and more competition was coming out compared to the D2 and D1 days).
Then they adjusted and tried different approaches with their dota clone (I forget the name, seems weird calling it that considering dota itself started on their engine), Hearthstone, and overwatch.
Though, in reality, it probably started much earlier: when they were acquired by Activision.
What a ride. As you read, you keep saying to yourself "this can't get any worse", and every subsequent line gets worse-er.
I don't know the guy, but damn, I feel really bad for him. The ultimate dick move of not allowing him to work for three months out of spite was especially gut wrenching. There was no reason to do it, they just did as a final "fuck you" to a person they lied, gaslit, overworked and underpaid for months.
That dick wasn't enforcable. I can't say if it's illegal where he comes from but I doubt they would take him to court to enforce it.
IMO that wasn't out of spite, that was the last ditch scare tactic attempt to pressure him, to keep him from leaving.
And Bobby Kotick runs away like a bandit, with all the money, after operating a company like this. America is fucking DOOMED.
One of the biggest heartbreaking elements of this story is that all the assholes who fucked this guy over are likely still at ActiBlizz. As recent details have shown, Microsoft is committing to maintaining ActiBlizz's independence to accommodate an immediate divesture if the FCC demands it. Instead of sacking the HR department and potentially expanding the Microsoft HR team to accommodate, afaik everyone involved with these heartless decisions must still be working at ActiBlizz to maintain independence.
As much as I appreciate an FCC that will actually go after corporations and hold them accountable, I wish they'd have waited until after this merger. At this point I seriously think everyone at ActiBlizz in a non-tech role (HR, Management, Marketing, etc) should be out on their ass, but legally nothing can happen.
Do you honestly think Microsoft's HR is any better?
Better than a company that aided and abetted a culture of sexual predation so pervasive that women took their own lives and men drank breast milk out of a fridge?
Yes, I do think they're better. I shudder to think that anything could be worse.
Fuck corporations, and fuck greedy people
ALWAYS get it in writing on day one.
That sounds like game development companies in general. They take advantage of passionate people, use them up and spit them out.
For the 3 month non-compete, I'd double check that it is actually legal. Blizzard is headquartered in California which usually has fairly good employee rights/laws compared to other states so I would be pretty surprised if that non-compete is enforceable. Usually non-competes have to be limited in scope in terms of both time and location, they limited time but not location so I doubt it's enforceable. Where I live non-competes aren't even allowed anymore except for C-levels, they aren't even allowed for middle managers anymore let alone regular employees.
Enforceability of a non compete depends on the location of the employee. In most cases they aren't enforceable almost anywhere. Unless you start a direct competitor, or go work for one in a similar job, it's pretty difficult to enforce.
Game developer (formerly gamasutra) dug up a story about an enforced one, they absolutely can, and that's the thing, they shouldn't ever have had this power or put it in contracts as intimidation.
Surely California law wouldn't matter? OP is British, and is working from the UK. He is either employed by a UK subsidiary of Blizzard, or he's a contractor. The latter means there's nothing they can do, and the former would probably make it very hard to enforce unless he was directly working on a very close competitor, with both using something very proprietary.
Oh oops, I hadn't realized OP is British. You are correct then.
Just as an aside, why do some people take the time to use proper punctuation, capitalize proper nouns, make use of extensive commas and parentheses when most people would never miss them, even some text formatting, but completely refuse to capitalize the first letter of each sentence?
Seriously, what is that? Is it a sub culture thing I'm not aware of?
Like this right here:
The first I isn't capitalized but the next ones are. It's not laziness, that's a choice. Why would you do that?
I used to type like that a lot, back in the era of AIM and FB chat being my primary social and communication outlets. Not sure why, but if I had to point fingers, I'd say it was an attempt to look not-too-tryhard and to emphasize the feeling of it being like a chat. It's off the cuff, not super planned or thought-out or composed.
Wow. Why are some people so fucking deplorable sefl important entitled shit heads? Because they have a fancy job title?
This guy was clearly overworked and underpaid, and his seniors sound like they believed they were higher beings. It might be painted with bias, but if the facts are facts, then blizzard are still as bad as they were with kotick, and they need serious reform and restructuring.
I hope someone fires the HR team and the senior managers that did all of this because they dont deserve the money they are likely paid to treat people like shit.
You mean the company who sided with China and attacked it's own players also won't give a shit about its employees when they have them in a contract? No..... Say it ain't so....
This is horrible but I am not sure why this dude is surprised or took Blizzard at their word. Not to mention how insanely naive you have to be to keep doing the job without written confirmation. If the terms didn't show up that Friday he should have stopped immediately but he kept going for 3 months???
I feel bad for this dude and fuck Blizzard but that seems like something that really should have been a massive and obvious red flag.
Schools don't teach future non-management people how to be smart about their careers, business wise, unfortunately.
Those lessons are usually learned the hard way, after they first enter the workplace.
Exploit new people that didn't suffer yet is the norm.
Holy crap, what a toxic company. I'm gonna think twice before spending a cent in their wares
There's so many great options out there. I've got a decent backlog without needing to ever touch another Blizzard game, so my full Blizzard boycott hasn't hurt me at all, even though their games are what converted me from someone who liked computer games to someone who was obsessed with them.
Reading that makes my blood boil ngl
I hate corporate dehumanisation so much
HR did everything right here. Their sole job is to protect the company, and they did this perfectly. They got more work out of someone for free, and when they got loud, they coerced them out of the door.
HR is NOT your friend, nor are they there to help you in workplace grievances. This is EXACTLY why these sorts of companies need unions, but if the games industry has no interest in creating a union, what hope is there for the rest of tech?
Remember that ultimately human resources is not there for you they are there for the interests of the company.
If they rectify your problem, then everyone wins. You have leverage.
If they don't rectify your problem the company wins and they might get a promotion.
You've got jack shit without a union.
Wow. Thank fuck I love somewhere where unions are an accepted and appreciated concept.
For a second there I thought that Roller Coaster Tycoon creator got hired by Blizzard.
Sounds like there's plenty of bad shit going on there.
I have to say, it's a tough sell to expect companies to pay above market rate for people in a cheaper location. We can't all be earning Bay Area salaries and living in Spain, that's just not worth it, honestly.
If you had to pay $200k in California or $80k in England for the same work, all remote, you wouldn't throw away twice as much money.
The fake promo thing sounds like an Amazon stunt, from my experience there. You have to work at a certain level for a year before you (hopefully) get promoted to that level officially. It's a great way of avoiding the Peter Principle for employers, with the added shitty bonus of saving you money.
All in all it sounds like a shitty situation with some "normal" stuff thrown in that we all wish wasn't so normal.
Edit: non-compete clauses are unenforceable in lots of places. Seems like they are enforceable in the UK, however.
Edit 2: a move to management is a lateral move at Amazon, too. Probably true of a lot of places. I don't like it, but it's not that unusual.
The only thing your comment pointed out is that Amazon is clearly as shitty a company as Blizzard.
You know what's actually normal at most companies? Getting a promotion that comes with a raise a few weeks after its offered. That's it. That's the actual normal situation in the world.
Thinking anything else is "normal" just means you've been conned.
The people that I know that have worked at Amazon will tell you flat out its a shitty company. It is a common opinion that you do your early career there and then move on with it on your resume. Two years unless they throw a stack of cash at you. Thats all its worth.
He would have had to agree to the non compete clause though, not sure what happened there....
This title needs a colon, not a semicolon