Video games are now the center of mainstream culture and some of the biggest celebrities are forced to reckon with the ugly underbelly of the industry.
Last month of July, the state of California filed a lawsuit against the developer and publisher of Call of Duty: Warzone, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft, Activision Blizzard. The lawsuit against Activision is due to an alleged widespread gender-based discrimination and harassment of the company to its staff that prompted a walkout and boycott from gamers, and streamers.
In response, many popular streamers are switching games to a less problematic title and doing their best to avoid discussing the issue regarding it.
Sean McLoughin AKA Jacksepticeye is a well-known Twitch streamer and YouTuber with more than 27 million subscribers on YouTube. He recently shared his thoughts regarding the said issue of Activision and said that he doesn’t want to see a lawsuit against Activision as part of what he does but he acknowledges the issues between both the company and the gaming community.
According to Jack, his knowledge regarding the issue is not constant saying “blurbs here and there” but what he has been hearing are all absolutely ridiculous. He said that the devs stuff are kind of been “bubbling up” on the surface for a long time and said that there has been stuff from the past with Activision games that people and users aren’t happy with and said that now it’s like kind of bleeding into the company and many examples from its players that they weren’t happy with over with Activision over the years like the resurfaced video form BlizzCon 2010 where footage shows an all-male panel pf developers mocking a female fan of World of Warcraft who asked for a character with less overtly sexualize designs.
Jach was hesitant from getting too specific about the allegations against Blizzard even though he had more to say, saying that he doesn’t really want to get too involved in it because he doesn’t know enough and it could give out bad information and said that he just yells at video games.
Activision is now becoming a more accurate reflection of the diverse audiences who play them but Jack pointed out that controversies like the lawsuit against Activision are a reminder that the culture needs to become more inclusive of its games. He also said that he thought that stuff had gone away and thought that it was back in like the early Call of Duty days. He also said that it’s really sad to see that some aspects of it still remain but you see it all the time if you go live on Twitch and that some of ‘Chad energy’ will come out and people will say things under the immunity of ridiculous ‘gamer words’.
Twitch has seen an increase in hate speech and abuse recently but since they add a new tagging system, it now made it easier for bad actors to single out streamers belonging to their categories like Black, Disabled, and Transgender.
Still, Jack was optimistic and maintains to say that the gaming community will still continue to grow more by welcoming people of different perspectives and backgrounds and said that he hopes that whatever culture that is shifting right now, will be more accepting, and open space. He also admits to say that there has been a lot of groundwork to be done but he thinks it is going in the right direction.
