There are several holes in the lawsuit.
- The lawsuit was filed by a government entity called the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. If you go to their website, you see that they say "You may file your own lawsuit for employment discrimination in court rather than using a DFEH investigation." You should be asking: why aren't the women involved in this lawsuit suing Blizzard themselves or together? Private attorneys only take a lawsuit case if they think they have a good chance of winning and getting a good money. A lawsuit costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. No one is going to take it on unless they think they are going to win. Blizzard is a big company, so winning a case would get them a lot of money. The fact that the women are having to use the government as their baseball bat would imply that private attorneys don't think they would win the case. But the government will do it because they are paid salaries in taxpayer dollars, regardless if they win or lose.
- They said they had been doing this investigation for more than 2 years, but they don't know who they are suing. Once you get down to the parties, you get to something really interesting. "Defendant DOES ONE through TEN". 10 people is a lot. 10 unnamed people. "DFEH is ignorant of the true names or capacities of the defendants." So they don't know who they are suing. They don't know who did anything after a 2 year investigation. "DFEH will amend this complaint to allege their true names and capacities when the same are ascertained." In other words, they will name who they are suing as responsible once discovery begins. So after 2 years of investigation, they don't know who did what and don't know who they are suing. "We did a very thorough 2 year investigation but we don't know who did anything! Let's go on a fishing expedition and we will find out who our 10 imaginary defendants are!".
- Then you have the "factual allegations". No one is named except for Alex Afrabsabi. The rest is just "yeah, we talked to somebody and they heard that someone did something, but they don't know who". There really wasn't that much of an investigation. They're throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. In lawsuit, you're allowed to commit unlimited defamation. They can allege whatever they want. They alleged that Bret Kavanaugh was involved in giant rape orgies, etc. High profile sexual allegations are more likely to be false than true, whether it be Michael Jackson, or Bill Cosby, or Bret Kavanaugh, or Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, or Donald Trump, etc. Notice how none of the allegations ended up sticking through the courts. Almost none of them, because they are usually spurious, done for political reasons.
- The lawsuit lasted 2 years. Blizzard is a huge company. If the sexual harassment was as pervasive as the lawsuit claims, then why didn't Kotaku makes tons of articles on this? if this was happening, you wouldn't be able to hide it.
The point of this is to get Blizzard to settle. Discovery is very bad for software companies. Discovery can last years and would really harm Blizzard's business as their projects are uncovered, which would influence their stockprice and influence competitors. Blizzard will settle and Alex Afrasabi will be thrown under the bus as the sacrificial scapegoat. The women cough up easy money from Blizzard and get free attention online, and this government agency gets a trophy on the wall.
They're making a mountain out of a molehill, but twitter and the media doesn't look for the truth. They just suck up and regurgitate whatever pushes their narrative.
The one actual mistake Blizzard made here was allowing their HR department to get infiltrated by SJWs who hired women for diversity reasons. Can't get accused of sexual harassment if there are no women who work at your company in the first place. "Woman joins company with a bro culture. Accuses Blizzard of having bro culture!" no shit sherlock.
It also seems hypocritical for people to be singling out Blizzard here.
Every large franchise has had stuff like this happen. The Blizzard allegations are small fry compared to the stuff that the big franchises
actually had going on behind the scenes back in the day. For example, Star Trek, with TOS, Denise Crosby in TNG, Terry Farrell in DS9, Jennifer Lien and Jeri Ryan on Voyager, etc. But people didn't stop watching ST because of that.
The internet is hyping up FFXIV as the alternative to WoW, though it is interesting that no one will is singling out FFXIV. The sexualization in FFXIV puts WoW to shame, and then there is the groping of women in Japan on trains and in the workplace is well known. I haven't heard any stories out of Square Enix but there's a decent chance there is more stuff going on there than what these people are claiming is happening at Blizzard, but the narrative right now is that FFXIV is the internet's darling golden calf and Blizzard is the popular whipping boy.
The actually infuriating thing to come out of this has nothing to do with any claimed harassment. It's the Blizzard devs continuing yet again to insult their paying customers.
"Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome aboard! We would like to inform you that todays flight will not take place, as our co-pilot has some girlfriend trouble (with Sally, from accounting). If your reaction to this going on right now is to complain that your flight is going to take longer to reach its destination, then you need to take a step back and realize that you are part of the problem. Continue to pay us money while we do not provide the service you desired!"