Email Reveals Activision’s DEI Mania

Video Games

Someone at Activision wants the whole world to know how excruciating it must be to work there. The video game publisher of Call of Duty, some Crash Bandicoot games, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 send out emails to their employees, keeping them abreast of all their woke initiatives, policies, and various other obnoxious burdens they foist on their workers. Apparently, these emails are sent several times a week, which makes me wonder if they’re just making the same points over and over or if they’re actually putting that much effort into DEI. Grummz, the social media handle of former Blizzard producer Mark Kern, has a leaked copy of a recent email:

Activision DEI Leaked! Plus:

– Your bonus and review depend on how hard you DEI.

– DEI Officers are installed on every dev team to ensure THE MESSAGE.

Of all the AAA Studios out there, my dev friends and contacts who have come forth tell me that @Ubisoft and @Activision are… pic.twitter.com/TDZqRn6v0o

— Grummz (@Grummz) May 16, 2024

According to That Park Place, the man who signed the email, Casey Morris, is “Actvision’s Officer of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” and he must everyone’s favorite co-worker. That actually helps explain the abundance of these emails: he probably has little else to do all day. DEI officers are one of those positions Eric July calls “fake jobs;” they don’t exist to create anything or make anything at the company better – they exist to exist, because they’re “supposed” to exist. Unfortunately, instead of just letting these people twiddle their thumbs and collect an unearned paycheck, DEI officers are given too much power, and they use it to make everyone’s life miserable. That’s how you get things like “Marketing Shared Space sessions” and “celebrations in partnerships with [their] Internal Events team” and “meaningful moments to spotlight culturally relevant recognitions and heritage months.” That’s all a bunch of useless, time-consuming nonsense that has nothing to do with making video games and everything to do with driving normal people crazy.

That Park Place observes something else: a few of these points are specifically about DEI, even if they don’t mention it. For example, the first one is about Activision’s XP Equity Mentorship Program. The details of this can be found on the “Diversity & Inclusion” section of the Activision website. (Look at the picture when you click on that link; the woman up front wearing a COVID mask is one of the most perfect images I’ve ever seen.) XP Equity focuses on building “skill, networking, and confidence,” and while it is open to anyone who works at Activision, it has a “special focus on supporting individuals who are part of diverse groups (including race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, etc.).” Sorry, ladies, but it looks like you’re plum out of luck at Activision.

There’s also the point in the email about creating the IGD council, made up of “external experts,” to “share input on [their] content review processes in partnership with [their] IGD team.” Initially, I thought IGD meant the IGDA, which is the International Game Developers Association, and was a simple mistake. But no; scrolling down the “Diversity & Inclusion” page reveals that IGD stands for “Inclusive Game Design” and is a team whose job is “embedding advocates, best practices, and innovations in all [their] games, to ensure that [their] games are the most diverse, welcoming, and inclusive.” This confirms Grummz’s claim that every single Activision game’s development team has a DEI officer on it. (What a DEI officer’s input would be on Crash Bandicoot 4, I have no idea; maybe one of the anthropomorphic animals is gay now or something.) But this point further highlights what a ridiculous non-job “DEI officer” is; this guy is bringing in “external experts” to enhance the IGD team, all of whom are probably just as useless as he is. How in need of help is your DEI team that you have to bring in “external experts” to advise them? Did they let a white heterosexual squeak through in the last Call of Duty game?

Remember when Grummz talked about how expensive it is to make AAA games? You have to wonder how much money Activision and other video game companies are wasting on this lunacy, money that could have gone into their products. Are these people hardcore idealists who don’t care if they sink the ship they’re inexplicably steering, or have they been convinced this waste and annoyance is necessary? If it’s the former, they’re just loons and nothing matters, but if it’s the latter, there’s hope for gaming when they see what a drain their DEI initiatives are to their profits.