Blizzard Fires Lead For ‘World Of Warcraft Classic’ After He Tried To Resign In Protest Of Employee Evaluations

Video Games

Jan 26

Blizzard Games is in crisis (again) as a change in employee evaluations has led to the firing of World of Warcraft lead developer, Brian Birmingham. Birmingham is a Blizzard giant having worked at the company for 17 years, not only has he leaned his talents to several games in the WoW franchise, but he has also contributed to the Overwatch, Starcraft, and Diablo series.

The problems started when Blizzard decided to introduce a stacked ranking system for its employees. This only allows a certain percentage of workers to be put in performance categories, for example, exceeding expectations, meeting expectations, or requiring improvement. At Blizzard, managers were expected to rate 5% of their team as underperforming. Birmingham argued that the policy forces managers to unfairly mark down employees which could affect their ability to achieve promotions and their access to profit participation schemes.

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Birmingham made his feelings clear in an email he sent to executives. He said he would not remain at the company while the policy was in place. Blizzard called his bluff and terminated his contract.

This isn’t the first time Blizzard has been accused of having a toxic workplace culture. In July 2021 The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit, demanding for their hiring, recruiting, and promoting processes to be overhauled. The following September, The Communications Workers of America filed unfair labor charges. Let’s not forget the mess surrounding Overwatch that eventually led to the renaming of the game’s main character to remove all reference to Jesse McCree, the developer who was connected to Blizzard’s sexual harassment lawsuit.

Despite countless lawsuits, petitions, and walkouts, little has changed at Blizzard in the last two years. As admirable as Birmingham’s intentions are, it’s difficult to see Blizzard seeing this as anything more than another one to add to the pile.

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