Majority of women working at Paradox Interactive report mistreatment

[HorseHead]

I imagine we will see a large influx of strategy players quit using Paradox games to play Civ similar to people leaving after Blizzard had the information come out. It seems like this is a very prevalent problem in the video game industry and is more pronounced in this industry than others. Here is a source on it (in Swedish): https://www.breakit.se/artikel/3002...ar-om-mobbning-krankningar-och-tystnadskultur
There was a study done by a union there and breakit.se leaked it.

 

[Angst]

God @#&% damnit, not more of this. Not that it surprises anyone, but did it have to be Paradox? Whole industry is revealed to be incredibly cancerous.

It's not hard to run a company without these things. But apparently it's not hard to run a company with these things either.

 

[HorseHead]

Whole industry is revealed to be incredibly cancerous.

I completely agree. This, Blizzard, Chucklefish getting kids to do unpaid work for them and so much more. I think really the main soloution is to play open0source games or just those made by tiny companies (though yes, there is exploitation in them, there is less)

Not that it surprises anyone, but did it have to be Paradox?

Yeah, I liked Paradox quite a bit but I will not be buying anymore DLC or games from them.

 

[shadowplay]

Does this mean I can't marry my horse?

 

[Gelion]

One thing is for sure, it won't ever be Steam

 

[HorseHead]

One thing is for sure, it won't ever be Steam

Knowing the industry I really would not be surprised. And if that does happen, I think I'm going to switch over to exclusivly open-source games as there is less risk of that kind of stuff happening.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@HorseHead Hello and welcome to Off topic.

 

[Evie]

I suspect right now that the fact that the situation appears less dire than Blizzard (union poll leaked vs accusation by state regulator, that's a few orders of magnitudes worse), and that its limited to general claims vs having highly disturbing specifics surrounding Blizzards are going to led to a much less dire response than what we saw with Blizzard - for the time being.

This may change as more information come to light.

Even if it does lead to a Paradox exodus, I doubt Civ will gobble up the former Para-Fans. It's way too ahistorical for the EU players, way too light on wars for the HOI crowd, way too light on feudal roleplaying for the CK crowd (Old World maybe) and way too Earth-bound for the Stellaris crowd.

Personally I was already on a bit of a Paradox break anyway, so for now will keep up with that, and we'll see what the future brings. Though frankly I rather expect most of the industry is in need for *some* level of reckoning on that front, so the idea of "avoid the dirty company, support the clean one" doesn't really strike me as a sustainable response in the long term.

 

[Moriarte]

I completely agree. This, Blizzard, Chucklefish getting kids to do unpaid work for them and so much more. I think really the main soloution is to play open0source games or just those made by tiny companies (though yes, there is exploitation in them, there is less)

Solution for your conscience, maybe, not for the problem. The industry comprises several companies - Electronic Arts, Activision-Blizzard, Tencent, Netease, Nintendo (to name a few) are valued collectively at hundreds of billions USD (!) in their stock markets and employ the overwhelming majority of best artists around, game designers, various software engineers, and, more importantly, the pipeline to make games quickly and at a certain level of quality. Once a small company emerges, and shows real promise, it’s quickly gobbled up by one of the whales, because that is how capitalism supposed to work. Exceptions are rare and insignificant in their influence on the mainstream gaming industry.

Your attitude is commendable, but unfortunately it will take a lot more to tackle mistreatment of people in gaming industries.

 

[migalhone]

These are sad news. I want Victoria III badly but i'm also a staunch believer in voting with my wallet. Really hope Paradox, and the industry, get their you-know-what together.

 

[aelf]

My impression of the Paradox player base is they tend to lean on the conservative side? If so, I reckon their reaction will be more muted.

 

[HorseHead]

Your attitude is commendable, but unfortunately it will take a lot more to tackle mistreatment of people in gaming industries.

Yeah, that is true with smaller companies though I do think voting with your wallet does in fact have an effect to some extent.

 

[HorseHead]

I suspect right now that the fact that the situation appears less dire than Blizzard (union poll leaked vs accusation by state regulator, that's a few orders of magnitudes worse), and that its limited to general claims vs having highly disturbing specifics surrounding Blizzards are going to led to a much less dire response than what we saw with Blizzard - for the time being.

Yeah, that is true though it is quite possible that after this coming to light we will see more abuses and I would not really be surprised.

Though frankly I rather expect most of the industry is in need for *some* level of reckoning on that front, so the idea of "avoid the dirty company, support the clean one" doesn't really strike me as a sustainable response in the long term.

True, but it some ways that is a way to cause the industry to have a reckoning.

"Pronounced like Eevee" No one every seems to know how that is pronounced without asking and they never remember after being told. Everyone I know named that always gets called the wrong thing.

@HorseHead Hello and welcome to Off topic.

Thank you for the welcome.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The site is in a foreign language, what are the specific mistreatments in this case?

Pdox has seen bad publicity for its treatment/handling of QA testers and more going back years now, and the quality of products they've been putting out as of late suggests massive inadequacies with project management. What I'd heard/read was enough to make me wonder "is it really just women?" when I read this thread title. But maybe the article covers things above and beyond the general mistreatment they've been doing for a long time now.

I want Victoria III badly but i'm also a staunch believer in voting with my wallet.

They've made that vote a lot easier lately. It isn't just their treatment of employees in decline. The basic controls in HOI 4 don't work consistently, and I get ratio'd for pointing this out as podcat left, hoping for the next person heading it to actually make sure basic things about the game work like "moving units where the game shows they will go" or "this will happen when you take this focus".

I get my fix with the older stuff + some conversion mods.

The industry comprises several companies - Electronic Arts

Still irks me that they can lie to players about what player ratings do, sell "cards" with real-money value based on those ratings to be used in their cash cow game mode meant to abuse their "whales", and somehow not get repeatedly dinged for fraud.

Because it is fraud. They are directly telling players that a thing they sell for real currency (card) does things it does not do (such as awareness influencing defenders at all, last I played). I've never spent a cent in MUT, but in principle they should have an enormous class action claim on them every year until they stop lying about the product.

 

[Angst]

My impression of the Paradox player base is they tend to lean on the conservative side? If so, I reckon their reaction will be more muted.

Yes, if they don't have outright, uh, unpleasant views. I remember reading stuff from their Polish user base in particular, where they were a particularly few loud and cruel people stuck in the 1800s. :/

of course, #notallpoles, but jesus their communities can be unaffable in this regard

 

[HorseHead]

The site is in a foreign language, what are the specific mistreatments in this case?

It was based off of workers claiming they had been mistreated per their own thoughts. That is why it is titled that they report mistreatment. Here is an English overview of it: https://www.pcgamer.com/majority-of...eractive-report-mistreatment-in-staff-survey/ . Which this shows few employees are happy working there also considering the number of men that had reported mistreatment. And also considering that Paradox is bringing in an outside firm to investigate shows that they must consider this to be a pretty real concern. So even if it is not as sever as Blizzard there still is obviously transgressions against employees.

 

[Farm Boy]

Sounds good enough for government work, even, then.

 

[Ajidica]

And also considering that Paradox is bringing in an outside firm to investigate shows that they must consider this to be a pretty real concern.

Or it shows they are looking to engage in CYA. Rule #1 about holding an internal investigation is you should always know what the investigators will find.

 

[HorseHead]

Or it shows they are looking to engage in CYA. Rule #1 about holding an internal investigation is you should always know what the investigators will find.

Yeah, you're right. I meant more it would be a big deal in terms of PR and that I would not be surprised if it ends up like Blizzard.

 

[Evie]

On the flip side, the chief union representative at Paradox was on Twitter earlier and explicitly noted that it was the *Unions* (the same people who ran these polls in the first place) who recommended the outside investigation to Paradox HR.

And that's I think an important factor here. This is a unionized workplace in a country with a strong labour union culture. This is a huge difference from the situation at Blizzard (or Riot before it). Whether it's a positive difference, I don't know, because it may depend on a lot of factor, but it essentially means there's a whole additional (and powerful) stakeholder involved on the employees side of the process. It makes it hard to judge what's happening here by drawing parallels to what happened at Union-less American studios.