Majority of women working at Paradox Interactive report mistreatment

It is possible, though perhaps not as likely, that men experience equal or even more severe levels of treatment but are either unwilling to answer as such or are not cognizant of it.

I base my theory on that many of Paradox’s games are little more than spreadsheets with graphical shells. :mischief:
 
Evie said:
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.
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But would the investigators hired by the employees want to find something bad enough that would cause Paradox to shut down or undergo massive layoffs?
 
That goes for most possible investigators, State included. No one is going to want destroy hundreds of jobs over anything but the most egregious crimes (even massive international corruption may not be enough), and even then they may still look for ways to work around the job loss.

It's in very few people's interest to destroy the company, not even the vast majority of victims, especially when (as is the case here) the victims remain employed.
 
Evie said:
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.
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Like, it doesn't solve the discrimination if present, but you're right. In Scandinavia, a union suggesting something to a company and the company complying is not unheard of at all. It's kind of the ideal of the system (although afaik Sweden's model differs from Denmark, and I'm most acquainted with Denmark of course). This doesn't mean that the unions are always respected and such. But if you work somewhere and aren't having your rights accepted done as in accordance to your union, you can often talk with the union and there can be something worked out. It's much less of a "they're a troublemaker because they use their union" culture, since unions are integral to the economy. Not perfect, but a far cry from the insanity in the States.
 
Like, really depends on where you're working in the states. Those old fuddy-duddy things Americans would like to pretend they don't do anymore, like physical and skilled labor, those still have unions.

It's the winners, and the low income producers that despise them. Still shopping Bezos Corp? Have we subscribed onto boycotts hurting good people in a good company now that we like the product?

But what would we know? We spend all our money on the military. That's what I hear, mostly from you guys, but that's what I hear.

Spoiler :
;)

Not too serious now.
 
One important question for determining how bad this is: What sort of mistreatment are we talking about? I remember talking with a colleague who used to work at Electronic Arts, and what he said about how stressful it was and the awful hours; you could certainly call that mistreatment or abuse. That was back when I was an intern, and was perhaps a formative experience in steering me away from pursuing jobs in the video game industry.

Put another way, more information is needed to determine if this is Blizzard level, EA level, or something else. Based on the insufficient information we have here, I'd guess a mix - the fact that a significant amount of the men at Paradox reported mistreatment or abuse suggests that general working conditions are a significant problem, and the fact that a significantly larger amount of women reported abuse suggests there is sexual discrimination going on - which may also include harassment.

If it is Blizzard-level, I'll be curious what other studios provide decent grand strategy games. Civ really does not qualify. Maybe some of the Slitherine/AGEOD ones that I haven't really explored? Old World is definitely on my list, and I was already much more likely to buy it than CKIII. Possibly Anno 1800 instead of Victoria, but is Ubisoft any better? I've avoided them for a decade, other than their GOG back catalog, due to their DRM stance. And CD Projekt, for that matter, isn't fully in the clear themselves, with their Cyberpunk 2077 crunch last fall.

Regardless, it is unfortunate, and will be interesting to see what emerges. Perhaps even more interesting to read the more detailed stories that emerge over the years - was this always a problem, or were there events that made things worse? I've worked at a company that was a pretty great place to work, and pretty good at supporting women in IT, particularly women new to being in the IT field, until it got acquired by a big public company that had a big PR machine but didn't know how to treat people as people instead of cogs in a machine. But in that case the mistreatment was both non-discriminatory, and also somewhat random (some projects had management that mistreated employees, while others were fine). So while the report is entirely believable, I'd like to know more details before I write off Paradox in general. What type of mistreatment, is it a general problem or concentrated in a few studios, etc.
 
sendos said:
I wouldn't say so, but I understand why you think that. Some far right gamers like playing historical strategy games.
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HoI attracts the Deutschland Uber Alles types.

Since CK2 though they're getting more casuals and women etc playing. Stellaris and CK3 less A holes than HoI or EIIV.


At one point it was a 94% male playerbase iirc
 
A lot of far-righters in strategy games spaces, stereotypically. The stereotype is well-known by (at least English-speaking, as I'm depressingly monolinguistic) communities. Company of Heroes is another good example. Everybody knows the people that flat-out idolise the Nazis in the community, to the extent that they've become a kind of meme. There's no equivalent on the other end of the spectrum (possibly because there isn't really a leftist equivalent. Depictions of the USSR might jive with some tankies, perhaps, but not in notable enough numbers to be noticed).
 
Gorbles said:
A lot of far-righters in strategy games spaces, stereotypically. The stereotype is well-known by (at least English-speaking, as I'm depressingly monolinguistic) communities. Company of Heroes is another good example. Everybody knows the people that flat-out idolise the Nazis in the community, to the extent that they've become a kind of meme. There's no equivalent on the other end of the spectrum (possibly because there isn't really a leftist equivalent. Depictions of the USSR might jive with some tankies, perhaps, but not in notable enough numbers to be noticed).
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I think males in general lean towards competitive strategy games in higher numbers.

Nazi stuff in particular attracts younger males due to the war, kewl tanks or uniforms etc and pop culture what if type stuff.

What if allies winning faster is a lot rarer than the other stuff.

Better PR and snazzy uniforms.
 
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Gorbles said:
A lot of far-righters in strategy games spaces, stereotypically. The stereotype is well-known by (at least English-speaking, as I'm depressingly monolinguistic) communities. Company of Heroes is another good example. Everybody knows the people that flat-out idolise the Nazis in the community, to the extent that they've become a kind of meme. There's no equivalent on the other end of the spectrum (possibly because there isn't really a leftist equivalent. Depictions of the USSR might jive with some tankies, perhaps, but not in notable enough numbers to be noticed).
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Oddly common on Quora as well. It likes to serve me content on WW2 (no idea why), and there tends to be at least 1 Nazi apologist/sympathiser in the comments.

Maybe it's just the WW2/colonial Europe fan base.
 
Zardnaar said:
I think males in general lean towards competitive strategy games in higher numbers.

Nazi stuff in particular attracts younger males due to the war, kewl tanks or uniforms etc and pop culture what if type stuff.
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Well, power fantasy stuff.
Strategy games are power fantasy, and glorification of power is kinda the schtick of the far-right. Not that you can't enjoy a power trip on a purely fantasy basis without buying the ideology itself, but people who have the ideology will probably tends to be more present in the fanbase.
 
Zardnaar said:
HoI attracts the Deutschland Uber Alles types.

Since CK2 though they're getting more casuals and women etc playing. Stellaris and CK3 less A holes than HoI or EIIV.


At one point it was a 94% male playerbase iirc
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Indeed, because in HoI, you can literally play as the Nazis and rewrite history. I wonder how that game is marketed in Germany anyway?

Some players of Stellaris do tend to like talking about inter-species genocidal "purges" every now and then.
 
sendos said:
Indeed, because in HoI, you can literally play as the Nazis and rewrite history. I wonder how that game is marketed in Germany anyway?

Some players of Stellaris do tend to like talking about inter-species genocidal "purges" every now and then.
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The Stellaris thing is mostly bad joke along with WH40K references.

Come across one very right wing Stellaris discord group moved on to an Aussie group.
 
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