Blizzard Apologizes to Gay-Friendly Guild Founder
Erin posted not too long ago about the incident between Blizzard and a WoW player attempting to recruit people for a gay-friendly guild. For her troubles, player Sara Andrews was given a warning by a Blizzard costumer representative and told she was in breach of the game’s Terms of Service.
Lots of people covered the story, and comments on the topic varied from “Blizzard is homophobic” to “Who cares?” to more colorful language at both sides of the fence, all of which has culminated with Blizzard offering a formal apology to Sara Andrews:
In an email to Andrews published by US website InNewsWeekly, Thor Biafore, Blizzard’s worldwide head of customer service, said that the company sends “Aplogies for any inconvenience this has caused you or your guild.”
“The action that was taken by our customer service representative was an unfortunate interpretation of our current policies, which are currently under review… I have had the warning removed from your account. Please accept our apologies for the way our staff characterised your conduct, and rest assured that your account will not be penalised in any way.”
According to INW, Blizzard COO Paul Sams has confirmed that a new guild recruitment channel will be set up, “Providing players with a designated area where they can advertise their guilds in an appropriate fashion.” Blizzard is also set to provide”sensitivity training” for 1000 WOW Game Masters in North America, Europe and Asia to ensure there is no repeat of the incident.
Sensitivity training! Hahaha …. I love it. What goes on in sensitivity training anyway? I wanna go.
But more to the point: what are “aplogies”?
[via Games Industry]
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3 opinions for Blizzard Apologizes to Gay-Friendly Guild Founder
Matt
Feb 13, 2006 at 3:15 am
“aplogies” are an intentional misspelling to show that the e-mail was actually hand-written and not some pre-fabricated, script generated letter.
And while I do have my own thoughts on all of this, I did feel that the CR’s interpretation of the rule was a little off.
Cal
Feb 13, 2006 at 5:59 pm
See, they need a spel cheker two.
Sensitivity training? You don’t need sensitivity training, just common sense. Think about the situation before firing off “You’ve broken rule 365 subsection z paragraph 83, sentence 1025″ letters.
So now they over react and sent 1000 people on some useless training - hmm, thinking about it can I get a share in any of those companies doing the training?
What goes on in Sensitivity Training? A lot of people apologising for opening the door too loudly; asking if moving a chair offends anyone in the room; everyone saying to everyone else “No, please you go first, no you, please I insist”; looking at each other with soft doe eyes and with the head tilted slightly to one side saying “I know, oh I know, I hear where you are coming from, I can see how you would feel that way”
Gah.
Tor
Feb 14, 2006 at 2:42 am
And hugs!
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