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Amir Satvat, the recipient of the primary “Sport Changers” award at this yr’s Sport Awards, says he is obtained “numerous hateful messages” in addition to “disturbing feedback” following his acceptance of the award final week, together with antisemetic remarks about his spouse.
“I’m persevering with to do my greatest to tune this out however it’s fairly excessive,” Satvat mentioned in a LinkedIn publish.
Through the occasion, Geoff Keighley admitted that he is “struggled” to understand how greatest to deal with the unprecedented rash of video games trade layoffs we have seen over the previous few years. It was the primary time the host and producer straight addressed layoffs on the awards, and the answer he got here up with was to honor Satvat, a determine well-known within the video games enterprise for his efforts to assist laid-off builders discover new work.
A quick video phase described how Satvat’s challenge has helped “place almost 3,000 folks in jobs,” and he accepted the award with a tearful speech by which he challenged the group to make the trade higher.
Many viewers responded positively to the phase, together with viewers within the trade, however some criticized it as a cynical try and sustain the looks of caring whereas celebrating the very folks chargeable for the poor state of the enterprise—the executives within the viewers whose corporations in the end fund The Sport Awards. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who oversaw Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard and the next layoffs, is on the present’s advisory board, for instance.
After the ceremony, Satvat himself got here below assault for his job at Tencent, the place he is been a enterprise improvement director for a couple of yr and a half. The suggestion from some is that Satvat was offered as a form of folks hero, however is definitely a part of the issue—or perhaps a sinister “trade plant” whose heartwarming story was solely manufactured.
Satvat says that his job wasn’t talked about in the course of the present as a result of it is irrelevant, and that he does not work on mergers at Tencent and did not at his earlier job at Amazon, and has by no means laid anybody off.
“I’ve by no means signed a contract or personally been a part of a deal that led to job losses in my profession,” wrote Satvat. “The truth is, in some situations, like at [Amazon Web Services], I put nice effort into ensuring tons of of peoples’ jobs had been saved throughout moments of restructuring.
“I’ve additionally been accused of making ‘jail-worthy fraud’ and mocked for ‘simply making one spreadsheet folks enter data into,’ often by individuals who spent all of 8 seconds taking a look at our web site with no understanding of the work we do or the affect we have had. We’ve got 15 assets throughout 5 completely different useful resource houses and there’s a lot of depth to our group, as any of you who’ve used it know.”
I used to be conscious of Satvat previous to the awards as a result of, in the midst of masking the trade’s layoffs over the previous couple years, his title has repeatedly come up within the aftermath of job cuts because the particular person out-of-work builders ought to hunt down. I’ve understood him to be a popular determine whose efforts are genuinely appreciated by sport builders who’ve misplaced their jobs over the previous two years.
That impression is mirrored within the many optimistic feedback posted about Satvat following his speech, resembling within the replies to this publish on BlueSky. “Amir acquired me a union job in Sport Dev in 2024,” reads one. “He deserves the world.”
The criticism, insults, and accusations Satvat is in any other case receiving do not seem to come back from any single perspective—good religion criticism of The Sport Awards is combined in with shouting about China, antisemitism, and different staples of web discourse most related immediately with X.
“This will occur to you too once you sacrifice over 2,000 hours of your time to assist the trade—that is the ‘reward’ for 2 years of service,” Satvat wrote. “…I didn’t wish to say something however there have been too many feedback about my household, about my spouse, about her non secular background, and different issues which are manner over the road for me to not say something.”
Satvat says that the publish can be his final phrase on the adverse feedback, and that he’ll proceed to pursue “optimistic, public service.”
