.jpg)
Streaming platform Kick, a major competitor to Amazon’s Twitch, is facing disturbing allegations from a former employee.
The former employee, who goes by the name Melissa, accuses the platform of having a racist work environment and discriminating against streamers with autism and cancer.
RELATED: Twitch CEO Announces ‘Difficult’ Decision, and Creators Weren’t Happy About It
In new video On YouTube, posted on June 17, Melissa reveals that the office environment at Kick was “very hostile,” which led to her sudden resignation from the company.
“The office environment for me was very hostile, not only because I was being treated very poorly by some individuals, and the people I went to were not helpful at all, but because there was a constant disrespect for other people’s opinions and beliefs,” Melissa said.
She accused the company’s social team of using offensive and racist slurs about senior management without facing any repercussions.
“It got to the point of just hearing F being insulted constantly, and not even as a joke as a joke, but specifically targeting the people they were supposedly discriminating against,” Melissa said. “Even as far as going through the social media room, the guys who run the Kick Streaming community and Kick, and they hear the N word dropped with a hard ‘R,’ and I’m like, ‘What is this office?’ And the upper management was in the room.
She even claimed to have seen two of her team members laughing at the fact that they were “deliberately misleading” transgender people. It also details an incident in which a company director who was managing the partnerships team allegedly found it laughable that he had offered a contract renewal to a streamer with disabilities “below the market price.”
“He had a smirk on his face and said, ‘I destroyed his GPA,’” Melissa said. “This was apparently funny because everyone in the room laughed. I said: ‘Well, what did you put it in?’ He then proceeded to brag about the fact that he got it at a price below the market price of an English streamer.
Melissa claims that the last straw for her was related to an incident that occurred two days before she finally decided to leave the company. She claims Kick was aiming to sign a “beloved Twitch streamer” who was publicly battling cancer, and the conversation in the office about signing her quickly turned “vicious.”
“The quote I remember hearing was: ‘We can have her take over the Kick Streaming stake at a relatively low price because maybe she thinks she’s going to die soon and she’ll want to leave more money to her family,’” Melissa said. .
RELATED: General Mills faces lawsuit alleging egregious racist incidents
Melissa also goes on to claim that a few employees at the company were defending a person who allegedly told two 14-year-old girls that he wanted to “do something sexual” to them.
Melissa said: “They (Kick) are not responsible for anything, as you can see they let things slide, they do anything.” “They don’t care about pedophiles on the platform.”
The Kick Leader responds to Melissa’s claims
Since Melissa’s video was posted on YouTube, Kick’s head of strategic partnerships, Andrew Santamaria, claimed in a post on social media platform X that Melissa’s accusations do not reflect Kick’s work environment.
I’ve spent time in KICK offices, and this does not reflect the KICK I know. KICK listens not only to the voices of our creators, but also to the hundreds of employees who work globally 24/7. We’re committed to making KICK the best place to stream in the world. Go directly.
– Santamaria (@Svntvmvriv) June 18, 2024
He also said recently Live broadcast Melissa’s claims “understate the great work” of employees at the company. He also questions why these allegations were first brought up publicly and not reported internally when she was working there. He also said that the company would investigate the accusations.
“If the evidence is presented, we will look into it 100%,” Santamaria said. “We take these allegations very seriously, and continue to investigate them internally, despite the evidence being presented. This is something that is very important to this team. It doesn’t matter that these are allegations, what matters is do these things really happen?
More labor:
- Dropbox’s CEO thinks back-to-office mandates are toxic
- A recruiter goes viral to reveal how an applicant lost a job
- Staff at the bankrupt retailer have had to evict customers from the store
Workplace discrimination is a serious and very common issue in the United States according to 2023 vote Through recruitment site Monster, 91% of employees said they had experienced discrimination in the workplace, and 77% said they had witnessed an act of discrimination at work.
RELATED: Veteran Fund Manager Picks Favorite Stocks for 2024
