A Mixer Employee Has Quit Over Alleged Racism, Company Issues Apology

Milan Lee, a former Mixer employee, has brought up his experience with racism within the Microsoft-owned streaming company. Executives and Mixer have responded by requesting a meet-up and assuring Lee that the issue would be further investigated.

Mixer Developer Milan Lee Walks Away Over Racism Episodes

The backlash against racism has reached the world of competitive video gaming, with the Black Lives Matter protest now highlighting the issue within the gaming community. Milan Lee, a former Mixer developer, has tweeted his own negative experience with the streaming platform.

Owned by Microsoft, Mixer has a reputation to protect and Lee’s interactions with unnamed managerial staff members, if true, put the company’s good name in serious pickle. According to Lee, incidents involving open or implied racism happened on at least several occasions at Mixer.

While his experience with Microsoft was career-fulfilling and he welcomed the news to be part of Mixer’s burgeoning family, he had another tale to tell as of how his dream to work in the gaming industry fell through.

He was one of the few people of color within the Mixer team and outlined the alleged racist episodes he had suffered which were both shocking and ludicrous. During a conference, Lee was allegedly pulled aside and told that he was a “street smart” hire, i.e. an affirmative action employee to meet diversity targets.

Manager Calls Herself “Slave Owner”

Lee outlined another accident where his manager referred to herself as “the slave master,” and her employees to as slaves. “My partners,” Lee’s manager explained, “are my slaves, and I own them.”

Following the meeting, Lee had only disgust and angst left, prompting him to consider quitting both his position at Microsoft and Mixer. He, though, later confronted his manager to no avail, and argued that a mediator from the company had also failed to inform the HR staff later, possible covering for the first manager’s ill-advised sense of humor

With no investigation opened against the manager, Lee saw himself without options and decided to leave the company instead. To make things even more flabbergasting, the conflict was at the time settled with his manager arguing that she couldn’t be “racist” because she had hired a “black person.”

Following the story and shortly after it went viral, Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, tweeted that he would want to know more and asked Lee if he would be willing to meet with him. Soon after, Mixer said that racism would not fly in its midst and issued a public apology and a note of thanks to Lee for bringing up the issue.