Editor’s Note: A lawsuit has been filed against Activision Blizzard by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which alleges the company has engaged in abuse, discrimination, and retaliation against its female employees. Activision Blizzard has denied the allegations. The full details of the Activision Blizzard lawsuit (content warning: rape, suicide, abuse, harassment) are being updated as new information becomes available.
In the latest chapter of the saga unfolding around Activision Blizzard over the last week, employees are organizing a walkout and demanding a more proactive response from the management who denied the allegations in the first place. This walkout is in response to the lawsuit filed by the state of California against the company for sexual harassment and wage disparity against its female employees, and the controversial responses made by Activision Blizzard's higher-ups. Activision Blizzard has remained silent over the allegations since their press release after the lawsuit came to light, which denied that the accusations outlined in the lawsuit were at all reflective of the company.
The lawsuit in question was filed by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) following a two-year investigation that unearthed highly disturbing behavior within Activision Blizzard. The lawsuit accused the company of fostering a "frat boy" culture, in which female employees were repeatedly sexually harassed, denied promotions and equal pay to their male counterparts, forced to pick up the slack for their male colleagues who would drink and play video games on the clock, and further sidelined and disparaged on the basis of their gender. The official response Activision Blizzard released roundly denied the allegations, calling them "distorted" or "false," a sentiment echoed by J. Allen Brack, the current president of Blizzard, and Fran Townsend, executive vice president for corporate affairs, in released internal company emails.
But employees at Activision Blizzard are dissatisfied with these responses. Nearly a thousand Activision Blizzard workers signed an open letter that ed the lawsuit. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has reported that Activision Blizzard employees will strike tomorrow, July 28, outside of Blizzard's Irvine campus to demand, among other things, a third-party audit of the company's leadership, the removal of mandatory arbitration clauses, the publication of salary and promotion rates for employees, and facilitating more diversity with improved hiring, promoting, and recruiting procedures.
This isn't the first time Blizzard's employees have united against management, previously striking against a reported pay gap within the company. While there are no public talks of unionizing among Activision Blizzard employees at present, according to the strike's organizers, some observers are beginning to speculate that such a move could come depending on Activision Blizzard's response.
Regardless, the voices of Activision Blizzard's employees calling out in of the lawsuit are very quickly drowning out those of management who continue to insist that the allegations are untrue. The majority of the gaming community already appears to be on the employees' side, if recent protests inside Word of Warcraft are any indication, and it is clear these workers are dedicated to being heard by the company who employs them.
Source: Bloomberg
