Activision Blizzard sued by state agency for alleged widespread discrimination

On Wednesday, a California state agency filed a lawsuit against game publisher Activision Blizzard for allegations of widespread sex discrimination and sexual harassment. The nature of this harassment is so widespread, the lawsuit claims, that women who worked for the game creator “almost universally confirmed that working for the defendants was akin to working in a fraternity house” – which, according to this trial means a workplace full of intoxicated men who sexually harassed their female colleagues without punishment.

The 29-page lawsuit claims that across the company, pay disparities have led women to receive “lower total pay than their male counterparts while doing substantially similar work.” It includes several alleged instances of Activision Blizzard slowing promotions for women in favor of their male counterparts, even when these women had longer tenures and a higher review record in the company, and added that the women of color were “particularly the target of the discriminatory practices of the defendants.” “And he was describing an office environment where drunk men sexually harassed their female colleagues without being punished.

A direct report to the president of Blizzard

The full lawsuit includes a long list of violations of both gender discrimination and sexual harassment, including many that set anonymous Activision Blizzard employees apart, and they range from explicit to disgusting. The lawsuit describes a particularly extreme example of alleged harassment and says that the victim ultimately committed suicide.

Several business leaders are mentioned by name in the lawsuit. Blizzard Entertainment chairman J. Allard Brack allegedly received a direct report from an employee in “early 2019” that staff members were leaving the company for “sexual harassment and sexism”. The report pointed directly to the company’s battle.net online service team, where “women who weren’t” huge gamers “or” core gamers “and who weren’t part of the holiday scene were excluded and treated as outsiders “.

A former senior creative director within the company World of warcraft The division reportedly had a reputation at its annual BlizzCon event for hitting on female colleagues, one so aggressively that “supervisors had to step in and kick her out of the employees.” Brack is named in these allegations for giving the director nothing more than a “slap on the wrist” after each incident, which was allegedly followed by subsequent harassment of the women.

And an Activision CTO, not identified by name, was reportedly seen “groping intoxicated female employees at corporate events” and hiring women based on their appearance.

The lawsuit alleges a long and detailed history of Activision Blizzard which has failed to respond to official complaints filed by affected staff members. These complaints were reportedly not kept confidential, and the lawsuit alleges that these complainants were subject to subsequent retaliation, which materialized in the form of dismissals, unwanted transfers of service and denial of new career opportunities. .

Company response: “irresponsible state bureaucrats”

Activision Blizzard released a statement following the lawsuit, going so far as to accuse the California State Department of Employment and Housing of “distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past.” After claiming that the DFEH did not engage in “good faith discussions” before filing its complaint, he then called the prosecution “irresponsible behavior by irresponsible state bureaucrats who [is] hunt many of the best companies in the state of California. “

The damages sought by the DFEH include those based on the gender pay gap, and although Activision Blizzard’s statement includes allegations that it is “working hard[s] to pay all employees fairly for equal or substantially similar work ”, it does not recognize any possible issues of wage disparity in the company’s past, nor how the company could have rectified previous violations of state law of California in the matter.

Activision Blizzard is far from alone in terms of allegations of sexual harassment in the video game industry, as recent examples from Ubisoft, EA and Riot Games show.