In connection with the sexual harassment lawsuit at Activision Blizzard

When the California Fair Employment Agency sued Activision Blizzard, one of the world’s largest video game studios, on July 20, it was no surprise to hear allegations of systemic discrimination based on the sex and sexual harassment in the company. It wasn’t a shock to read that male executives fiddled with their female colleagues, or joked loudly about rape in the office, or completely ignored women for promotions. What has been surprising was that California wanted to investigate Activision Blizzard, given that these issues seem to have been present since its founding in 1979.

Activision Blizzard is a multi-billion dollar publisher with 9,500 employees and a list of legendary franchises, including Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo and World of Warcraft. On July 20, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, alleging that executives had fostered an environment of misogyny and brotherhood rule for years, violating equality laws of remuneration and labor codes along the way. It’s not just dirty jokes in the break room – the lawsuit highlights clear disparities in hiring, compensation and professional growth between men and women at Activision Blizzard, and it paints a picture of pervasive sexism and blatant abuse in the workplace.

Here’s a look at some of the claims:

• Only 20% of all Activision Blizzard employees are women.

• The main managerial positions are held only by white men.

• Across the company, women are paid less, promoted more slowly and fired faster than men.

• HR and executives do not take harassment complaints seriously.

• Women of color in particular are micro-managed and overlooked for promotions.

• A pervasive culture of brotherhood encourages behaviors such as “cube crawls,” where male employees grope and sexually harass female colleagues at their desks.

It has been a few weeks since the lawsuit was filed, and employees, executives and players have all had a chance to respond. Meanwhile, other reports of long-standing harassment and sexism at Activision Blizzard continued to air, including photos and stories from the “Cosby Suite,” which was specifically named in the file. According to the lawsuit, it was a hotel room where male employees gathered to harass women at corporate events, named after rapist Bill Cosby.

Days after deposit, Kotaku posted photos from the supposed Cosby Suite, showing male Activision Blizzard developers posing on a bed with a framed photo of Bill Cosby at BlizzCon 2013. especially when you remember they’re middle-aged men, not college students).

One of the only executives actually named in the lawsuit was Blizzard chief J. Allen Brack, and he alleges that he consistently ignored the systemic harassment and failed to punish the attackers. Brack called the allegations “extremely disturbing,” but that line was returned to his face on Twitter when the independent developer Nels Anderson compared it to a video from BlizzCon 2010, with Brack on the far left.

In the video, a young woman asks the panel to World of warcraft developers, all six of whom are white men, if they will ever create a female character who does not looks like she just got out of a Victoria’s Secret Catalog. The panelists laugh and one of them replies: “Which catalog would you like them to come out of? They basically proceed to dismiss his question. At the end of the exchange, Brack piles up and makes a joke about one of the new characters from a catalog of sexy cows.

On August 3, just two weeks after California filed his lawsuit, Brack resigned as president of Blizzard. In his place are General Manager Mike Ybarra and Vice President of Executive Development Jen Oneal. Oneal will be the first woman to serve as president since Activision’s founding in 1979; the lawsuit notes that there has never been a non-white president or CEO of Activision Blizzard.

Activision Blizzard’s initial response to the lawsuit was tragic, with one executive calling the allegations baseless and distorted. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who regularly argues with shareholders over the ridiculous fortune he has amassed, released his own response to the lawsuit, where he essentially vowed to listen better. Unsurprisingly, this did not allay the concerns of many employees. A petition in support of the lawsuit ended up collecting more than 2,000 employee signatures, and the workers staged a strike just eight days after the filing, calling for systemic change at the studio.

Shareholders were also not supported by Kotick’s response. Investors filed a further class action lawsuit against Activision Blizzard on August 3, alleging that the company had not raised potential regulatory issues related to its discriminatory culture. Blizzard’s director of human resources, Jesse Meschuk, also left the company in the weeks following the initial trial.

Meanwhile, other top game developers have rallied to the lawsuit, and former Activision Blizzard executives have shared their support for employees, apologizing for their contribution to maintaining a toxic corporate culture. .

None of this is new. As evidenced by photos, videos, stats, and personal stories from Activision Blizzard, the company has been running first and foremost for decades, and honestly, it’s backed by an industry that operates much the same way.

In 2019, a wave of accusations against top male developers hit the industry, and AAA studios like Ubisoft and Riot Games made headlines for fostering toxic work environments. California is currently suing Riot for allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in hiring and compensation practices.

But even that is not new. Women, non-binary people and marginalized people in the video game industry have spoken out against systemic harassment and discrimination for decades. The sexism is apparent in the hiring and pay habits of many major studios, and it’s also evident in the games themselves, which feature an overabundance of straight, white, and male protagonists.

What is surprisingly this time around is that the lawsuit against Activision Blizzard sort of came out of nowhere. It took a successful media report for California to sue Riot in 2020, but the lawsuit against Activision Blizzard emerged on its own, after years of a low-profile investigation by the Fair Employment and Housing Department. If sexism is systemic in the video game industry, it feels like the system is finally fighting back.