The Wall Street Journal recently published report that revealed shocking revelations regarding Activision Blizzard’s systemic patterns of abuse and misconduct against employees, for which the company has already been under scrutiny (legal and otherwise) for the last few months. In particular, the report revealed that the company’s CEO Bobby Kotick himself has not only protected abusers at the company and perpetuated their behaviour by withholding knowledge of misconduct from the Board of Directors, but has mistreated women and employees himself, even having made a death threat against one of his assistants in 2006.
Following that, Kotick issued a public letter in which he proclaimed “new zero tolerance policy for inappropriate behavior”, but the new information that has come to light has clearly disgruntled company employees, and rightly so. Recently taking to Twitter, ABK (Activision Blizzard King) Workers Alliance called for the resignation of Bobby Kotick and replacement as CEO. The company’s employees will be staging a walkout today, the tweet states, making this the second time in the last few months that Activision Blizzard employees have had to resort to such measures in order to be hear.
Meanwhile, Kotaku also reports that over a hundred Activision Blizzard employees have gathered outside Blizzard Entertainment’s headquarters in Irvine, California, demanding Kotick’s resignation.
Back in August, Kotick said that any and all Activision Blizzard employees found guilty of misconduct would be “held accountable for their actions”, following which over 20 people have been let go by the company. One would imagine that the same rules should apply to all company personnel, including the CEO.
In related news, WSJ’s report also revealed that former Blizzard co-lead Jen Oneal left the company after just three months in her new position due to being “tokenized, marginalized, and discriminated against”, which entailed not being paid as much as fellow co-lead Mike Ybarra, among other things. Read more on that through here.