Several days later and the internet is still buzzing with the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft for nearly $70 billion. Though CEO Bobby Kotick is reportedly leaving the company once the deal completes, there have also been questions regarding ongoing controversies. The publisher has been embroiled in discrimination and harassment lawsuits for the past year or so with multiple employees speaking out against the toxic workplace culture.
Though Microsoft said it had “changed how we do certain things” with regards to the company, Xbox boss Phil Spencer spoke more about the same to The Washington Post. With the acquisition process starting near the end of last year, Spencer said, “We spent time with the Activision team looking at the incidents, looking at employee polls and then had a good discussion with them about their plan, both the progress they’ve been making and what their plan was.”
Microsoft will stay out of Activision’s legal troubles with Spencer noting that, “We had to look at that forward plan and ensure we had a kind of confidence in that.” He was also asked about unions, which is important considering that the company’s employees don’t have a union and affected Activision-Blizzard workers turned to the same during the ongoing controversies. Spencer responded, “I’m going to be honest, I don’t have a lot of personal experience with unions.
“I’ve been at Microsoft for 33 years. So I’m not going to try to come across as an expert on this, but I’ll say we’ll be having conversations about what empowers them to do their best work, which as you can imagine in a creative industry, is the most important thing for us.” Time will tell how and if things actually improve for the workers so stay tuned for more reports on that front in the coming months.