The publisher Activision Blizzard is the subject of a lawsuit by a California authority. After two years of investigation, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing accuses the American giant of promoting a culture of harassment against the background of sexual discrimination against its employees. Worse still, the state agency claims that an employee’s suicide is the result of these abusive practices.
Sexual harassment at Blizzard
The complaint is cold in the back. The Californian agency describes the everyday life of employees at the American publisher on around twenty pages. A daily newspaper with sexist practices, wage inequality or even employment discrimination in a society with 20% women.
Accordingly this complaint, filed with the Los Angeles Supreme Court, Activision Blizzard interview “A culture of brotherhood”. She addresses the frequent behavior of different men, including company executives, who do not hesitate to openly flirt with their female colleagues or get drunk at work.
In the office women are exposed to “cube-crawling” in which male employees drink copious amounts of alcohol while they “crawl” through the various areas of the office and often behave inappropriately towards female employees. Male employees proudly come to work hungover, play video games for long periods of time, delegating responsibilities to female employees, joking about their gender, talking openly about female bodies and joking about rape …
Inappropriate behavior which, according to DFEH, even led to an employee’s suicide. As a victim of sexual harassment, she actually committed suicide after photos of her gender were distributed among employees.
An employee committed suicide while on a business trip because of her sexual relationship with her male boss. The police discovered that the male supervisor had brought a butt plug and lubricant with him on this business trip. Another employee confirmed that the deceased employee may have experienced further sexual harassment in the workplace prior to her death. In particular, during a Christmas party before her death, male colleagues are said to have circulated a photo of the deceased’s vagina.
And discriminatory practices
In addition, the investigations of the state authority also point to the salary and recruitment policy of the publisher. Women would thus be assigned positions with less responsibility and lower pay than their male colleagues.
Employees interviewed in the survey also mentioned the impossibility of promotions and access to positions of responsibility. The reason ? The risk of getting pregnant or being colored.
And if the studio women are unlucky enough to already be a mother, criticism and accusations fall as soon as she leaves work to pick up her children from kindergarten or daycare. Some were even kicked out of breastfeeding rooms to allow meetings between men.
Practices Activision Blizzard Human Resources and Management would have heard of without anyone taking action to stop them. The complaint also refers to these two companies which, in the opinion of the DFEH, have both failed to meet their obligations.
Harassment and discrimination problems extend to, and at least know about, people at the top of the hierarchy. The defendant’s former chief technology officer has been watched by employees groping drunk female employees at company events and has been known to make hiring decisions based on the looks of applicants …
Employees also complained of harassment, including male colleagues playing with them, male supervisor offering them private appointments, and other undesirable harassment. The defendants failed to respond appropriately to these complaints.
Activision Blizzard defends itself
In response to this complaint, Activision published a long press release in Blizzard IGN columns. In the latter, the editor regrets the work of the Ministry of Fair Employment and Housing and notes that the previously published document contained distorted comments and misrepresentations. While recognizing that improper conduct may have occurred, the company assures that all necessary measures have since been taken.
Activision Blizzard also deplores the use of the death of a company employee as part of this investigation. The publisher firmly denies that harassment could have led to an employee’s suicide and reiterates its commitment to its practices. In particular, he notes that there are procedures in place to report problematic behavior and that he regularly trains his teams on these issues.
We were extremely cooperative with the DFEH during their investigation, including providing extensive data and documentation, but they refused to tell us about any issues they saw. They were required by law to do appropriate research and have good faith discussions with us to better understand and resolve any claims or concerns before going to court, but they did not. Instead, they rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we’ll show in court.
We are outraged by the behavior of the DFEH, which included the tragic suicide of an employee whose death is unrelated to this case and regardless of her grieving family.
Waiting for new testimonials?
On the basis of this news, several testimonies begin to be heard. Former members of Blizzard speak on the networks and endorse the words of the DFEH. Some also state that these are practices that have been entrenched in the studio for many years. Long before the merger with Activision.
Oh yeah, one really important thing: this isn’t a special new thing that happened with the merger of Activision and Blizzard. This is * Blizzard * culture. Don’t give Blizzard another pass just because it’s fun to immerse yourself on Bobby Kotick.
– Terra Field 🏳️⚧️ (@RainofTerra) July 22, 2021
At the same time, Jez Corden, a journalist at Windows Central, confirmed hearing similar remarks. Several contacts who previously or currently worked at Blizzard appear to confirm the practices affected by the complaint. Ironically, this is a reminder of the historic compensation paid to Bobby Kotick, president of the Activision Blizzard group.
Some past and current Blizzard employees have contacted me and reviewed some of the claims made in the lawsuit, which contradict Activision’s testimony.
While Bobby Kotick collects an astronomical salary and goes shopping for a yacht, the employees he looks after suffer. https://t.co/qV0Y3f9uDB
– Jez (@JezCorden) July 22, 2021
So it could be that other voices will soon be heard. After Ubisoft, Riot Games or Naughty Dog, the video game industry seems to be changing. The harmful practices are slowly but surely being revealed. We must now hope that concrete action will be taken and that developers around the world will dare to speak out and denounce such behavior.
In any case, our video game walks are in no way worth those waves of harassment or crunch.
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