Last week we gave you one of those news that we never like to give. The State of California in the United States had filed a complaint against Activision Blizzard, discriminating against women on the basis of sex, sexism and harassment.
While it is true that some public voices such as co-founder and former company director Mike Morhaime have come to apologize for these accusations, the company’s response has been to deny everything and even to announce that ‘she planned to fight the charges. For this reason, nearly 1,000 Activision Blizzard employees have decided to publish and sign a public letter in which they describe the company’s attitude as “disgusting and insulting
This is the open letter from Activision Blizzard employees
To the leaders of Activision Blizzard,
We, the undersigned, agree that the statements of Activision Blizzard, Inc. and its legal counsel regarding the DFEH lawsuit, as well as the subsequent internal statement by Frances Townsend, are odious and insulting to anything we believe our company should stand up for. . To put it plainly and unequivocally, our values as employees are not accurately reflected in the words and actions of our leaders.
We believe these statements have hampered our continued pursuit of equality within and outside our industry. Categorizing claims that have been made as “distorted and in many cases false” creates an atmosphere of society that victims do not believe. It also calls into question the ability of our organizations to hold perpetrators accountable and foster a safe environment for victims to come forward in the future. These statements make it clear that our leadership does not put our values first. Immediate corrections are needed at the highest level of our organization.
Executives at our company have said that steps will be taken to protect us, but in the face of the legal action and the disturbing official responses that followed, we no longer trust our leaders to put the safety of employees above their own. own interests. To claim that this is a “truly baseless and irresponsible trial” while seeing so many current and former employees speak out about their own experiences with harassment and abuse is simply unacceptable.
We call for official statements that recognize the seriousness of these allegations and show compassion for the victims of harassment and assault. We call on Frances Townsend to stand firm on her pledge to step down as executive sponsor of ABK’s Women Employees Network due to the prejudicial nature of her statement. We call on the leadership team to work with us on meaningful new efforts to ensure that employees, as well as our community, have a safe place to talk and introduce themselves.
We support all of our friends, teammates and colleagues, as well as members of our dedicated community, who have experienced abuse or harassment of any kind. We won’t be silenced, we won’t retire or give up until the company we love is a place to work we can all be proud to be a part of again. We will be the change.
