News business Activision Blizzard: The company accused of poison culture by the California state
This Tuesday, July 20, 2021, the DFEH (Department of Fair Employment and Housing) of California filed a lawsuit against Activision-Blizzard in the Superior Court of Los Angeles.
The DFEH is an official body whose task it is to protect all employees from various threats and accuses the publisher of “constant sexual harassment including touching, comments and advances”.
The DFEH relies on a survey carried out over 2 years
Examples are given, such as where on the World of Warcraft development team Sexism would be particularly stubborn with “Reflections on Rape and Recurring Flirting”. The company is too Accused of recruitment discrimination and unequal treatment of women and men.
The complaint also highlights an employee’s suicide : After the discovery of photos in which she appeared naked, her colleagues had repeatedly harassed her. She ended her life on a business trip.
Given the magnitude of this news, the publisher published a communicates. With regard to the suicide cited above, the company declares itself “disgusted with the reprehensible behavior of the DFEH, which connects the lawsuit with the tragic suicide of an employee whose death is unrelated to this affair and regardless of her grieving family. ”
The DFEH contains skewed and sometimes incorrect descriptions of Blizzard’s past. We were extremely cooperative with them during their investigation and provided them with a lot of information and documents, but they refused to tell us about the perceived issues. The law required them to properly investigate and have good faith conversations with us in order to better understand and resolve problems or difficulties before they were brought to justice for what they did not do. Instead, they rushed to file an inaccurate complaint as we will prove in court. We celebrate diversity and want to create a work environment that is inclusive for everyone. Sexual behavior or harassment of any kind has no place in our society or industry or in any environment. We take these allegations very seriously and will investigate all of them. In cases of proven misconduct, decisions were made to correct the problem.
Activision-Blizzard then said it was “confident in its ability to demonstrate its practices as an equal employer”.
