The Wall Street Journal is reporting thatfollowing the company’s recent sale to Microsoft, efforts to pursue Activision Blizzard—and its embattled CEO Bobby Kotick—have escalated at both the state and federal level.
The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, whose initial investigation kicked off this entire thing last yearhave now “subpoenaed Activision’s directors related to the company’s handling of the workplace issues”, and have also “subpoenaed police departments in the Los Angeles-area for any records they have related to longtime Chief Executive Bobby Kotick and 18 other current and former Activision employees”.
Federally, the Securities and Exchange Commission has also “sent an additional subpoena to Activision as part of an investigation it launched last year into the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations”. In response, an Activision representative told the WSJ that the subpoenas were an “extraordinary fishing expedition”.
While original requests for information from the SEC were from recent years, this latest filing reportedly requests “records and communications from a much longer list of current and former executives”, and dates all the way back to 2016.
If you would like to meet some of the “directors” listed above, here they are.
Activision Blizzard has had quite the year, with the initial news of the DFEH’s investigation kicking off a sequence of events that led to a number of high-profile departures and firings, further investigations, internal revolt, derision from the company’s peers, a mass departure of workers, unionization efforts and allegations that Kotick himself had been involved in incidents of harassment.
And that was all before Microsoft stepped in to buy the beleaguered company for just under $70 billion
UPDATE 7:00pm ET – An Activision Blizzard spokesperson tells Kotaku:
The DFEH is requesting sensitive, confidential information with no limits or relevant scope from Southern California police departments. This serves no legitimate purpose. It represents yet another questionable tactic in DFEH’s broader effort to derail AB’s settlement with the EEOC. Rather than protecting California workers, the DFEH is impeding the meaningful progress at Activision Blizzard and delaying compensation to affected employees.
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