blizzard Activision Blizzard Has Fired 20 Employees Over Harassment Claims and More

[Starym 3,801]

 

According to an internal letter to staff, Activision Blizzard has fired 20 employees and taken significant additional action in connection to the recent harassment lawsuit and all the allegations surrounding it.

The Financial Times initially reported on the 20 employees fired, as the internal staff letter also talked about 20 more that were reprimanded in relation to all the recent and past accusations, as well as a large expansion to the company's ethics and compliance team in order to create a "more accountable workplace". The Financial Times also spoke to Activision Blizzard’s chief compliance officer Frances Townsend (who had a pretty bad initial response to the lawsuit), and while she didn't name the specific employees fired due to legal reasons, she did clarify they included several game developers and a few supervisors, and that the company is trying to earn their team's confidence that new reports will be handled well. She also added that "Kotick and the Board basically gave me a blank cheque" for implementing changes to improve these issues.

Activision Blizzard is also tripling its training resources and is adding 19 full-time roles for its ethics and compliance team. You can read the full story over at the Financial Times or over at Reuters.

[Pregrowth 46]

Good, very good, now fix world of warcraft pvp.

[Prophet001 599]

I mean that's great but don't make this video game in a fantasy world a platform for your personal agenda.

That'll kill it faster than anything.

[Grumar 188]

I have little faith that all these employees may deserve it if they're treating this situation like they are removing in game material. There is no reason to believe they aren't either.

Edited October 20, 2021 by Grumar

[Dejo93 1,023]

Meh not really surprising tbh

[Monlyth 75]

My feeling on this is that it's unlikely to stop once and for all until Bobby Kotick goes. Most of the things in this lawsuit happened under his leadership. Rot starts at the head.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Monlyth

[Yridaa 490]

1 hour ago, Monlyth said:

Most of the things in this lawsuit happened under his leadership. Rot starts at the head.

Absolutely false. Afrasiabi started the harassment way before Kotick had any influence in the company. And there are allegations of others in that time period as well (2003-2007). Afrasiabi was already highly placed back then so if you conclude Blizzard to be a multi headed hydra, then rot still starts at the head? 🤔

[Arcling 898]

They still didn't fire Townsend, so there is that. She should have been one of the first to go.

8 hours ago, Monlyth said:

My feeling on this is that it's unlikely to stop once and for all until Bobby Kotick goes. Most of the things in this lawsuit happened under his leadership. Rot starts at the head.

Unfortunately, some of the "old guard" weren't those great guys people believed them to be. As it was mentioned above, it started way before their parent company changed from Vivendi (and they weren't saints either) to Activision. As scummy as Kotick is, he wasn't directly in charge of their subsidiaries, it's not his job to run daily operations. Most of lawsuit pointed to how Mike Morhaime neglected instances of harassment, like "Alex, stop being overly friendly with employees, ok?". Jeff Kaplan was also the one who brought Afrasiabi into the company, they were close friends, so his earlier departure might had something to do with it, possibly just neglect like with Morhaime and several others.

To be honest, it's not surprising more cases like these are being discovered. "Culture" in the industry was horrible back then (it still is in many places), plus there wasn't that much of a public talk about these issues. Especially with companies that were started and ran by a group of friends, so some people were untouchable there and the most they would get was the aforementioned "don't be too friendly". Hard to remove abusers when they are friends with company's presidents.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Arcling

[Migeru71 15]

"a large expansion to the company's ethics and compliance team in order to create a "more accountable workplace""

 

In English that means a team of unaccountable pitchfork-wielding wokesters with a license to engage in unencumbered witch hunts. It will create every bit as toxic a workplace as the sexual harassers did.