Activision Blizzard's Culture of Harassment

Activision Blizzard, the publishing giant behind everything from Call of Duty to Overwatch , is being sued by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing over a “frat boy” workplace culture that it alleges has led to years of harassment and abuse targeting the women in its workforce.

A two-year investigation by the state agency found that the company discriminated against female employees in terms and conditions of employment, including compensation, assignment, promotion, and termination. Company leadership consistently failed to take steps to prevent discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, the agency said.

There’s some very specific, detailed and incredibly disturbing stuff in the documents, as Paul Tassi from Forbes notes:

The attached screenshot of part of the suit (trigger warning for harassment, abuse, suicide):

There’s a lot more like it:

Female employees almost universally confirmed that working for Defendants was akin to working in a frat house, which invariably involved male employees drinking and subjecting female employees to sexual harassment with no repercussion. “Cube crawls” in Defendants’ offices were common and male employees proudly came into work hungover. Similarly, male employees would play video games during work, engage in banter about their sexual encounters, talk openly about female bodies, and make numerous jokes about rape.

As a product of this “frat boy” culture, women were subjected to numerous sexual comments and advances, groping and unwanted physical touching, and other forms of harassment. A female employee noted that random male employees would approach her on Defendants’ work site and comment on her breasts. Female employees working for the World of Warcraft team noted that male employees and supervisors would hit on them, make derogatory comments about rape, and otherwise engage in demeaning behavior. This behavior was known to supervisors and indeed encouraged by them, including a male supervisor openly encouraging a male subordinate to “buy” a prostitute to cure his bad mood.

I’ve only read bits and pieces of the suit, and these article extracts and I feel ill. Every one of these victims deserves to be heard and compensated, and every one of these scumbags deserves to be sanctioned, made unemployable, or jailed.

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Seems like there are people who only think with their genitals, time to chop them off.
This is really horrible, dafuq kind of company runs like this, and with the mere mention of things like this, the company is going to most likely loose a lot of investors and trust, which is correct, these c!@#nts need to be brought back down to earth and face judgement.

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Apparently a lot of them

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Their share price is already down 1.5% in the first two hours of trade today:

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Wow, thats hectic and sick! But good that these festering puss gets air and the jerks get what they are due!

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Guess the China thing isn’t the only reason to boycott them.

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Didn’t this happen previously? I guess, nothing came of those protests either.

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Things like this that makes me glad that I do not work in an office environment. The first time someone does something like this to someone else and I witness it, is probably the day I get fired and arrested for assault.

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Activision Blizzard Employees Plan Walkout Wednesday To Protest Working Conditions

Workers demand Activision Blizzard improve conditions for women and other marginalized groups.

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Stock is down 12% over the last month now…

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…8.5% of that in the last week:

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Share price under $80 now. Down 15% in the last month, market capitalization down almost $10bn since this mess started.

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Unfortunately I believe that this is a token move, pandering to the public and/or shareholders. Unless they show some real changes in their corporate culture and how they support victims of sexual harassment,I really don’t think new leaders alone will make a difference. An entire new leadership team, maybe…

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I dunno… I still think EA deserves it more.

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I hate EA. Goes to play Stars Wars game
Activision is terrible. Relaxes after a kak work day, shooting noobs on Rust
2K is the devil. Feeling nostalgic, fires up borderlands 2, now this is a looter shooter
Epic Games, what a disgusting company. Slides up a ramp on Rankin, with shock rifle

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What happened with 2k?

2K refers to the amount of DLC or extra content you can buy outside of a base game release.

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1000 times this.

Also the number of times they’ll re-release GTA V

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Still sliding, despite assurances of change, investigation, being better.

Public efforts:

Not so public efforts:

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