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CEO Bobby Kotick: Now it's about his future at Activision Blizzard
Photo: JAVIER ROJAS / ZUMA Wire / IMAGO
The US company Activision Blizzard stands for some of the most famous games and game series, from "World of Warcraft" to "Call of Duty" and "Diablo" to "Candy Crush". With its digital worlds, it generates billions in sales. But for a few months now, Activision Blizzard has also stood for something else: an apparently misogynistic corporate culture. It has been pervading at least parts of the large game company for years, which consists of various, largely independent studios.
It's about a toxic working atmosphere, about discrimination, about sexism.
In July, the California Occupational Safety and Health Agency filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard.
The culture within the company, which sees it as its mission to "connect the world through epic entertainment," is a "breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women," the complaint said.
After revelations about companies such as Riot Games ("League of Legends") and Ubisoft ("Assassin's Creed"), the games industry, which is still largely male, had the next big scandal.
20 employees left the company
Activision Blizzard tried to rebut the allegations: The picture sketched by the occupational safety and health authority does not correspond to today's corporate culture, it said in July, in which "there is no place for sexual misconduct or harassment of any kind".
The allegations are out of date and there have been major changes in recent years.
In practice, however, there was a need for action in the coming months: In September, a settlement was reached with another US agency that has investigated the company's practices, in which Activision will pay Blizzard 18 million dollars.
And the company informed its workforce in October that 20 people had left the company in the wake of allegations of their behavior.
Disciplinary measures were also taken against a further 20 employees.
The image of the company is far from being saved by such steps.
On Tuesday, the culture debate at Activision Blizzard and its studios reached a new high point.
Now it's Bobby Kotick's job
Current research by the "Wall Street Journal" suggests that company boss Bobby Kotick was better aware of the dark side of his company than he disclosed internally and externally.
Kotick has been the head of Activision Blizzard since 2008, before he had been in charge of the predecessor company Activision since 1991.
From interviews and internal documents, the picture emerges that Kotick did not inform the board of Activision Blizzard about everything he knew, reports the Wall Street Journal, citing insiders , received praise upon their departure, while their colleagues were asked to remain silent on the matter. "
In one case, a former employee accused her former boss of two rapes, it is said.
The man is said to have urged the woman in the run-up to the assaults to drink alcohol.
Company boss Kotick is said to have learned of those incidents from 2016 and 2017 through an email.
In the months following that 2018 email, Activision Blizzard is said to have reached an out-of-court settlement with the woman, the report said, while the alleged perpetrator was fired. However, Bobby Kotick is said to have never informed the board of directors about the agreement, nor about the allegations against the manager, according to the sources of the "Wall Street Journal". The article describes other situations in which Kotick's behavior seems questionable. For example, he is said to have advocated not dismissing a co-studio boss, although this was recommended to the company after an internal investigation into a case of sexual harassment.
In 2006, Kotick allegedly molested an assistant and threatened her with death in a voice message.
According to a spokeswoman for Activision Blizzard, Kotick apologized for the message back then.
»An inaccurate and misleading picture of our company«
In a statement on the text, Bobby Kotick himself spoke of an "article that paints an inaccurate and misleading picture of our company, of me personally and of my leadership."
"Anyone who doubts my conviction that I can offer the most inviting, inclusive place to work doesn't know how important that is to me," says Kotick.
They put on a zero tolerance policy for inappropriate behavior, "and zero means zero".
A message to investors from Activision Blizzard said, "The Wall Street Journal is ignoring major changes underway to create the most welcoming and inclusive place to work in the industry, and it doesn't take into account the efforts of the thousands of employees working work hard every day to live up to their - and our - values. «The company also emphasized that it has been generating above-average returns for its shareholders for over 30 years.
The article also tells you something new about top manager Jen Oneal.
The long-time employee was appointed co-boss of the Blizzard studio responsible for "World of Warcraft" in August.
She became the first woman to run a studio at Activision Blizzard.
In November, Oneal announced that it would be leaving the company without going into detail about its reasons.
The "Wall Street Journal" now reports that Oneal has complained, among other things, that she earns less than the male co-boss Mike Ybarra.
Oneal is said to have written in an internal email that she was also sexually molested earlier in her career at the company.
"I was marginalized, marginalized and discriminated against," she writes in it.
One of the allegations that the California Occupational Safety and Health Agency has leveled against Activision Blizzard is that the company pays women less than men.
The reputation as an attractive employer is battered
How badly all the negative headlines will hurt Activision Blizzard over the long term is difficult to assess.
In any case, the company's reputation as an attractive employer has been battered.
According to the Wall Street Journal, since July alone, the company has received more than 500 reports from current and former employees about problems such as harassment, sexual assault, bullying and unequal pay.
At the same time, however, the impact of the scandal on the sales figures of games or the turnover from in-game purchases is likely to be manageable - the company's brands are too popular, and too little gamers make their purchase decisions dependent on internal company information.
Recently, some fans were annoyed that allegedly in the course of the change in leadership at Studio Blizzard, the release of "Diablo IV" and "Overwatch 2" was postponed.
Investors, however, are likely to be unsettled that the company's boss is now also at the center of the criticism.
In the past few months, Kotick had acted as a cleaner.
As a symbolic gesture, he recently lowered his annual salary to the California minimum wage of $ 62,500 after it had previously been $ 154 million.
On Tuesday, around 150 employees of his company called for Koticks to resign at a so-called walk-out, a protest event at the company headquarters.
That number seems small in view of a total of around 10,000 employees.
The tech journalist Jason Schreier, however, who knows the US games industry very well, calls the number of participants "impressive" - given that the campaign was only two hours in advance and that many employees were working from home.
On the article in the "Wall Street Journal" Schreier commented: "It's hard to imagine that Bobby Kotick will remain CEO after this report."