Gaming giant Activision Blizzard the company known for Call of Duty, World of Warcraft amongst other popular games reportedly has a “frat boy” culture. One report suggests that men working there have harassed women with jokes about rape.
Staff at Activision Blizzard are set to stage a walkout in protest at the handling of a discrimination lawsuit by senior leadership.
Last week, the state of California filed a lawsuit accusing them of maintaining a culture of sexual harassment, unequal pay, along with toxic working conditions.
The lawsuit states that men working at the company engage in “cube crawls” drinking “copious amounts of alcohol” before harassing women with jokes about rape.
Around 20% of the staff at Activision Bilzzard are women and an investigation by the state found that they are frequently subjected to groping and sexual assault.
The company first denied the claims made saying they were “distorted, and in many cases false, description of Blizzard’s past”, and they’d also be fighting the lawsuit.
Employees are now preparing to stage a walkout stating the responses from the management at Activision Blizzard have led them to “believe that our values as employees are not being accurately reflected in the words and actions of our leadership”.
Over 2,600 members of staff have signed an open letter calling the internal response to the lawsuit “abhorrent and insulting”, to which company boss Bobby Kotick has admitted was “tone deaf”.
The walkout comes coupled with a list of demands with the aim to “improve conditions for employees at the company, especially women, and in particular women of colour and transgender women, nonbinary people, and other marginalized groups”.
Some of these demands include an end to mandatory arbitration clauses in all employee contracts, better diversity and inclusion policies in regards to recruitment, pay data to be published and an independent review of the company’s reporting structure.
CEO Mr Kotick has recently written an open letter to staff that was shared publicly last night. Stating the previous response was “tone deaf” and promising “swift action”. Also adding there’s “no place anywhere” for “discrimination harassment or unequal treatment of any kind”.
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