Activision Blizzard faces another lawsuit over sexual harassment
Activision has been served another lawsuit over harassment at the company. As Bloomberg Law and Game Developer report, an anonymous woman still working at Activision Blizzard has sued the game developer in a Los Angeles court for allegedly enabling sexual harassment and discrimination. The company also retaliated against her when she shared her experiences at a December 2021 press conference, according to the complaint.
As with past suits, the woman accused Activision Blizzard of routinely allowing misconduct. The senior administrative assistant in IT was reportedly pressured to join in “cube crawls” where women were harassed and groped, and was told to tolerate unwanted sexual advances and excessive drinking. She was also asked to keep her complaints private, according to the suit, and supposedly faced an increasingly hostile workplace the more she spoke out.
The plaintiff said she applied for positions elsewhere in the company to avoid sexism in IT, and wrote to president Allen Brack (who stepped down in August 2021 as the scandal grew) about the problems. She was offered and took a lower-paying role elsewhere in the company, but noted that her application for an executive assistant job was rejected in December that year, shortly after she’d applied in November.
In the lawsuit, the woman demands damages that include lost earnings and medical expenses. She also asks for functional reforms, including the ouster of CEO Bobby Kotick, a rotating human resources team (to prevent conflicts of interest) and the use of a neutral firm to investigate incidents.
We’ve asked Activision Blizzard for comment. The company has used some measures to address harassment and discrimination complaints, including removing employees, taking disciplinary actions and forming a committee to implement anti-harassment initiatives. It also settled an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit and has been more cooperative with investigations. However, it’s still facing a mounting number of legal challenges that include both more lawsuits and an SEC investigation — the debacle is far from over.
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