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Nearly year after an explosive lawsuit by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing kicked off a firestorm of sexual harassment and discrimination allegations at Activision Blizzard, a Board of Directors working group investigating the company has released its findings. Led by a 25-year veteran of the Call of Duty publisher, the group concluded there was never any “systemic issue with harassment, discrimination or retaliation” at Activision Blizzard.
“Contrary to many of the allegations, the Board and its external advisors have determined that there is no evidence to suggest that Activision Blizzard senior executives ever intentionally ignored or attempted to downplay the instances of gender harassment that occurred and were reported,” the Workplace Responsibility Committee wrote to shareholders in a June 16 SEC filing. “While there are some substantiated instances of gender harassment, those unfortunate circumstances do not support the conclusion that Activision senior leadership or the Board were aware of and tolerated gender harassment or that there was ever a systemic issue with harassment, discrimination, or retaliation.”
These findings are aimed squarely at refuting allegations in the DFEH lawsuit and those raised in a November 2021 Wall Street Journal investigation. The latter reported that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick failed to report a 2018 settlement with an alleged rape victim at Call of Duty: Vanguard maker Sledgehammer Games to the company’s Board.
The report also claimed Kotick threatened to have his female assistant killed in a 2006 voicemail and interfered to prevent the co-head of Call of Duty: Black Ops studio Treyarch, Dan Bunting, from being fired for sexual harassment. An Activision spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal at the time that Kotick had always kept the Board informed, apologized to the assistant for the hyperbolic language, and that Bunting was properly disciplined when the incident occured. However, shortly after the Wall Street Journal asked about the matter, Bunting resigned from the company.
Activision Blizzard Clears Itself Of Any Wrongdoing
The Call of Duty publisher says it’s the victim of an ‘unrelenting barrage of media criticism’
kotaku.com
