CEO of Bobby Kotick, CEO of Blizzard Activision, called a 2021 petition signed by more than a thousand employees of Activision Blizzard to eliminate him as the “Fake” CEO, and suggest harassment complaints and legal lawsuits offered against Activision Blizzard designed by Lien Minh media staff to attract new members. Kotick made comments while appearing on Grit, a business podcast of the US venture capital company Kleiner Perkins. He appeared on Podcast with former CEO EA Bing Gordon (thanks, Gamespot), to talk about both of their company history.
Kotick’s references are widely reported with incidents with the cultural allegations of the company’s cultural harassment, threats and paying wages during the time – coinciding with a lawsuit against the company – and the petition is called this to eliminate him as CEO, which has attracted a thousand signatures.
The petition was a report by Wall Street magazine (paid), highlighting some of the harassment accused by Activision staff, along with reports that Kotick was aware of these allegations but did not notify the company’s Board of Directors and intervened to prevent the dismissal of harassers. It was not only the active staff, who found these statements as an alarming statement: a group of shareholders of the company called for Kotick’s resignation shortly thereafter. Kotick denies any misconduct.
After being reminded by Kotick “2021”, the Podcast host Joubin Mirzadega said that “peak social activities at work”, related to that time. “There is a petition. Like, a thousand people signed it.”
“It was fake,” Kotick said.
“The Board of Directors. The independent auditors. Everyone is like: This guy does nothing wrong,” Mirzadega continued, confirming that a petition against Kotick was the theme of the conversation.
Kotick then expanded the discussion to include broader statements about the wrong behavior at the workplace at Activision Blizzard. Some of the platforms of that first: the California’s justice and housing have filed a lawsuit in the summer of 2021 after two years of DFEH’s investigation. The lawsuit sued that the company’s culture is “a reproductive place to harass and discriminate against women”. A $ 54.875 million agreement was finally achieved in December 2023, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying that “there is no court or any independent investigation that proved any allegations. [of] Sexual or spacious sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard “.
In an additional statement given to the RPS at the time, an Activision Blizzard spokesman commented that “CRD (previously DFEH) admitted that no Court’s investigation or independence proves any allegations that ‘Activision Blizzard’s Board of Directors, including its executive director,, it
In Podcast Grit this week, Kotick argues that harassment requirements and legal lawsuits against Activision Blizzard, in fact, are designed by the media staff of the Union to attract new members.
“I can tell you exactly what happened,” he said. “The media staff of the Union began to look at technology. They continued to lose because they represent the News Association, Comcast and they realized that they were losing members at a truly dramatic speed, so they had to find out: How do they get new union members? So they have targeted a variety of businesses.
“It was the strength of the trade unions,” Kotick continued. “I didn’t really understand this until we went through this process. They were able to have a government agency, Eeoc and a state employment agency called a fair and housing, to submit fake lawsuits against us and Riot Games made allegations to the wrong workplace.”
Some other contexts about Riot: by 2022, they agreed to pay 100 million dollars to resolve a collective lawsuit that gives them because of “gender discrimination and sexual harassment system”, after both DFEH and the California labor standards object to the initial $ 10 million settlement.
“They are very smart,” Kotick continued on Podcast. “They realized that it would be something they could go to a company – because we paid well, we had great benefits – and they could say, hey, culture was bad! Everyone was harassed or they were retired. There was a discrimination. Kotick is capable of referring to Chris Shelton and Sara Stephens here, President and Secretary-Fund Secretariat of CWA at the time.
“They made this plan, hired a PR company and they started attacking our company. They asked these two agencies to file a lawsuit to declare some sexual harassment.
“Do you know this happened?” Ask Mirzadega.
“I saw at another company they knew in advance,” Gordon added, but not the company in the question. “Many newspapers have been made up of trade union activists.”
“I don’t know anything of them,” Kotick said. “I am one of those people. I think maybe from my education, but when I heard about things inappropriate at work, I just fired everyone.
“I mean, think about it. I dated Sheryl Sandberg,” he laughed. “Do you think we have problems with equity and gender pay when operating?
If Kotick’s proposal here is his connection with the former Meta Coo Sandberg – who supported the equal representative at work – evidence that the allegations against him are unfounded, perhaps notably Sandberg itself is the subject of the allegations that she has worked with Kotick to turn off the report on treating women. According to Wall Street 2022 Report, Sandberg was accused of putting pressure on the UK’s tabloid newspaper to quit stories of a ban on Kotick from an ex -girlfriend, while Kotick and Sandberg were dating.
Working with a group of Facebook and Activision employees as well as external advisors, “WSJ wrote,” Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Kotick developed a strategy to persuade Daily Mail to not report on the ban, before they encountered a problem in 2019. Reflecting her negative reputation as a supporter for women. “
Kotick denied the allegations and ex -girlfriend then withdrew some of her statements.
As well as in some cases, the abuse of employees in Activision Blizzard, the magazine Wall Street’s article also emphasized other cases where Kotick was sued for wrongdoing. In 2006, one of his assistants “complained that he had harassed her, including by threatening in a dialogue to kill her.” Kotick reported to solve the problem from the court. “Mr. Kotick quickly apologized 16 years ago for his clear and inappropriate voice, and he was extremely regretful about the exhaust and tone of his voice to this day,” an Activision spokesman told WSJ.
Kotick also faced the suggestions he considered buying the press to ensure the positive insurance scope for Activision. In 2022, another report of Wall Street magazine wrote that Kotick proposed to buy Kotaku or PC gamer to “change the story” around the company. From WSJ:
“Kotick has been eager to change the company’s public report, and in recent weeks has proposed Activision Blizzard to make a number of acquisitions, including game commercial publications such as Kotaku and PC Gamer, according to people who are familiar with him.
We contacted CWA to comment on all this.
