Activision Blizzard and its current and former employees are in the middle of dealing with the fallout of a lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing that alleges the company fostered a “frat boy” culture in which female employees were subjected to sexual harasssment, unequal pay, and much more.
Since the lawsuit was filed on July 20, actions have been taken, sources have spoken their stories, Blizzard’s CEO J. Allen Brack has stepped down, and much more. It can be tough to keep track of everything that has happened so far, so we’ve created this timeline of events that will help keep you up-to-date on everything going on to stop these horrific problems from ever happening again.
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July 20, 2021 – Activision Blizzard Sued by California over Allegations of ‘Frat Boy Culture’ and Sexual Harassment
Following a two-year investigation by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the state filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, alleging that the company fostered a “frat boy” culture in which female employees were subjected to unequal pay and sexual harassment.
The lawsuit claimed that female employees of all levels of employment were impacted by this, and the state also alleged that Blizzard’s leadership failed to address any of these outstanding issues or prevent them from occurring within the workplace.
This “frat boy” culture was seen in male employees drinking “copious amounts of alcohol” as they made their way through cubicles to often “engage in inappropriate behavior toward female employees.”
One particular incident cited in the lawsuit involves a female employee, who was already subjected to intense sexual harassment at the company, committing suicide during a work trip with a male supervisor who allegedly brought inappropriate, sexual items with him on their trip.
A source who has since departed Blizzard told IGN another story about how the room designated for breastfeeding didn’t have locks.
“Men would walk into the breastfeeding room. There was no way to lock the door. They would just stare and I would have to scream at them to leave,” The source said. IGN understands locks have since been added.
The lawsuit asks for an injunction that would force Activision Blizzard to comply with workplace protections, as well as deliver unpair wages, pay adjustments, back pay, and lost wages and benefits for female employees who were harassed.
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July 21, 2021 – Activision Blizzard Released a Heavily Criticized Official Statement in Response to the Lawsuit
A day after the lawsuit made headlines, Activision Blizzard released an official statement in response, claiming that the “DFEH includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past.” It claimed it has been “extremely cooperative with the DFEH throughout their investigation,” but that they “refused to inform us what issues they perceived.”
Activision Blizzard then accused them of rushing to file an inaccurate complaint and failing to have “good faith discussions with us to better understand and to resolve any claims or concerns before going to litigation.”
“We are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family,” Activision Blizzard wrote. “While we find this behaviour to be disgraceful and unprofessional, it is, unfortunately, an example of how they have conducted themselves throughout the course of their investigation. It is this type of irresponsible behaviour from unaccountable State bureaucrats that are driving many of the State’s best businesses out of California.”
The company continued on to say that it has taken many steps to strengthen its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and combined its Employee Networks at a global level to provide additional support.
This response led to over 2,000 former and current Activision Blizzard employees signing an internal letter criticizing the company’s public statement regarding the lawsuit, saying the response was “abhorrent and insulting.” The letter also said that these employees “no longer trust” that the company’s leaders “will place employee safety above their own interests.”
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July 22, 2021 – Blizzard J. Allen Brack Emails the Staff to Address the Lawsuit
Blizzard president J. Allen Brack emailed staff at the company to address the lawsuit, calling the reported behavior “completely unacceptable” and promising to discuss issues with employees to help move the company forward.
Obtained and posted by Bloomberg, his letter does not address any of the specifics of the legal case, but Brack does discuss “iterating on our culture,” and a “commitment to continuous improvement.” He also said, “I disdain ‘bro culture,’ and have spent my career fighting against it.”
July 22, 2021 – Activision Blizzard Executive and Former Homeland Security Advisor to George W. Bush Fran Townsend Sends Internal Email
Activision Blizzard executive and former Homeland Security Advisor to George W. Bush sent a very different type of letter to the internal Blizzard staff which sounded much different from the one sent by J. Allen Brack.
She claimed the lawsuit “presented a distorted and untrue picture of our company, including factually incorrect, old, and out of context stories – some from more than a decade ago.” She continued to speak about the supposed steps Blizzard has taken to ensure it is a safe and inclusive company, and says that “egregious actions of others” and this “truly meritless and irresponsible lawsuit” shouldn’t “damage our culture of respect and equal opportunity for all employees.”
One of IGN’s sources shared that Townsend’s letter was one of the key factors in spurring Activision Blizzard employees to action.
“That’s when employees really began to feel like the narrative was not heading in a direction that was reflective of our beliefs and of the demands [for] the changes that we want to see,” they said. “So in an act of solidarity with the victims, as well as to create this call to action, a walkout was formed. Once the logistics were all confirmed, that’s when we publicized it to the rest of the company.”
Amidst all of this, Townsend also tweeted out an article that discusses the problem with whistleblowing.
July 24, 2021 – Former Blizzard Executives Apologise for Failing Employees
Blizzard co-founder and ex-CEO Mike Morhaime shared his thoughts on the allegations levied against his former company and said, “to the Blizzard women who experienced any of these things, I am extremely sorry that I failed you.” He continued by saying that “it feels like everything I thought I stood for has been washed away.”
Former senior VP of story and franchise development Chris Metzen also shared his thoughts on Twitter, saying, “I offer my very deepest apologies for the part I played in a culture that fostered harassment, inequality, and indifference. There is no excuse.”
He said that he was “having trouble reconciling the place I knew, loved, and worked in for so long with the hard reality that has been presented over the past few days. It’s like staring at two totally different worlds. But it’s not. It’s just the one world, and the yawning disconnect between my perception from the top and the crushing reality many of you experiences fills me with profound shame.”
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July 25, 2021 – Senior System Designer on World of Warcraft Says ‘Almost No Work is Being Done on World of Warcraft’ Following the Lawsuit
World of Warcraft senior system designer Jeff Hamilton took to Twitter to share his thoughts on the “terrible” statement by Activision Blizzard in response to the lawsuit. He believes that all these allegations need to be “taken seriously and in good faith” and that those found guilty “deserve both removal from the company and criminal investigation.”
He also confirmed that “almost no work is being done on World of Warcraft right now while this obscenity plays out. And that benefits nobody – not the players, not the developers, not the shareholders. Activision’s response to this is currently taking a group of world-class developers and making them so mad and traumatized they’re rendered unable to keep making a great game.”
July 27, 2021 – World of Warcraft Will Remove Inappropriate References from WoW and WoW Classic
The World of Warcraft team made their first official statement since the lawsuit was made public, saying that it will remove inappropriate references from both WoW and WoW Classic.
While the team didn’t go into specifics, WoW does have references to some developers and team members who were named in the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing lawsuit, including Alex Afrasiabi.
The statement is a promising one, but IGN’s own reporting shed light on the former WoW leadership that were “untouchable,” which helped lead to many of these issues.
“WoW makes money, so the people at the top of WoW are untouchable, which means they get away with lots of shit.” A Blizzard source said. “Also if you were there a long time, which most of the WoW team leadership was, you were ‘in the family’ and pretty much untouchable, which is the breeding ground for behavior like this.”
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July 27, 2021 – Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick Issues a Response, Calling the Company’s Initial Statement ‘Tone Deaf’
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick released a statement that called the company’s initial statement “tone deaf,” and he promised “swift action” and said there’s no place anywhere for “discrimination, harassment, or unequal treatment of any kind.”
In the short term, Kotick said the company would be investigating every claim of harassment while offering listening sessions and evaluating managers. He also pledged to add resources to ensure that Activision Blizzard’s hiring practices are more diverse.
As reported by Kotaku, Activision Blizzard would go on to retain the services of the law firm WilmerHale to help “review policies and procedures to help promote a more respectful and inclusive workplace.” This was the same law firm that is helping Amazon keep its workers from unionizing.
On July 28, Activision Blizzard employees issued a response to Kotick’s message, saying that while they are pleased that the tone of leadership communications has changed, Kotick’s messaged failed to address multiple concerns expressed by those at the company.
It didn’t address any of the demands from those involved in the walkout and the employees said that they expect “a prompt response and a commitment to action from leadership.”
July 27-28, 2021 – Activision Blizzard Employees Stage a Walkout and List Demands
Activision Blizzard employees announced on July 27 that they would be staging a walkout on July 28 in protest of the response the company’s leadership made to the lawsuit that highlighted harassment, inequality, and more within the company.
The employees also shared their list of demands, which are as follows;
- An end to mandatory arbitration clauses in all employee contracts, current and future. Arbitration clauses protect abusers and limit the ability of victims to seek restitution.
- The adoption of recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and promotion policies designed to improve representation among employees at all levels, agreed upon by employees in a company-wide Diversity, Equity & Inclusion organization. Current practices have led to women, in particular women of color and transgender women, nonbinary people, and other marginalized groups that are vulnerable to gender discrimination not being hired fairly for new roles when compared to men.
- Publication of data on relative compensation (including equity grants and profit sharing), promotion rates, and salary ranges for employees of all genders and ethnicities at the company. Current practices have led to aforementioned groups not being paid or promoted fairly.
- Empower a company-wide Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion task force to hire a third party to audit ABK’s reporting structure, HR department, and executive staff. It is imperative to identify how current systems have failed to prevent employee harassment, and to propose new solutions to address these issues.
Blizzard confirmed it would offer paid time off for those employees who wished to be part of this walkout.
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July 28, 2021 – Ubisoft Employees Sign Letter Supporting Activision Blizzard Walkout, Demand Better From Ubisoft
Nearly 500 Ubisoft employees signed an open letter asserting solidarity with Activision Blizzard as they were performing a walkout. The letter also criticized Ubisoft’s handling of last year’s sexual misconduct revelations.
“[W]e have seen nothing more than a year of kind words, empty promises and an inability or unwillingness to remove known offenders,” the letter states. “We no longer trust your commitment to address these issues at their core. You need to do more.”
July 29, 2021 – Activision Blizzard Confirms That Former Senior Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi Was Fired in 2020
Activision Blizzard confirmed that former Blizzard senior creative director Alex Afrasiabi, who was named in the DFEH lawsuit, was fired in 2020 for “misconduct in his treatment of other employees.”
In a statement to Kotaku regarding Afrasabi’s involvement in the so-called “Cosby Suite” that was a hotel room reportedly used for networking by Blizzard employees, a Blizzard spokesperson said, “An employee brought these 2013 events to our attention in June 2020. We immediately conducted our own investigation and took corrective action. At the time of the report, we had already conducted a separate investigation of Alex Afrasiabi and terminated him for his misconduct in his treatment of other employees.”
This “Cosby Suite” was the name given to Afrasiabi’s BlizzCon 2013 hotel room and was a “meeting place where many, including Afrasiabi, would pose with an actual portrait of Bill Cosby while smiling.”
IGN learned from a source that Afrasiabi was leading an incubation development team as late as May 2020.
July 31, 2021 – Security Researcher Reveals Blizzard Recruiters Harassed Her at a Job Fair
As reported by Waypoint, security researcher Emily Mitchell shared a story that showed how systemic these issues at Activision Blizzard are. In August 2015, Mitchell was looking for a job and approached the Blizzard booth to see what positions were available. While she was hoping for a new opportunity, she was instead met with harassment.
Mitchell asked about a penetration testing (or pentesting) position, which is an industry term for a security audit, and one of the Blizzard employees asked her if she was lost, while another one asked if she was at the conference with her boyfriend. The third asked if she even knew what pentesting was.
“One of them asked me when was the last time I was personally penetrated, if I liked being penetrated, and how often I got penetrated,” Mitchell told Waypoint. “I was furious and felt humiliated so I took the free swag and left.”
August 3, 2021 – Blizzard President J. Allen Brack Steps Down
Following the Activision Blizzard lawsuit, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack confirmed he was “leaving the company to pursue new opportunities.”
Announced by Blizzard, Brack will be replaced by “co-leader” Jen ONeal and Mike Ybarra. Oneal joined Blizzard in January 2021 after leading Vicarious Visions and Ybarra joined Blizzard in 2019 after leaving Xbox as an executive.
Brack was mentioned in the lawsuit, having reportedly only given a “slap on the wrist” to ex-creative director Alex Afrasiabi, despite having received complaints about consistent sexual misconduct at the company. He also received renewed criticism following the resurfacing of a video from BlizzCon 2010 that showed Brack and Afrasiabi laughing at a fan’s questions as to whether new female characters in World of Warcraft might be less sexualized.
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August 3, 2021 – Activision Blizzard Employees Form Coalition, Reject CEO’s Choice of Law Firm
A coalition of workers from across multiple Activision Blizzard development studios have sent a joint letter to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and his executive leadership team that criticizes the company’s decision to hire law firm WilmerHale.
This group, which is calling itself the ABK Workers Alliance, have expressed their frustrations over not just the hiring of the law firm that is currently working on helping Amazon prevent its employees from unionizing, but also over the fact that Kotick did not “meaningfully address” workers’ demands following last week’s walkout.
The ABK Workers Alliance says it rejects the hiring of WilmerHale as it claims there is a conflicting interest due to its “pre-existing relationships with Activision Blizzard and its executives,” WilmerHale’s history of “discouraging workers’ rights and collective actions,” and Stephanie Avakians’s history of “protecting the wealthy and powerful.”
The letter also calls on Kotick and the executive leadership to full address the list of their demands, and the ABK Workers Alliance has outlined the steps they are taking internally to improve their workplace, including worker-to-worker mentorships, open listening sessions, and community meetings.
You can read the full letter here.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
