Employees at Activision Blizzard walked out Tuesday to call for CEO Bobby Kotick’s resignation. The protest followed a disturbing Wall Street Journal report earlier the same day about Kotick’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations at the company. Now a group of employees have decided they will no longer silently tolerate his management.
“There’s just no faith at all among employees in leadership,” says one current Blizzard employee. “Nobody actually likes these guys, across the company.”
The action came together quickly on Tuesday. More than 150 people gathered outside Activision Blizzard’s headquarters in Irvine, California, many carrying signs with phrases like “NO CONFIDENCE IN KOTICK” and “UNACCOUNTABLE CORPORATE BUREAUCRATS ARE DRIVING THE BEST EMPLOYEES OUT OF ACTIVISION BLIZZARD.” Additional employees joined the protest remotely by stopping their work for the day. “We will not be silenced until Bobby Kotick has been replaced as CEO,” tweeted the Activision Blizzard King Workers Alliance, a group of employee activists who helped organize the walkout.
This is the second employee walkout this year in response to allegations of discrimination and misconduct at Activision Blizzard. The first occurred in July, after California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed an explosive 29-page lawsuit against the company. It alleged that women did not receive fair compensation and were unable to advance on par with male counterparts, but it also contained hair-raising allegations of abuse. In September, the company agreed to pay $18 million to settle a separate workplace harassment and discrimination complaint from the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The US Securities and Exchange Commission also began investigating the company. Activision Blizzard has received 500 current and former employees’ allegations of workplace bias, misconduct, or abuse since late July, the The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
More than 150 people gathered at Activision Blizzard's campus on Tuesday to protest company leadership.
Photograph: Anonymous*
