Activision Blizzard Being A Terrible Company: Explained
In an industry known for toxic culture, poor treatment of employees, and abysmal women’s rights stances, there’s one company that takes the cake home and then further abuses it. Activision Blizzard has come under intense scrutiny from the community and pressure from the justice system. For a game maker who’s created some of the world’s most popular games to play with friends; World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Diablo to name a few, they sure are bad at treating their own people right. Here’s a breakdown of the major controversies the company has idiotically brought upon itself by being objectively terrible.
Union Busting!
In January of 2022, just as Quality Assurance testers were about to form a union, Activision Blizzard happened to restructure the company, effectively squashing unionization efforts. Very cash money of them.
Three major shareholders at Activision, who all look like scary cult members, came under insider trading investigation after the three mysteriously bought millions of dollars of stock shortly before the company announced it was going to be acquired by tech giant Microsoft. Definitely just a coincidence, for sure, no doubt.
Sexual Harrassment!
In 2021 a lawsuit was brought by the State of California against the company after a 2 year investigation which found workplace conditions for non-dude employees to be pretty freaking terrible. The lawsuit alleges “Cube crawls” where male employees would get hammered and prowl the office harassing women. It also accuses the company of consistent discrimintation against female employees, like kicking new moms out of designated lactation rooms so male employees could use them for meetings and passing around nude photos of one employee at a holiday party. The employee later took her own life. Activision Blizzard: you truly are the worst.
Activision Blizzard
Once this lawsuit got kicked into high gear, Cali governor and pre-acid spill Batman villain looking guy Gavin Newsome probably fired a state lawyer for trying to prosecute Activision Blizzard. And wouldn’t you know it, an Activision board member gave $100,000 to a Newsome campaign. Isn’t that another weird coincidence?! And Meta/Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg put pressure on a UK celebrity gossip magazine to not publish damning stories about her ex-boyfriend and “alleged” terrible person Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard’s much despised CEO. Employees of the company have been calling for his resignation for years. It’s almost like having a bunch of power and not enough checks and balances… corrupts people?!
