I don't see any big-name news networks covering it, but Activision Blizzard King continues to remain under fire for harassment.
The Wall Street Journal posted an article on Tuesday detailing how CEO Bobby Kotick not only swept reports of harassment under the rug for years, but also was accused himself, the worst of which was him threating to kill a female employee, as well as threatening to "destroy" a female flight attendant on his private jet.
Internally, it has been chaos. Bobby sent out a video on Tuesday basically saying the media cannot be trusted, and that if we don't trust him, we do not support his efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion. This triggered a walkout across all ABK studios.
On Wednesday, there was a company-wide meeting in which we were told that, despite shareholders demanding Bobby's resignation, he will not resign, and that his past accusations are not covered under our new zero tolerance policy. They also said we need to move forward. This triggered another walkout.
As a survivor of sexual assault and the subject of harassment in gaming from a very early age (CrossFire voice chat was savage), this entire situation has retraumatized me, brought feelings back to the surface I thought were long put to bed. I have started to doubt my safety at work. I have been unable to focus at work, constantly checking emails, Twitter, and our ABK Worker's Alliance page for updates.
Although my particular studio has not been involved in any of the lawsuits or allegations, and in fact, have had DE&I policies in place before ABK as a whole did, it is still difficult to go to work knowing that behavior like Bobby's is tarnishing our work and affecting our partner studios.
The best thing anyone externally can do now is to support A Better ABK, our worker's alliance, which directly helps ABK employees and acts as liaison between us and the executives. Please don't boycott our games--we made them, not Bobby Kotick. We put our love and passion into our work, and it would hurt to see our work suffer. Lastly, treat the ABK dev teams with some compassion. Please don't go on Twitter demanding bug fixes or new maps or whatever it is gamers want these days. We are all just trying to survive right now.
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