In 1999 I moved back to the good ol US of A from Honduras for the last time. I was back in the land of the free, home of the brave. As fate would have it I’d end up living in Shreveport, La. in a nice middle class neighborhood. At this point in my gaming life all I had was a PlayStation and Metal Gear Solid. Enter my friend John. John had a pc with some games on it and one game he had stood taller than the rest, Diablo 2. This classic piece of gaming history was my first introduction to Blizzard games. Then came Warcraft 3 and inevitably World of Warcraft. For years to come Blizzard was among the best game developers to me. There was nothing that they could do wrong. Fast forward some years and that is no longer the case and what’s worse is now Activision Blizzard stand a chance at creating a dangerous precedent in an age where we are fighting against inequality, harassment, and prejudice because apparently it is incredibly challenging to just be a decent human being.
On July 20th the state of California filed a workplace discrimination and harassment lawsuit against Activision Blizzard. According to an article in Time.com "A two-year investigation by DFEH concluded that the company allowed a “frat bro” culture to take hold, according to the lawsuit, and create an environment that allowed sexual harassment to subsist with impunity. Widespread complaints from women included their appearance regularly commented on and being groped by male employees, as well as being pursued romantically by male supervisors." Things got so bad that one employee took her own life as a result of the tormenting abuse and harassment she was on the receiving end of. Imagine being subjected to such a level of harassment and abuse that the only way out was to take your own life.
So how did Blizzard respond? If you think they were self accountable then bless your pure heart. Of course they wrote off the suit stating that the DFEH (Department of Fair Employment and Housing) claims were not true regarding the nature of Blizzard's past. What a shocker. It gets better because on November 16th in an article written by Kirsten Grind, Ben Fritz, and Sarah E. Needleman in The Wall Street Journal it turns out that Kotick was aware for years of the abuse and harassment happening within the company he is leading! Kotick conveniently did not inform the board of directors of any of these allegations. Naturally as this article spread like wildfire people took action. Blizzard employees staged a walk out, influential faces from around the games industry spoke out including Jim Ryan who criticized Activision's handling of the situation and Phil Spencer stating that he will be reevaluating Xbox's relationship with Activision Blizzard.
Now one would think that with the lucrative relationships with Sony and Xbox at risk Kotick would have already been forced to resign right? Unfortunately, despite shareholders demanding his resignation, Kotick's best pals in Activision Blizzard are sticking to their guns, holding down the fort, and defending their sick friend. This has the makings of s twisted symbiotic relationship between Kotick and company where they get to party on making mounds of money while turning a blind eye to what is going on in their company all the while the very same people making them those mounds of money suffer. It's as if they know that once Kotick is out they would be soon to follow or maybe these "boys" have some skeletons of their own they are desperately trying to keep under wraps. This willful lack of accountability sets an ugly precedent for not just how other companies may behave in similar situations but also for the generations of young men and women to come who will grow up in a society where the poor and title less are free to suffer and the rich CEO's are free to oppress and suppress those below them. Welcome to the American dream.