By Natalie DeCoste
The accusations and scandal surrounding gaming company Activision Blizzard are ramping up with the latest allegations in California’s lawsuit.
Activision Blizzard is embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal. The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit on June 21, 2020, accusing the gaming company of fostering years of abuse and discrimination targeted at female employees.
Activision Blizzard is one of America’s largest video game developers and distributors, with over 9,500 employees and 100 million players worldwide. The company caters to a massive audience with its video game development, and, as the lawsuit noted, females make up almost half of the audience for which Activision makes games.
Since the news of sexual harassment broke, the company promised to make the company a safe place for women to work. However, those promises seem to be coming up empty as California expanded its anti-discrimination lawsuit against Activision Blizzard.
California is now adding on temporary workers to the lawsuit in addition to the female full-time employees.
The updated complaint also alleges that Activision Blizzard is encouraging employees to speak with attorneys at the WilmerHale law firm. The firm was hired as a third-party auditor to review workplace culture against the wishes of many employees, citing conflicts between the firm and Activision, instead of state investigators. In addition to asking employees to speak with WilmerHale instead of the state, Activision Blizzard denied the state access to that evidence because the conversations were confidential.
“When the investigator is “an attorney [WilmerHale]…; her work related to receipt or investigations of discrimination or harassment complaints is privileged” and then withheld from the government department charged with investigating and remedying the complaints. This directly interferes with DFEH’s statutory mandate to investigate, prosecute, and remedy workplace discrimination and harassment violations on behalf of employees and contingent or temporary workers who engaged in, or were perceived to be engaged in, protective activity,” read the amended complaint.
One of the more shocking allegations in the updated complaint is that Activision Blizzard shredded documents that were meant to be retained under California law.
“DFEH is also informed and aware that documents have not been maintained and preserved as required by law or by the DFEH’s Document Retention Notice, including but not limited to documents related to investigations and complaints were shredded by human resource personnel and emails are deleted thirty (30) days after an employee’s separation,” read the complaint.
“With regards to claims that we have destroyed information by shredding documents, those claims are not true. We took appropriate steps to preserve information relevant to the DFEH investigation,” said an Activision Blizzard spokesperson to Axios.
California is now also claiming that Activision Blizzard tried to get its employees to sign away their ability to speak freely to investigators in waivers, secret settlements, and non-disclosure agreements.
These agreements would require employees to notify Activision Blizzard before disclosing information about incidents. Additionally, the company would be able to moderate what its employees could say under these agreements, giving the company the ability to limit disclosures.
“Defendants have also taken adverse actions aimed at curtailing employee rights in this government enforcement action such as soliciting waivers of employee rights and obtaining repressive, if not punitive, secret settlements of sexual harassment claims, non-disclosure agreements, and non-disparagement agreements with severe penalties against employees,” read the complaint.
In response to the original and updated allegations, Activision Blizzard maintained it is acting in compliance with what California has asked of it.
The company has “complied with every proper request in support of its review even as we had been implementing reforms to ensure our workplaces are welcoming and safe for every employee…We have provided the DFEH with clear evidence that we do not have gender pay or promotion disparities. Our senior leadership is increasingly diverse, with a growing number of women in key leadership roles across the company,” said Activision Blizzard’s spokesperson.
