Ex-Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has called a 2021 petition signed by over a thousand Activision Blizzard employees to remove him as CEO “fake”, and suggests that harassment claims and legal cases brought against Activision Blizzard were engineered by the Communication Workers of Union in a bid to attract new members. Kotick made the comments during an appearance on Grit, a business podcast by American venture capital company Kleiner Perkins. He appeared on the podcast with former EA CEO Bing Gordon (thanks, Gamespot), to talk about both their company histories.
Kotick’s statements reference widely reported incidents alleging a company culture of harassment, intimidation, and pay inequity around the time – coinciding with a lawsuit against the company – and the petition referred to appears to be this one to remove him as CEO, which attracted over a thousand signatures.
That petition followed a report by the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) that highlighted several alleged incidents of harassment by Activision staff, alongside reports that Kotick was aware of these allegations but did not inform the company’s board of directors, and intervened to prevent the firing of an alleged harasser. It wasn’t just Activision workers who found these claims alarming: a group of company shareholders called for Kotick’s resignation soon after. Kotick denied any wrongdoing.
After being prompted “2021” by Kotick, the podcast host Joubin Mirzadega says “peak social activism in the workplace,” in reference to that time period. “There was a petition. Like, a thousand people signed it.”
“That was fake,” says Kotick.
“The board. The independent auditors. Everybody was like: this guy’s doing nothing wrong,” Mirzadega goes on, confirming that a petition against Kotick is the subject of the conversation.
Kotick then expands the discussion to encompass the wider claims of workplace misconduct at Activision Blizzard. Some background on that first: the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit in summer 2021 following two years of investigation by the DFEH. The lawsuit alleged that the company’s culture was “a breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women”. A $54.875m settlement was eventually reached in December 2023, with the state department saying that “no court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations [of] systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard”.
In an additional statement made to RPS at the time, an Activision Blizzard spokesperson commented that “the CRD (previously DFEH) has acknowledged that no court or independent investigation substantiated any allegations that ‘Activision Blizzard’s Board of Directors, including its Chief Executive Officer, Robert Kotick, acted improperly with regard to the handling of any instances of workplace misconduct.’”
In this week’s Grit podcast, Kotick argues that the harassment claims and legal case against Activision Blizzard were, in fact, engineered by the Communication Workers of Union in a bid to attract new members.
“I can tell you exactly what happened,” he says. “The Communication Workers of America Union started looking at technology. They kept losing because they represented the news guild, Comcast, and they realised they were losing members at a really dramatic rate, so they gotta figure out: how do they get new union members? So they targeted a bunch of different businesses. Google. Some other tech companies. Tesla, SpaceX and us.”
“It’s the power of unions,” Kotick continues. “I didn’t really understand this until we went through this process. They were able to get a government agency, the EEOC and a state employment agency called the Department Of Fair Employment And Housing, to file fake lawsuits against us and Riot Games making allegations about the workplace that weren’t true.”
Some further context about Riot: in 2022, they agreed to pay out $100 million to settle a class-action suit brought against them for “systemic sex discrimination and harassment”, after both the DFEH and the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement objected to an original $10m proposed settlement.
“They’re so clever,” Kotick continued on the podcast. “They realized that would be a thing where they could come into a company – because we pay well, we have great benefits – and they could say, hey, the culture is bad! People are harassed or they’re retaliated against. There’s discrimination. The guy and the lady who ran CWA, they are really smart.” Kotick is likely referring to Chris Shelton and Sara Stephens here, the president and secretary-treasurer of the CWA at the time.
“They came up with this plan, hired a PR firm, and they started attacking our company. They got these two agencies to file these lawsuits to claim there was some sexual harassment. We didn’t have any of that. Ultimately they had to admit that this was not truthful.”
“Did you know this was all happening?” asks Mirzadega.
“I’ve seen in another company they knew in advance,” adds Gordon, without specifying the company in question. “A lot of the press was made up by union activists.”
“I didn’t know any of it,” says Kotick. “I’m one of those people. I think it’s probably from my upbringing, but when I heard about things that were inappropriate conduct in the workplace, I just fired people. Like on the spot. My view is: you don’t want to have a culture where there was any kind of discrimination, retaliation, misconduct. It’s bad for recruiting and its bad for retention.”
“I mean, think about it. I dated Sheryl Sandberg,” he laughs. “You think we had a problem with pay equity and gender pay at Activision? She literally wouldn’t do a ‘lean in circle‘ at the company until I showed her our pay equity fillings.”
If Kotick’s suggestion here is that his association with ex-Meta COO Sandberg – who has advocated for equal representation in the workplace – is proof that the allegations against him are unfounded, it’s perhaps worth noting that Sandberg herself is the subject of allegations that she worked with Kotick to shut down reports about his treatment of women. According to a 2022 report by the Wall Street Journal, Sandberg allegedly pressured UK tabloid The Daily Mail to drop stories about a restraining order against Kotick from an ex-girlfriend, while Kotick and Sandberg were dating.
“Working with a team that included Facebook and Activision employees as well as paid outside advisers,” wrote the WSJ, “Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Kotick developed a strategy to persuade the Daily Mail not to report on the restraining order, first when they began dating in 2016 and again around the time they were breaking up in 2019, the people said. Among other concerns, Ms. Sandberg’s legal and public-relations advisers, both inside and outside Facebook, worried that a story would reflect negatively on her reputation as an advocate for women.”
Kotick denied the allegations and the ex-girlfriend later retracted some of her claims.
As well as detailing several instances of abuse by employees within Activision Blizzard, the Wall Street Journal article also highlighted other instances where Kotick himself has been sued for alleged misconduct. In 2006, one of his assistants “complained that he had harassed her, including by threatening in a voice mail to have her killed.” Kotick reportedly settled the matter out of court. “Mr. Kotick quickly apologized 16 years ago for the obviously hyperbolic and inappropriate voice mail, and he deeply regrets the exaggeration and tone in his voice mail to this day,” an Activision spokesperson told the WSJ.
Kotick has also faced suggestions that he considered buying out press to ensure positive coverage for Activision. In 2022, another Wall Street Journal report wrote that Kotick suggested buying Kotaku or PC Gamer to “change the narrative” around the company. From the WSJ:
“Mr. Kotick has been eager to change the public narrative about the company, and in recent weeks has suggested Activision Blizzard make some kind of acquisition, including of gaming-trade publications like Kotaku and PC Gamer, according to people familiar with him. The Activision spokeswoman, Ms. Klasky, disputed that Mr. Kotick wanted to make the acquisitions. A spokesman for G/O Media, the parent company of Kotaku, declined to comment. PC Gamer didn’t respond to a request for comment.”
We’ve reached out to the CWA for comment on all this.
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