Activision Blizzard employees will perform a walkout on Wednesday in protest of working conditions at the company. The World of Warcraft and Call of Duty developer is currently being sued by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing due to multiple allegations against the company for creating a “frat boy” culture where sexual harassment went unchecked and reports of it were ignored.
Activision Blizzard has so far responded by claiming they will fight the lawsuit and that many of the claims were “untrue or distorted.” This has, unsurprisingly, left many current Activision Blizzard employees upset. More than 2,000 employees have signed a letter stating their unhappiness with how management has chosen to respond to the allegations. They will use the walkout as a way to withhold their labor and make multiple demands of Activision Blizzard, the latter of which includes better conditions for workers and specifically mentions “women of color and transgender women, nonbinary people, and other marginalized groups that are vulnerable to gender discrimination not being hired fairly for new roles when compared to men.”
Kotaku acquired the entire statement of intent letter, which you can read here.
The allegations against Activision Blizzard are another example of a serious problem in the game industry with how employees are treated in the workplace. In 2020 there were allegations against many higher-ups at Ubisoft for “sexual misconduct” and, despite that being more than a year ago, a Kotaku report earlier in July stated that not much had changed since the original report. The original Ubisoft allegations came amidst a massive wave of them back in 2020 and it is very clear that sweeping change still needs to occur across the industry.
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