The owner of the Call of Duty and StarCraft games franchises is facing legal action in the US over claims of sexual harassment and discrimination against women.
Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard, one of the world’s largest game companies, is alleged to be tolerating a “frat boy” culture that has led to unequal pay, promoting men over women, and personal misconduct.
After a two-year investigation, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) has initiated legal action against the company – a decision Activision has called “disgraceful and unprofessional”.
The DFEH has made a series of claims about the company’s allegedly embedded culture of discrimination.
Sexual harassment
Employers to be liable if they don’t prevent sexual harassment
Blog post alleges sexual harassment and misogyny in advertising sector
Sexual harassment in a pandemic: why staff are more vulnerable
“Female employees almost universally confirmed that working for defendants was akin to working in a frat house,” the DFEH legal filing stated.
Men would “proudly” arrive at work with hangovers, play video games for long periods and delegate their responsibilities to female employees, it said. It also heard evidence that men had joked about rape and discussed sexual encounters.
“Female employees are subjected to constant sexual harassment,” the DFEH alleged. “High-ranking executives and creators engaged in blatant sexual harassment without repercussions.”
Complaints had been dismissed, not been kept confidential and not properly investigated, it found.
“As a result of these complaints, female employees were subjected to retaliation, including but not limited to being deprived of work on projects, unwillingly transferred to different units and selected for layoffs,” the DFEH said.
There were also office games that men fuelled by drink would engage in. The DFEH found that “In the office, women are subjected to ‘cube crawls’, in which male employees drink copious amounts of alcohol as they ‘crawl’ their way through various cubicles in the office and often engage in inappropriate behaviour toward female employees.”
Activision responded to the legal action by calling the DFEH “unaccountable state bureaucrats”.
It particularly objected to the DFEH listing a case in which a female employee committed suicide after having a sexual relationship with her male supervisor. Male employees had, claimed the DFEH, shared intimate photographs of the woman at a party. Activision strongly denied that the woman’s death was linked to any allegations about behaviour at the company.
It said: “We are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family.
“It is this type of irresponsible behaviour from unaccountable state bureaucrats that are driving many of the state’s best businesses out of California.”
The DFEH’s filing said that women only made up about 20% of the company’s workforce and that its most senior leaders were exclusively white and male.
It said: “Female employees receive lower starting pay and also earn less than male employees for substantially similar work.
“Defendants promote women more slowly and terminate them more quickly than their male counterparts.”
Activision said the DFEH had not painted an accurate picture of the firm adding that it had made significant changes to internal procedures and introduced compulsory anti-harassment training.
It stated that the DFEH had rushed to judgment and failed to hold “good-faith discussions with us to better understand and to resolve any claims or concerns before going to litigation”.
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
The DFEH, however, said it had attempted to resolve matters before filing the legal action, requiring “all parties to participate in a mandatory dispute resolution”. But this had not succeeded.
