LAWSUITS

The Activision Blizzard harassment and discrimination lawsuit has repercussions for the industry as a whole

By now, you’re probably familiar with at least the broad strokes of the lawsuit brought against Activision Blizzard by the California Department Of Fair Employment And Housing. Since it was filed in July, its allegations have inspired a lot of discussion around “frat boy” workplace culture”, with “cube crawls” seeing male employees drinking “copious amounts of alcohol” and wandering between office cubicles, leading to “inappropriate behaviour toward female employees.”

The full complaint makes for grim reading. The result of a two-year investigation by the DFEH, it describes “a breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women”, spanning everything from unequal pay and opportunities for promotion to rape had witnessed jokes and unsolicited comments about the bodies or experienced of female employees.

Former World Of Warcraft creative director Alex Afrasiabi is named specifically, alleged to have preyed on female employees at events, “attempting to kiss them, and putting his arms around them”. So widely acknowledged were these activities, the filing says, that during BlizzCon “his [hotel] suite was nicknamed the ‘Cosby Suite’ after alleged rapist Bill Cosby”. Afrasiabi was ejected from Blizzard in 2020, after an internal investigation into his behaviour, but the filing claims that he’d had “multiple conversations” with Blizzard president J Allen Brack about his behaviour previously, and that the only consequences were “a slap on the wrist”.

A study found that 25 per cent of survey respondents misconduct

The picture being painted might be particularly unpleasant, but it’s also one that has become uncomfortably familiar in recent years. Last summer, multiple Ubisoft employees came forward alleging misconduct, including sexual harassment and assault, at several of the publisher’s studios. That was followed by a study, published by the company itself, which found that 25 per cent of survey respondents had witnessed or experienced misconduct first-hand. This July, French videogame workers union Solidaires Informatique filed a legal complaint against the company, alleging a culture of “institutional sexual harassment”.

Prior to the Activision Blizzard case, Ubisoft was the most high-profile target of such claims – but it’s far from alone. California’s DFEH also has an ongoing court case against League Of Legends developer Riot Games, accusing employees of sexual harassment and “gender discrimination in hiring, pay and promotion decisions”. The studio was previously sued in 2018 by two female staffers for similar reasons; that case came a few months after a Kotaku exposé on Riot’s so-called “bro culture”, with reported issues ranging from inequitable interview practices to employees being sent unsolicited photos of male genitalia.