Activision Blizzard settles sexual harassment case for $54 million
Activision Blizzard has reached a settlement of approximately $54 million with the US state of California. The latter filed a lawsuit in 2021, partly due to an alleged ‘culture of sexual harassment’ at the game publisher, but says he has now found no evidence of this.
According to the California Civil Rights Department, there has been “discrimination against women” working at Activision Blizzard for years. So it would they have been denied promotion and paid less for the same work. As part of the settlement, the game publisher must “take additional steps to ensure fair wages and advancement opportunities and pay compensation to women employed in California between October 12, 2015 and December 31, 2020.”
Approximately $45 million of the amount is to be used to compensate these employees. The rest should go to charities that focus on promoting women in the tech industry, or “raising awareness around gender equality issues in the workplace.”
The CRD filed the lawsuit two years ago. At the time it stated that female employees were discriminated against, but also that there was a culture in which women were sexually harassed and in which sexual misconduct took place. Male executives would try to hit on the women and make rape jokes. Male employees would ‘drink large amounts of alcohol, then harass women, and play games during working hours while handing out work to female employees’, it was stated at the time. Activision Blizzard has repeatedly denied the allegations, calling the filing of this lawsuit “irresponsible behavior by bureaucrats.”
The CRD now states that there was proven gender discrimination, but that the allegations of ‘systematic or large-scale sexual harassment’ at Activision Blizzard could not be proven. No evidence has also been found of misconduct by CEO Bobby Kotick, the CRD writes according to The New York Times in the settlement agreement. The Wall Street Journal writes that California estimated Activision’s liability at $1 billion in 2021.
In 2021, Activision Blizzard settled another lawsuit for $18 million, also alleging unfair treatment of female employees. Earlier this year, the publisher was fined by the American regulator for failing to keep track of employee complaints about misconduct in the workplace. The amount at the time was 35 million dollars.