Activision Blizzard in freefall as employees revolt

Channel:

Inside Gaming

Subscribers:

1,170,000

Published on July 31, 2021 4:30:00 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET9dyP9HJFY

Game:

Overwatch 2 (2023)

Duration: 15:46

61,273 views

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* Content Warning for topics discussing sexual assault, harassment, and suicide.

Things have gone from pretty bad to even worse at Activision Blizzard as a 2-year investigation conducted by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing has unearthed copious amounts of information about the companies toxic work culture, serious claims of sexual harassment, and just an overflow of gender discrimination.

It’s been a long week which included a terrible corporate response to a lawsuit from Activision Blizzard top brass, open letters from the larger staff, walkouts, viral videos, and horrendous findings of those involved with something called “The Cosby Suite.”

We did our best to recap all the developing stories related to the #ActiBlizzwalkout here so it’s a good place to catch if you hadn’t heard about everything going on or the details involved. Be warned though some of this is pretty dark so we prefaced this week's episode with a CONTENT WARNING for sexual assault, harassment, and suicide.

In other news, this week video games and video game hardware are selling very well. PlayStation 5 is the fastest-selling Sony console and the Xbox Series S and X are setting records in that regard for Microsoft as well.

Shawn Layden fired some shots this week when talking about Game Pass saying consolidation is the enemy of diversity and the number of subscribers needed to support one triple game was around 500 million.

Lastly, Death Stranding has sold 5 million copies and Kojima productions expect to sell even more when the new directors cut drops later this year in September.

We return to Zelda Skyward Sword HD for Brian’s official take and the Coming Soon section has a fascinating multiplayer FPS game about time loops called Lemnis Gate.

Check it out and thanks for watching!

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SOURCES

[Bloomberg Law] Blizzard sued by CA over “frat boy” culture
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-blizzard-sued-by-california-over-frat-boy-culture

[Bloomberg Law] The official Activision Blizzard lawsuit
https://aboutblaw.com/YJw

[CNN] Activision Blizzard lawsuit summary
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/tech/activision-blizzard-sexual-harassment/index.html

[Polygon] Activision Blizzard employees walkout
https://www.polygon.com/22595703/activision-blizzard-employee-protest-walk-out-lawsuit

[Forbes] Activision Blizzard lawsuit summary
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/07/22/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-alleges-horrific-mistreatment-of-women/?sh=7314e3bb166c

[Kotaku] The Bill Cosby Suite
https://kotaku.com/inside-blizzard-developers-infamous-bill-cosby-suite-1847378762?rev=1627495648163

[CNN] Activision Blizzard Staff denounce public response to the lawsuit
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/26/tech/activision-blizzard-employee-petition-lawsuit/index.html

[Polygon] 2,600 Blizzard employees sign open letter
https://www.polygon.com/22594765/activision-blizzard-open-letter-harassment-lawsuit

[Twitter] Full Blizzard Walkout Picture
https://twitter.com/JonnyPeltz/status/1420487978946752516/photo/1

[Twitter] Bungie Producer tweet
https://twitter.com/amber_ui/status/1420437257421348867

[Axios] Ubisoft Open Letter in support of Blizzard staff
https://www.axios.com/ubisoft-workers-letter-activision-blizzard-harassment-392fd998-9518-4d1c-9ca7-24a7c4534bb3.html

[Twitter] Blizzcon 2010 fan question
https://twitter.com/chrisbratt/status/1418629194683125761?s=20

[Twitter] Greg Street Apology
https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status/1418750286894551040?s=20

[Twitter] Senior WoW designer Jeff Hamilton tweets
https://twitter.com/JeffAHamilton/status/1419115702569472003

[IGN] Activision Blizzard Walkout summary
https://www.ign.com/articles/activision-blizzard-walkout?utm_source=twitter

[Activision Blizzard] Bobby Kotick’s Letter
https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-details/letter-ceo-bobby-kotick-all-employees

[VG247] PS5 sells 10 million
https://www.vg247.com/2021/07/28/ps5-10-million-sales/

[Twinfinite] Series X and Series S fastest selling Microsoft consoles
https://twinfinite.net/2021/07/xbox-series-x-s-fastest-selling-microsoft/

[GamesIndustry.biz] Shawn Layden takes a shot at game pass
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-07-27-shawn-layden-consolidation-is-the-enemy-of-diversity

[GamesIndustry.biz] Death Stranding sold 5 million copies so far
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-07-23-death-stranding-has-sold-five-million-copies-on-ps4-and-pc

Other Statistics