Bobby Kotick Denies All Allegations Of Activision's "Systemic Issue With Harassment"

thegamer.com:

During a recent interview, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick claimed that the company has never had a systemic issue with harassment and that the board of directors would never let him keep running the company if any of the claims were true.

While speaking to Variety in his first major interview since 2012, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick spoke out about the lawsuits that were made against the company back in 2021 that claimed that it had a "pervasive fray boy culture" that included sexism and discrimination of women, alongside several other claims. That lawsuit was then settled in 2022 for $18 million, just five percent of Activision Blizzard's earnings in 2021.

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During the interview, Kotick responded to the settled lawsuit, claiming that he has been "humbled and outraged" by the claims made and noting that he makes no apologies for Activision or its culture. Kotick also claims that, after going through every possible type of investigation, Activision was found not to have a systemic system of harassment, instead blaming the company's issues on the media and the "aggressive" labour movement trying to take it down.

Kotick said, "We’ve had every possible form of investigation done. And we did not have a systemic issue with harassment — ever. We didn’t have any of what were mischaracterizations reported in the media. But what we did have was a very aggressive labor movement working hard to try and destabilize the company.” Kotick also suggests that, for a company of its size, Activision has had a "relatively low level of harassment and assault complaints", something that the company aims to prove with data drawn from an EEOC investigation that