Ex-Activision Blizzard exec’s lawsuit alleges he was laid off for being an ‘old white guy’
A former Activision Blizzard executive is suing the company for age discrimination, according to lawsuit filed on Jan. 2. James Reid Venable, a 57-year-old former senior director of business operations, said Activision Blizzard “retaliated and discriminated” against him after he made a discrimination complaint to the company’s human resources department — specifically, Venable believes he was laid off for being old and white.
The complaint, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and first reported by Law360, outlines Venable’s tenure at Activision Blizzard. He said he was hired in 2014 and promoted several times as a “high performing executive,” to the point where he led the operations team. Venable accused former CEO Bobby Kotick of saying at a leadership conference that the company’s problem was that it had “too many old white guys.” Two older white executives, in their 50s, left the company “at least in part” because of the statement from Kotick, which the complaint describes as “ageist.”
Activision Blizzard then promoted a younger “non-white employee,” Jonathan Lee, who is currently the chief operating officer of its central technology division. “Plaintiff is informed and believes and herein alleges that the decision to promote the substantially younger, less experienced employee over Plaintiff was based on the campaign to get rid of ‘old white guys’ within Activision,” the lawsuit says.
Under Lee’s management, Venable received a poor performance review and the lowest merit increase in his Activision Blizzard career, according to the complaint. He also says that he was given fewer stock options than younger, nonwhite employees. Later, a female employee in Venable’s department made a comment on his “white male
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