{"id":305554,"date":"2021-07-22T16:43:01","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T13:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/california-sues-activision-blizzard-over-sexual-harassment\/"},"modified":"2021-07-22T16:43:01","modified_gmt":"2021-07-22T13:43:01","slug":"california-sues-activision-blizzard-over-sexual-harassment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/california-sues-activision-blizzard-over-sexual-harassment\/","title":{"rendered":"#California sues Activision Blizzard over sexual harassment"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#California sues Activision Blizzard over sexual harassment<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Activision Blizzard is a breeding ground for sexual harassment, with male workers fostering a \u201cfrat bro\u201d culture full of rape jokes, harassment and groping that even drove one female employee to suicide, according to an explosive lawsuit brought by the state of California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Male employees of the Santa Monica-based video-game<\/a> publisher \u2014 whose titles include \u201cCall of Duty,\u201d \u201cWorld of Warcraft\u201d and \u201cGuitar Hero\u201d \u2014 subjected female employees to \u201cconstant sexual harassment,\u201d according to the California suit<\/a>, which was filed by the state\u2019s Department of Fair Employment and Housing on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That includes \u201chaving to continually fend off unwanted sexual comments and advances by their male co-workers and supervisors and being groped at the \u2018cube crawls\u2019 and other company events,\u201d the suit claims.<\/p>\n

During the so-called \u201ccube crawls,\u201d male employees would \u201cdrink copious amounts of alcohol as they crawl their way through various cubicles in the office and often engage in inapp<\/a>ropriate behavior toward female employees,\u201d according to the suit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fact that 80 percent of Activision Blizzard\u2019s employees are male meant that female employees felt they were unable to speak up about misconduct, the suit said.\u00a0Women who reported sexual harassment were allegedly laid off, transferred to other teams involuntarily and denied opportunities to work on desirable projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Call
Activision Blizzard is the studio behind wildly popular games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. <\/figcaption>
Foo1;Foo2<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Activision Blizzard did not immedia<\/a>tely reply to a request for comment from The Post but has slammed the suit as containing \u201cdistorted\u201d and \u201cfalse\u201d claims in statements to other media outlets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a statement, Activision Blizzard claimed the suit was filled with \u201cdistorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard\u2019s past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been extremely cooperative with the DFEH throughout their investigation, including providing them with extensive data and ample documentation, but they refused to inform us what issues they perceived,\u201d the company said in a statement. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey were required by law to adequately investigate and to have good faith discussions with us to better understand and to resolve any claims or concerns before going to litigation, but they failed to do so,\u201d the company added. \u201cInstead, they rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we will demonstrate in court.<\/p>\n

The company also fired back at state allegations that its toxic culture even drove one female employee to suicide while on a business trip<\/a> \u201cdue to a sexual relationship that she had been having with her male superior,\u201d according to the suit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At a holiday party before her death, the woman\u2019s male co-workers allegedly passed around a photo of her vagina, according to the suit. Following her death, police reportedly found that her unnamed male supervisor had \u201cbrought a butt plug and lubricant on this business trip.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n

While the suit contains frequent references to unnamed Activision employees, it calls out Blizzard president J. Allen Brack by name as being aware of and enabling misconduct.<\/p>\n

The \u201cWorld of Warcraft\u201d team was especially prone to misconduct, according to the suit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWorld of Warcraft\u201d\u00a0senior creative director Alex Afrasiabi allegedly would \u201chit on female employees, telling him he wanted to marry them, attempting to kiss them, and putting, his arms around them\u201d during company events.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfrasiabi was so known to engage in harassment of females that his suite was nicknamed the \u2018Crosby Suite\u2019 after alleged rapist Bill Crosby,\u201d reads the suit, in an apparent reference to Bill Cosby.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other members of the World of Warcraft team would hit on female employees and make \u201cderogatory comments about rape\u201d with the encouragement of their supervisors, according to the suit.<\/p>\n

One supervisor on the \u201cWorld of Warcraft\u201d team reportedly encouraged a male subordinate to \u201c\u2018buy\u2019 a prostitute to cure his bad mood,\u201d the suit says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Female employees of the company were also systemically paid less and promoted less frequently due to the possibility that they could become pregnant and miss work, according to the suit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe put tremendous effort in creating fair and rewarding compensation packages and policies that reflect our culture and business, and we strive to pay all employees fairly for equal or substantially similar work,\u201d Activision Blizzard said in its statement. \u201cWe are confident in our ability to demonstrate our practices as an equal opportunity employer that fosters a supportive, diverse, and inclusive workplace for our people, and we are committed to continuing this effort in the years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and was first reported by Bloomberg Law<\/a>.\u00a0\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#California sues Activision Blizzard over sexual harassment” Activision Blizzard is a breeding ground for sexual harassment, with male workers fostering a \u201cfrat bro\u201d culture full of rape jokes, harassment and groping that even drove one female employee to suicide, according to an explosive lawsuit brought by the state of California.\u00a0 Male employees of the Santa…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":305555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/07\/activision-00.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[112498,5037,13096,5038,10751,71374],"class_list":["post-305554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-7-22-21","tag-activision-blizzard","tag-california","tag-call-of-duty","tag-gaming","tag-sexual-harassment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}