Editor’s Note: A lawsuit has been filed against Activision Blizzard by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which alleges the company has engaged in abuse, discrimination, and retaliation against its female employees. Activision Blizzard has denied the allegations. The full details of the Activision Blizzard lawsuit (content warning: rape, suicide, abuse, harassment) are being updated as new information becomes available.
As Activision Blizzard continues to find itself mired in bad press, the company's latest Overwatch 2 news continues a disturbing trend - announcements seemingly timed to follow controversies coming to light. Amidst claims of union-busting, studio walk-outs, and two discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits, Activision Blizzard has continued onward with announcement schedules and news around its upcoming titles. Unfortunately, many of these announcements seem to be positioned to distract from the plethora of issues facing the company at present.
Over the past year, Activision Blizzard has seen a massive wave of controversy around studio working conditions and management of the Santa Monica-based company. July 2021 saw the filing of a lawsuit by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing following a two-year investigation, citing "frat boy culture" and sexual harassment targeted at female employees. In March 2022 Activision settled with the EEOC for a shamefully low amount, though in the intervening months further issues within the company came to light, prompting employee walkouts and calls for CEO Bobby Kotick to resign.
Through all of this, Activision Blizzard's studios have mostly continued to work, moving forward on highly anticipated projects like Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 - a fact that the company is quick to remind the public of. The timing of this is highly suspect, however; major game-related announcements frequently follow news harmful to the company's image. Most recently, a trailer featuring Overwatch 2's new hero Sojourn, who had been seen in previous promotional materials, was released the same day as a California lawyer in the ongoing Activision lawsuit resigned from the CDFEH and alleged that California Governor Gavin Newsom interfered with the suit. Politico is reporting that Activision Blizzard board member Casey Wasserman donated $100,000 to Newsom's campaign to stop California's governor election recall.
Activision Blizzard's Announcements Detract From Bad Press
Recent years have provided some transparency into Activision Blizzard's inner workings, and revealed some fairly ugly truths. The company has allegedly fostered studio environments where women are harassed, unfairly compensated, and sidelined when they raise concerns to superiors or HR. Raven Software, one of Activision's holdings, has a team that has dealt with underpayment and significant numbers of layoffs, especially among quality assurance testers. (this undervaluing of QA testers was seemingly addressed by Activision Blizzard giving contract workers full-time positions and raises, though Raven employees, who have recently unionized, have received no such benefits.) Reports have alleged that Kotick has long been aware of the company's record of sexual harassment, and while it appears he may leave his position once Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard is complete, many have called for his resignation even earlier. It's no wonder that Activision Blizzard would look to direct media attention elsewhere, and the company may be deliberately timing announcements to detract from these stories.
A handful of specific incidents really highlight the timings in question. Aside from the CDFEH and EEOC suits, Activision Blizzard is facing a wrongful death lawsuit following the death of employee Kerri Moynihan. Moynihan took her own life at a company retreat in 2017; according to her parents, who filed the suit this past March, sexual harassment was a significant factor leading to her death. In the days following the filing, Activision Blizzard announced Overwatch 2's open beta, which unsurprisingly generated a buzz on social media - and while it didn't entirely drown out news of the Moynihan lawsuit, it certainly pulled some attention away.
This even predates the DFEH's lawsuit. In 2019, competitive Hearthstone player Blitzchung voiced his support for Hong Kong protestors during an official event; Activision Blizzard reacted by punishing Blitzchung, banning him from future tournaments and stripping him of his prize money. While the community backlash was strong, Blizzard didn't fully reverse Blitzchung's ban. What's more, the controversy was followed by leaks revealing Overwatch 2 and its upcoming announcement at BlizzCon 2019, as well as Diablo 4's reveal.
Is Activision Blizzard Deliberately Timing Announcements?
It's hard not to wonder whether this is a deliberate effort by Activision Blizzard to cover up controversy with its own news. Replies to the official Overwatch Twitter account's tweet revealing Sojourn is flooded with users linking to Bloomberg's article alleging the California Governor's Office's involvement in the recently-settled suit. This take, while cynical, seems at least potentially justified - the pattern described here is fairly compelling on its own. It may be appealing for some to think that huge companies like Activision Blizzard make trailers and reveals for emergencies like bad press.
And yet, trailers are made to generate excitement - studios don't stop creating content when press is good. Overwatch 2's upcoming beta wasn't made just to drown out conversation around lawsuits. Developers want to show off their work to audiences, a goal which can conflict with negative public perception in the face of controversy. Activision Blizzard could be timing announcements to counteract bad press, but everything the company has announced almost certainly would have still been announced under different circumstances.
The first and most obvious takeaway is to not let excitement and hype around announcements draw meaningful attention from Activision Blizzard's serious controversies. The company is a titan of the games industry, and it is important to hold it accountable for the ways it may have failed its employees. Activision Blizzard's record earnings could be spent to better company culture and fairly compensate workers, rather than to give multi-million dollar raises to executives while developers get laid off. March's $18 million settlement doesn't in any way address the company's issues - notably, it includes a clause that allows Activision Blizzard to remove sexual harassment allegations from the files of the settlement's claimants - and without internal, structural changes, harassment and discrimination are likely to continue.
The second takeaway is less concrete. Barring a studio shutdown, teams under Activision Blizzard will continue making games, and while the apparent willingness to use development announcements to drown out bad publicity only speaks further ill of Activision Blizzard, the existence of these announcements shouldn't be held against developers. Making a game takes an absurd amount of time, energy, and people - even more so at Blizzard's scale. This work should be celebrated by developers, publishers, and players alike, but it currently can't dodge cynicism, especially as it can't be disproven that this is a deliberate strategy. Hopefully, the company begins to see serious changes, but as Overwatch 2 approaches, Activision Blizzard could at least stand to time its announcements with a little more compassion.
Source: Politico