Activision Faces Internal Rifts in Bid to Blunt Uproar Over CEO
(Bloomberg) -- Some employees at Activision Blizzard Inc. said they were let down by internal meetings that were held Wednesday morning to discuss the new revelations about the company and Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick.
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The gatherings took place on video calls across the game publisher’s three primary organizations, Activision, Blizzard and King. Executives in charge of each division took questions and shared similar talking points after the Wall Street Journal reported detailed allegations that Kotick was aware of sexual misconduct at the company years before a California lawsuit made them public this summer and failed to report alleged instances of rape to the board.
Hours after the article was published on Tuesday, more than a hundred employees staged a walkout to demand Kotick’s resignation. The board said it’s standing by Kotick, but partners and shareholders have raised questions about his handling of the crisis. Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation chief Jim Ryan criticized Activision’s response in an email to staff Wednesday, Bloomberg reported. When asked for comment, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which owns more than a million shares in Activision, said in a statement that it recognizes that sexual harassment and misconduct incidents can result in “significant” risks to its portfolio holdings and that it continually monitors its holdings to address those risks.
The leaders said Kotick would be working to “regain trust” of employees throughout the company, according to partial transcripts from two of the meetings shared with Bloomberg. Activision president Rob Kostich told people in his group that Kotick wouldn’t be resigning, according to two attendees. Blizzard’s top executive, Mike Ybarra, told staff in what appeared to be pre-recorded remarks that he understood their frustrations and apologized for not being more active as a leader, according to two attendees.
Some employees of King, the makers of Candy Crush, asked whether a sudden announcement on Monday that they’d be getting bonus vacation days next week for Thanksgiving was meant to preempt the article. Activision Blizzard Chief Operating Officer Daniel Alegre denied that was the reason. In response to a question about whether Activision’s newly instituted “zero tolerance” policy on harassment, announced last month, would also apply to Kotick, Alegre said that his boss was “deeply and personally committed to doing the right things.”
Alegre also addressed the reported pay disparity between Ybarra and Jennifer Oneal, who were named co-leaders of Blizzard this summer following the lawsuit. Oneal, who resigned earlier this month, said she was paid less than Ybarra. Alegre said that Oneal was paid “differently” than Ybarra because of complications involving cash and equity and that “they were both offered the exact same compensation.”
But Oneal told Blizzard employees that she wasn’t offered compensation equal to Ybarra’s until she tendered her resignation, according to a Slack transcript reviewed by Bloomberg. Gaming website IGN earlier reported on the Slack exchange. Pay discrimination was one of the items listed in the California lawsuit.
The company also told staff that it’s banning alcohol in all offices. Many people were given the opportunity to take paid mental health days, which some staff said hadn’t mollified them. On video calls and in Slack channels across the company, calls for Kotick’s ousting continue. Many Activision Blizzard employees are even publicly demanding on their own personal Twitter feeds that the CEO be fired.
In an email to Blizzard staff on Tuesday reviewed by Bloomberg, Ybarra wrote that “if there’s a silver lining to the last few months, it’s that they’ve proven that Blizzard is full of incredible employees who are making progress every day to improve our culture, our game communities, and ourselves.” Ybarra added that “our best years are ahead of us.”
But with morale low and Kotick still in place, some employees are skeptical about that.
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