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 spoke out against those lawsuits, 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 movements trying to take it down.

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(Via: BusinessTech)

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". This is despite the fact that, even after the lawsuit was settled, former Blizzard employees have spoken out about the racism and sexism that occurs "in the open".

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 it's going to release soon. These claims track with previous reports from Activision that suggest it had no "systemic harassment" based on an investigation performed by... Activision.

Activision-Blizzard-Ubisoft-Cover---via-Activision-Blizzard

This investigation was made after it was reported by The Wall Street Journal that Kotick allegedly knew about the sexual harassment going on at Activision and chose not to report it. This report is referenced by Kotick in the Variety interview, where he calls it an "inflammatory narrative". After denying a systemic issue of harassment, Kotick goes on to say that the problems with Activision's image are because of "outside forces" and because labour organisers are "influencing the state and federal investigations into harassment and gender discrimination claims".

Labour movement and organisers are mentioned by Kotick at several points during the interview, but he's also quick to claim that he's not "like other CEOs that are anti-union" and that he's all for a union that is out to provide better opportunities for workers, just not one that "doesn't play by the rules".

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