Activision Blizzard kept a poor record for years when colleagues complained about workplace misconduct. This also made it more difficult for the developer to respond to those complaints. The company is therefore fined $ 35 million by a US regulator.
The developer did not have the proper procedures and resources to track employee misconduct complaints across various business units, says the US Securities and Exchange Commission. As a result, the top of the company did not have the right information to see how often misconduct occurred in the workplace and how big this problem was. As a result, the company could not estimate whether these problems should be reported to shareholders, which is reason for the SEC to fine the company. According to the regulator, this took place between 2018 and 2021.
In addition, between 2016 and 2021, the company required former employees to inform Activision Blizzard if the SEC asked them questions. For example, the developer would probably want to be kept informed of SEC’s activities. This is also against the law.
SEC and Activision Blizzard have jointly agreed on a fine of 35 million dollars, or 32.4 million euros. The settlement does not mean that Activision Blizzard admits that it was wrong. The company has to adjust its actions.
Activision Blizzard has been under fire since 2019 due to alleged misconduct in the workplace and a diseased work culture. It was first announced that female employees were paid to share data about their fertility and pregnancy with the company. Later The US state of California stated that there was a broad culture of sexual excess and sexual harassment within the company. In June last year the company itself stated that it had found no evidence of systematic misconduct, based, among other things, on the “relatively low” number of employee misconduct reports. The SEC is now saying that the company didn’t keep track of this.
