(CN) — Former CEO of video game company Activision Blizzard Robert Kotick says news company G/O Media defamed him in news publications that knowingly lied about nonexistent widespread workplace misconduct under his leadership.
During Kotick’s tenure as CEO, Activision Blizzard faced immense scrutiny in 2021 when the California Civil Rights Department began investigating the company for potential workplace sexual harassment and discrimination. By December 2023, however, Activision Blizzard and the department settled for $54 million.
The settlement, signed by both parties, stated that “no court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations” of either systemic sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard or that the company’s senior executives “ignored, condoned or tolerated a culture of systemic harassment, retaliation or discrimination.”
Despite this, Kotick noted, G/O Media published two articles on March 11, 2024 — one on video game website Kotaku and one in science and tech outlet Gizmodo — about Kotick that repeated the since-dismissed claims of widespread workplace misconduct without ever mentioning they had been dismissed.
“Neither article had anything to do with Activision,” Kotick says in the complaint. “Both were about rumors that Kotick was interested in buying TikTok. Yet, Kotaku and Gizmodo went out of their way to include withdrawn, false allegations relating to workplace issues which G/O Media knew had been conclusively disproven by numerous investigations … purely for the malicious purposes of causing further harm to Kotick.”
According to Kotick in the complaint filed Tuesday, he and his representatives repeatedly wrote to G/O Media demanding corrections to the articles, including removal of a headline that originally called Kotick a “disgraced” CEO and a note that the California Civil Rights Department voluntarily withdrew its claims.
Gizmodo subsequently removed the word “disgraced” from its headline, and both publications revised their articles with details of the settlement. Still, Kotick claims, the articles continue to “mischaracterize” the agreement.
Kotick seeks damages to be determined at trial.
Kotick, who led the “Call of Duty” and “World of Warcraft” publisher for more than 30 years until his retirement in late 2023, filed the defamation suit in the Superior Court of Delaware.
Under Kotick’s leadership, Activision Blizzard also agreed to two federal settlements over purported workplace misconduct — one $18 million agreement with the Employment Opportunity Commission, and one $35 million agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Representatives of Kotick and G/O Media could not be reached for comment.
Just one month before filing his suit against G/O Media, Kotick bashed the multiple legal actions against Activision Blizzard as “fake lawsuits” during a podcast hosted by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.
As part of the episode, Kotick was also asked about a 2021 petition signed by over 1,800 Activision Blizzard employees calling for his resignation, to which he replied, “That was fake.”
Kotick also accused the Communications Workers of America union of masterminding Activision Blizzard’s legal woes by enlisting the government to file suit in an effort to drum up unionization support.
“They came up with this plan, hired a PR firm, and they started attacking our company,” Kotick said.
The Communications Workers of America denied Kotick’s claims in a statement sent to gaming news company Rock Paper Shotgun, noting that after Activision Blizzard’s $18 million settlement with the employment commission, Kotick himself apologized for inappropriate workplace conduct that occurred under his watch.
Additionally, the ABK Workers Alliance — a union comprised of Activision Blizzard employees — publicly denounced Kotick’s comments via social media platform X.
“The trauma, discrimination and abuse that our coworkers and former coworkers endured is not fake or a ‘plan to drive union membership,’” the alliance said. “Our unions were born from the very real and harmful way executives reacted when made aware of these situations.”
“A common misinformation tactic used by companies during a union campaign is to assert that a union is a third party that comes in and makes changes,” the alliance added. “That is not true. The workers are the union.”