Activision Blizzard is currently being sued by the state of California for its ‘frat boy’ workplace environment, which allegedly includes harassing female employees, passing naked photos of female employees around at a staff party, and micromanaging female employees while male employees were allowed to play video games and drink alcohol at work. Certain sections of the lawsuit detail that the micromanagement - and subsequent lack of full-time employment or promotion, despite having greater experience compared to male co-workers - was particularly prominent with women of colour. These allegations are shocking, in that they include some incredibly disturbing allegations, and it's harrowing to read about such things. But sadly, they shouldn’t be surprising.
Much of the reaction to these allegations has crystallized around a single question - How? How, in the year 2021, can these practises still be happening? How can men act in such a sexist, not to mention illegal, way and get away with it? How can a company as notable as Activision Blizzard operate with these standards? How did these women stand it? How did their co-workers stand by and just let it happen?
The content of this lawsuit is upsetting and may be difficult to read: Content warnings for rape and suicide.
We should be beyond these questions by now. Even just in gaming, several other studios have faced allegations of a toxic, sexist work environment, not to mention that there is still a loud and dedicated section of the gaming audience determined to push women out with its misogynistic abuse. Just last month, the E3 journalists portal used the pronoun ‘he’ for everyone. Yes, this was a minor tech snafu, but it’s hard to imagine that it would have been released if the portal used ‘she’ by default, because it likely would have been caught during testing.
Gaming is not the only industry rampant with toxicity, of course. Hollywood recently tried to expel its most abusive predators as part of the MeToo movement, and sexism extends beyond million dollar creative industries into every single workforce. Not every male boss or male dominated workspace is a cauldron of misogyny, but while men continue to hold a disproportionate amount of leadership roles and in many cases have unchecked power over the progression of the women in their workforce, the conditions are consistently in place for abuse like this.
This is not to excuse Activision Blizzard’s culture - quite the opposite. That this sort of thing happens elsewhere does not mean it should be accepted, nor forgiven. But it does mean we should stop acting so surprised. It’s important to keep this particular case under the microscope, to grill Activision Blizzard into meaningful changes and to ensure that those accused are investigated and suitably face consequences. Still, Activision Blizzard is not the only example - acting as if this is an isolated case, as if the problem will be eradicated with this lawsuit, is unhelpful at best and wilfully ignorant at worst.
Of course, some of the details within the lawsuit are extreme. The lawsuit accuses male Activision Blizzard employees of regularly engaging in a "cube crawl" - this is described as an activity where male employees drink "copious amounts of alcohol as they crawl their way through various cubicles in the office and often engage in inappropriate behavior toward female employees." In another incident, a female employee suffered ongoing sexual harassment at work, including having naked photos of her passed around at an office party. During a business trip with a male supervisor, the woman took her own life. The male supervisor was “found by police to have brought a buttplug and lubricant on this business trip.”
As it often is, the lawsuit also alleges that racism was mixed in with the misogyny at Activision Blizzard. Two African American employees allege that they were micromanaged beyond belief, one being forced to explain her decision to go for a brief walk while her male co-workers sat around playing video games, and the other being singled out to write a one-page report when she requested time off work - something other employees were not subjected to.
These are among the most damning details of the lawsuit, and naturally, the immediate reaction has been to focus on them. While sexist work culture permeates everywhere, the ‘cube crawl’ is likely specific to Activision Blizzard, although it’s childish enough and gross enough that other, similarly toxic workplaces might have had a similar idea. What we also need to focus on, however, are the smaller details. Female employees allege that they were passed over for promotion or employment opportunities, in many cases despite having more positive progress reports and greater experience than other applicants, because of their gender. They were warned that pregnancy would limit their opportunities at Activision Blizzard. They were shamed for picking up their children from daycare. They had to listen to jokes about rape. These issues are not exclusive to Activision, and the general tolerance of those attitudes across workplaces provide the fertile soil for cube crawls to grow.
Many people will be reading the Activision Blizzard report and will be shocked and upset by what they read. But many will find it all too familiar, both the more standard sexism and in some cases, the more extreme incidents. We need to move beyond ‘How?’, because we know how. Women, especially women from minority groups, rarely get the opportunities they deserve in leadership roles, partially because they’re never offered the progression and partially because when they are, they’re expected to double up as an educator, and end up burning out from exhaustion. We need to do better, and we know how. It’s not just about stopping the cube crawls, it’s about stopping the rot at its roots by calling this behavior out, and restructuring to ensure that there are viable pathways for the culture to be changed, not be exhausted individuals, but by a concerted effort from every well-meaning worker to ensure this racism and sexism is no longer tolerated.