At Blizzard, groping, free-flowing booze, and fear of retaliation tainted ‘magical’ workplace

Cher Scarlett remembered the times when women at Blizzard Entertainment would meet in empty office rooms in the company’s Irvine, Calif., headquarters. There, they would commiserate over their experiences, sometimes to process raw emotions before heading back to work. In one such meeting about five years ago, Scarlett, a former software engineer at Blizzard, decided to share her experiences of being inappropriately touched by other coworkers. She learned she was not alone.

“A lot of women at Blizzard, we talked about this stuff happening. We would therapy session with each other about it,” Scarlett said. “None of us felt safe to report it and felt there [were] so many instances where if we told somebody outside of our group of friends that was having similar experiences, we got told [by other coworkers] that it was not a big deal, or that we were overreacting or that it was a compliment.”

Scarlett said that during her year at Blizzard from August 2015 to 2016, she had been underpaid, harassed, and, on two separate occasions, groped at company events. She was later among a group of current and former Activision Blizzard employees who provided testimony to California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), which in turn launched an investigation into the company in October of 2018.

Last month, the DFEH filed a gender-based discrimination, inequality, and harassment lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, alleging the company had a “frat boy culture” that included excessive drinking and sexual harassment.

Activision Blizzard is one of the world’s biggest gaming companies, with 9,500 employees worldwide and a market capitalization of more than $60 billion, producing hit franchises like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.

One of its largest subsidiaries, Blizzard Entertainment, founded in 1991, was named extensively in the lawsuit. The allegations in the lawsuit included one leveled specifically at J. Allen Brack, then the company’s president, claiming he was personally aware of multiple instances of harassment at the company and failed to mitigate the issues.

Brack, who did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story, stepped down from his post Tuesday, leaving behind a company in turmoil. Blizzard employees staged a walkout on July 28 and took aim at their leaders over the allegations in the lawsuit, as well as the company’s response, both internally and externally, to the charges.

In interviews, 17 current and former Blizzard Entertainment employees across the United States and Europe shared accounts of a workplace that didn’t take complaints to human resources seriously and normalized misconduct. Many of them spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

According to employees, the culture impacted not only women but men and marginalized genders, too. Employees with diverse backgrounds told the Washington Post they had faced harassment and misconduct from coworkers and reported it to human resources, but it led to no punishment nor produced any change.

“Blizzard had this promise, that was kind of this Camelot promise, of this really fun place to work in, and you’re working on some of the world’s best games, and you’ve got this really creative bunch of people,” said one former male employee who held a senior leadership position. “But underlying all that was this unspoken part of the company, that there were all these bad things happening and getting either swept under the rug or ignored. And I think a lot of people are trying to process that.”

In response to questions from the Post, an Activision Blizzard spokesman wrote: “We take every allegation seriously and will investigate all claims.”

The effects of the suit have rippled through the video game industry. Over the past three years, several other video game publishing companies have faced allegations of sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination, and claims of human resource departments failing to adequately address complaints.

A week after news of the Activision Blizzard lawsuit surfaced, employees of Ubisoft, another major video game publisher based in Paris, authored an open letter in solidarity with Activision Blizzard employees, sending it to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. Ubisoft ousted several executives in 2020 following reports of workplace harassment and toxicity and has vowed to reform its culture.

“The current movement to hold the gaming industry accountable to a higher standard of behavior is something we at Ubisoft embrace,” a spokeswoman for the company wrote to the Post following the release of the open letter. “There is still more work to be done.”

For the most part, the games industry is not unionized, with the exception of some companies in Europe and South Korea, and many employees are focused on keeping their jobs or remaining in the super-competitive industry, believing that outing bad actors or raising concerns about instances of toxicity could cost them their career.

While Blizzard had a reputation for being a magical place to create video games, employees said it also had a pervasive drinking culture with easy access to liquor at the office; a human resources department that employees believe ignored complaints; and men in leadership positions who harassed women at company events. Much of this came to light through the DFEH investigation and was alleged in the July 20 lawsuit.

“In my experience, you just stopped going to HR,” said a female former longtime Blizzard employee. “They were almost like a gang that would ruin your career if you reported certain individuals.”