Bobby Kotick will get to keep his seat on Activision Blizzard’s board of directors despite catching flak over the alleged role he played in creating the company’s toxic workplace culture. At the video game developers’ annual meeting of stockholders, investors voted on several proposals, as well as who gets to be on the company’s board of directors over the next year. A total of 533,703,580 shareholders have voted to keep Kotick on the board, while on 62,597,199 have voted against it. As GameInformer notes, that means he gets to keep his seat until the next meeting in 2023.
Activision Blizzard employees walked out of their jobs last year and called for Kotick’s resignation after The Wall Street Journal reported that the CEO knew about the worst instances of abuse in the company and even protected the employees accused of harassment. If you’ll recall, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued the publisher in July 2021 for allegedly fostering a “frat boy” culture. The California agency investigated the company over the course of two years and found that women working for Activision Blizzard were paid less than their male counterparts and were subjected to constant sexual harassment.
More recently, the New York City Employees’ Retirement System sued Kotick, calling him unfit to negotiate the company’s pending sale to Microsoft due to his “personal responsibility and liability for Activision’s broken workplace.” NYC’s retirement system represents the city’s police, teachers and firefighters and owns Activision Blizzard stock. The company named a new chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer in April to help the company have a more inclusive workplace. In response, a group of employees aiming to protect workers from discrimination formed a committee to outline a list of demands for Kotick and the new chief diversity officer.
While majority of the shareholders have chosen to keep Kotick on the board, they also approved a plan to release an annual public report detailing how Activision handles any sexual harassment and gender discrimination dispute. The report must also detail how the company is preventing these incidents from happening and what it’s doing to reduce the length of time it takes to resolve them.