Embattled Activision Blizzard Govt Steps Down as Girls folks’s Network Sponsor
Activision Blizzard’s president for corporate affairs Frances Townsend has stepped down as an government sponsor of the ABK Girls folks’s Network as of two weeks prior to now. The embattled corporate government has been criticized by workers in the end of the corporate for several missteps following the lawsuit in opposition to Activision Blizzard used to be first publicized.
Townsend will not be any longer the government sponsor of the ABK Girls folks’s Network, a bunch for females workers at Activision Blizzard King. Nonetheless, Townsend is silent employed by Activision Blizzard.
In an announcement obtained by The Washington Post’s Shannon Liao, Townsend “believes in doing what’s reliable for the Network, and can proceed to purple meat up and come the work of the Network as most effective she will be able to.”
Activision Blizzard Lawsuit Timeline: The Anecdote So Far
The news is sparkling the most modern surrounding Townsend because the firestorm around Activision Blizzard in the wake of the California Division of Handsome Employment & Housing’s lawsuit for gender discrimination continues.
Townsend used to be previously criticized for issuing an announcement quickly after news of the lawsuit broke calling the allegations “distorted” and “fraudulent.” Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick sent a apply-up letter to workers calling this initial response “tone-deaf.”
Per The Washington Post, Townsend told workers over Zoom that her statement used to be following “reliable counsel’s guidance on language, and that the final consequence now not sounded considerable admire her scream[.]”
Despite claiming the statement used to be now not her scream, Townsend used to be criticized all another time for tweeting a link to an editorial titled, “The Discipline With Whistleblowing,” on her non-public social media yarn. The article which calls out whistleblowers used to be seen as hideous given many most fresh and dilapidated Blizzard workers were sharing tales of their abuse on-line or to the clicking.
After being criticized for her tweet, Townsend apparently began blocking Blizzard workers and journalists (myself, incorporated) earlier than deactivating her Twitter yarn altogether. A statement from Activision Blizzard to Kotaku said, “The company didn’t query her to delete it. It used to be her determination.”
A coalition of Activision Blizzard workers has sent CEO Bobby Kotick and the corporate’s leadership team a letter that has criticized them for now not responding to workers’ explicit calls for to built a more wholesome work atmosphere. And whereas Activision Blizzard announced it hired agency WilmerHale to catch a neutral audit of company insurance policies, the employee’s group has rejected the agency resulting from the friendly relationship between WilmerHale and the corporate’s government leadership.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s News Editor.