"The executives of our company did not protect us": Activision Blizzard workers hit back at claim harassment lawsuits were "fake""Bobby Kotick is trying to paint a false narrative."Image credit: Activision News by Tom Phillips Editor-in-Chief Published on Feb. 13, 2025 Activision Blizzard staff have hit back at the eyebrow-raising claim made this week by former boss Bobby Kotick that the company's harassment lawsuits - and an employee petition seeking the CEO's removal - were "fake".The high-profile ABetterABK workers group, which spearheaded much of the company's employee activism at the time, responded to Eurogamer's coverage of Kotick's comments via social media last night and stated that "the executives of our company did not protect us, and often made the situation worse or directly perpetuated the harm"."The trauma, discrimination, and abuse that our coworkers and former coworkers endured is not fake or a 'plan to drive union membership'," the group stated. "Our unions were born from the very real and harmful way executives reacted when made aware of these situations."Speaking via the Grit podcast, Kotick had suggested the legal action Activision Blizzard had faced under his tenure, from multiple US government agencies, had been a "plan" by the Communication Workers of America (CWA) union to drive up membership."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," ABetterABK's statement continued. "This is not true. The workers are the union."We are not a third party looking for companies to prey on. We are workers with a vested interest in making our company the best it can be."Activision Blizzard ultimately settled all of the legal action - meaning payouts to staff who faced harassment at the company, and no evidence of systemic patterns of employee abuse ever proven in court.Valentine Powell, a former senior UI engineer who led several employee walkouts, additionally responded with a lengthy social media thread commenting on Kotick's comments, and sharing their perspective on life at the company."During my time at Blizzard I was loud and I was vocal about the issues facing our company, I helped spearhead multiple initiatives to remove systemic tools of harm, and I worked with the newly hired DE&I crew to help form several ERGs, set up our first attendance at Pride, and the Inclusion Nexus," Powell wrote."There were money barriers, there were political barriers, there were bad actors, basically we were only allowed to make small changes, and most of us knew we needed large ones. One of my first forrays into collective bargaining at Blizzard was the salary spreadsheet."This was years before unionisation was ever discussed," Powell continued. "We gathered a list of about 50 ways people wanted to improve salary and promotions, and refined that list down to 10 bullets with the help of over 100 employees across Blizzard. We presented our list, and were told by leadership 'no'."We didn't discuss unionisation as a team until months after our first walkouts. We wanted to try to bring light to what was happening and try to fix it ourselves if we could. The first two walkouts were entirely employee run. It was terrifying and amazing and beautiful."After a couple months of us being loud, Activision Blizzard stopped being nice about it, especially Kotick. I was The One who started the petition to remove Bobby Kotick as CEO. I was the first name on the list, and that petition had nothing to do with CWA."Powell concluded by noting that the CWA had offered support regardless of whether staff were part of the union or not - or whether they would ever join."Bobby Kotick is trying to paint a false narrative, but its unsurprising," Powell wrote, "he refused to listen to us for years when we tried to handle this stuff without unionisation, and only listened once we actually started unionising."In the same interview, Kotick claimed that Microsoft's Activision Blizzard takeover was sparked by both companies failing to buy TikTok.