https://www.eurogamer.net/activision-blizzard-withheld-raises-from-union-campaigners-nlrb-finds
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Activision: “You cannot kill our frat boy culture.”
Sylvanas: “Burn it!”
Will there be any arrests? Will Afrasiabi, Kilgore, McCree and their ilk be facing charges or go to court? Do we have subpoenas for J. Allen Brack and Bobby Kotick? If so, when do they go to court?
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Am i wrong here to think that if they could find verifiable proof in quantity to throw the guy out in only 10 days, a lot of people already knew but were covering for him? What a creep.
You are correct and that is precisely what the original lawsuit and various subsequent and related lawsuits claim
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Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with downloading the latest court documents for many months now. I have been skimming the Case Summary file on the LA Superior court website but I haven’t been downloading them.
I need to remind everyone here that downloading court documents comes at a cost. For the vast majority of court documents they get archived to PACER. With PACER there’s 2 things making things cheaper for people - the Recap the Law extension which archives them and the fact PACER allows you a certain number of downloads for free in a period. There’s also free legal sites that may have copies of certain court documents given you have the Case number.
For the LA superior court however no such things exist , at least as far as I can find. There’s no certain amount of freebies. There’s no extension that archives them. I haven’t found a free legal site that archive LA superior court documents either.
This means it gets prohibitively expensive downloading court documents for the case. Costs me $15 USD for a 30 page document that may only have something interesting on 2 pages of it. I have come away from downloading sessions with $100 USD on my Credit Card. I live in NZ so that’s doubly expensive for me.
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Now for some quick fire answers
Arrests = It’s a Civil case so possibly not. Don’t know Californian law that well. Please consult Hoeg Law on Youtube he’s done a lot of videos on the case. I bet he’ll know.
Too early to tell if those people would be facing charges. Jury trail isn’t until Feb 2023
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The California lawsuit is a civil case. Arrests have nothing to do with it afaik.
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Earlier today, I saw some news about one of the legal cases going on. I spent a few minutes looking for this thread, been kinda quiet.
I glanced at the business section of the local newspaper, and there was a small article about Blizzard agreeing to settle for $35 million - At least with the SEC for certain specific violations.
One of the take aways for me was that the SEC said Blizzard was not only doing bad business practices - but was also commiting illegal acts.
I looked for an article online about it to post some relevant info. From the LA Times:
Video game giant Activision Blizzard will pay $35 million to settle allegations that the company lacked procedures to collect and assess employee complaints of workplace misconduct, and charges that it violated a federal whistleblower protection rule, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Friday.
“The SEC’s order finds that Activision Blizzard failed to implement necessary controls to collect and review employee complaints about workplace misconduct, which left it without the means to determine whether larger issues existed that needed to be disclosed to investors,” Jason Burt, director of the SEC’s Denver regional office, said in a statement. “Moreover, taking action to impede former employees from communicating directly with the Commission staff about a possible securities law violation is not only bad corporate governance, it is illegal.”
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There’s way more that happened regarding the lawsuit. I haven’t always been paying attention, even if I could post.
$35 Million is pocket change when your corporation has profit margins as big as Activision-Blizzard. Cost of doing business.
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Personally, since I don’t see them being contrite, I hope the legal system makes an example out of the former Blizzard employees who did these crimes like Afrasiabi, Kosak and McCree. There should be no golden parachutes for them, they get pilloried and fines/jailtime/whatever the fitting punishment is.
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It has nothing to do with the lawsuit, per say, but it’s scummy behavior.
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/culture/q-a-with-blizzard-leadership-on-return-to-office-bonuses-leaves-devs-fuming
According to several sources, Ybarra stated something to the effect of: “If you think that executives are making a lot of money and you aren’t, you’re living in a myth.”
Ybarra is the devil.
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But wait, there’s more!!!
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I knew he was the devil, because when his name was being bandied about as some Blizz bigwig, Forum Posters were saying he does M +. That is clearly demonic activity by all standards, objectively.
Also