Former CEO of video game company Activision Blizzard Robert Kotick says news company G/O Media defamed him in news publications that knowingly lied about nonexistent widespread workplace misconduct under his leadership, Courthouse News reported.
During Kotick’s tenure as CEO, Activison Blizzard faced immense scrutiny in 2021 when the California Civil Rights Department began investigating the company for potential workplace sexual harassment and discrimination. By December 2023, however, Activison Blizzard and the department settled for $54 million.
The settlement, signed by both parties, stated that “no court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations” of either systemic sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard or that the company’s senior executives “ignored, condoned or tolerated a culture of systemic harassment, retaliation or discrimination.”
Despite this, Kotick noted G/O Media published two articles on March 11, 2024 — one on video game website Kotaku and one in science and tech outlet Gizmodo — about Kotick that repeated the since-dismissed claims of widespread workplace misconduct without ever mentioning they had been dismissed.
Aftermath reported: Former Activision boss Bobby Kotick has filed a defamation suit against G/O Media over a pair of 2024 articles.
A record of a March 11 defamation filing titled “Robert Kotick v G/O Media Inc” can be viewed in Delaware court records, but the complaint itself is not currently publicly available. Courthouse News, which first reported on the suit, writes that Kotick is “seek[ing] damages to be determined at trial” regarding articles on former G/O Media site Gizmodo and current G/O Media site Kotaku about Kotick’s reported interest in buying TikTok.
As context into Kotick, the articles both discussed a California Civil Rights Department into Activision Blizzard that was settled in 2023. The final California settlement makes note that “No court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations” and that the “defendants deny all allegations of wrongdoing, liability, and damages.
Courthouse News writes that Kotick claims “the articles continue to ‘mischaracterize’ the agreement,” and quotes the complaint in stating that allegations were included “purely for the malicious purposes of causing further harm to Kotick.”
Blue’s News reported: Courthouse News reports that former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is suing G/O Media over the inclusion of some uncomfortable details in stories about Kotick’s interest in buying TikTok.
“Neither article had anything to do with Activision,” Kotick says in the complaint. “Both were about rumors that Kotick was interested in buying TikTok. Yet, Kotaku and Gizmodo went out of their way to include withdrawn false allegations related to workplace issues which G/O Media knew had been conclusively disproven by numerous investigations…purely for the malicious purposes of causing further harm to Kotick.”