After a month of August plagued by protests in the video game industry , following the lawsuit of the state of California against Activision Blizzard , employee associations of both Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard itself publicly affirm that the two companies continue to ignore the workers and their requests to change the work culture of both. This is denounced by the associations A Better Ubisoft (ABU) and A Better Activision Blizzard King (ABetterABK) , with their comments shared by Game Developer, the former Gamasutra.
In a public statement, ABetterABK states that Activision Blizzard’s management has failed to comply with workers’ demands, which included the end of forced arbitration clauses, the adoption of rules to avoid discrimination in hiring and promotions. , the creation of a diversity and equality department, and make public data on salaries, bonuses and percentages of promotions in the workforce according to each gender and ethnicity in the workforce. All this to ensure that workers have the same conditions and the same treatment in the company, regardless of their gender or race.
For its part, ABU claims that more than 34 days have passed since 1,000 Ubisoft employees signed a statement demanding real changes from its president. This, a whole year after the harassment at Ubisoft was known and the board promised changes. After all this time, the Ubisoft employee association states that ” we have not received a response to our key requests”, and reiterate their demand that Ubisoft stop protecting people they know are abusers, by moving them from a studio to another without further repercussions.
Likewise, they request that the main companies in the video game industry establish general rules and procedures when dealing with these cases, such as abuses at Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard. “Neither Activision Blizzard workers nor Ubisoft workers have received a meaningful response from management, instead we have received empty gestures that show the real apathy that their leaders have towards employees, ” adds the group of workers of Ubisoft, in a subsequent statement to Game Developer.
The state of California’s lawsuit against Activision Blizzard led to the departure of Blizzard’s president and members of its human resources department, although that did not appease some employees who organized strikes and protests against their leadership. In the case of Ubisoft, their protest dates back to a year ago, and today they continue to demand solutions with messages like this. For his part, the president of marketing at Electronic Arts, Chris Bruzzo, said a few weeks ago that toxic environments are inevitable, but we must fight against them .