Activision Blizzard's game characters.
Activision Blizzard's game characters.
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Activision Blizzard employees stage walkout, and thousands sign petition for anti-discrimination action

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Hundreds of Activision Blizzard employees joined a walkout today to protest the company’s initially harsh response to allegations of sex discrimination at the company that makes games such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.

The backlash against the company’s stance was visible on social media, and that forced Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick to adopt a more conciliatory stance and apologize for the company’s “tone deaf” response earlier. Kotick promised swift action against anyone found to have violated the company’s policies on non-discrimination. And today, the company issued a statement that said employees need not fear retaliation for joining in the planned walkout.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.