Ex Activision Blizzard CEO sues Gizmodo parent

Former CEO of video game company Activision Blizzard Robert Kotick says Gizmodo parent G/O Media defamed him in stories that knowingly lied about nonexistent widespread workplace misconduct under his leadership.

Jackson Healy of Courthouse News Service writes, “During Kotick’s tenure as CEO, Activision 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, Activision 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.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.