Just yesterday, Activision Blizzard shareholders voted to approve a report looking into the company’s anti-harassment efforts. While the company itself is “carefully considering” that, stockholders also gave the green light to the Board of Directors nominees, which included shitty CEO Bobby Kotick. So great, Kotick gets to stay on the board for another year despite the ongoing efforts from employees, other shareholders, and even right-wing groups to see him gone. I mean, Kotick has even been accused of perpetuating the company’s toxic culture, so why anyone would wanna work with him is totally beyond me.
You might’ve missed the news since it wasn’t part of the main press release announcing the results of the company’s Annual Meeting of Stockholders. In fact, if you check that document, Kotick’s name doesn’t appear a single time. That’s pretty sus, considering his name is almost inseparable from the company. But if you look at the official legalese filed on June 21, you’ll see Kotick shows up under the first proposed item. And yikes, what an item it is.
“Item 5.07 Submission of Matters to a Vote of Security Holders” asked the entirety of the company—where all 647,887,763 votes “were represented in person or by proxy”—to approve the nominated Board of Directors to serve another full one-year term ending at next year’s stockholders’ meeting.
An alarming majority, 533,703,580, voted for the Board to remain, with only 62,597,199 opposed and some 2,162,178 abstaining. Robert Kotick has been approved to stay on the Board of Directors until 2023. Real cool, I guess.
Regarding the report that would document Activision Blizzard’s efforts to curtail ongoing workplace abuse and sexual misconduct, the proposed item had an overwhelming majority of support from everyone at the company. 379,308,934 voted for it, while 183,876,515 voted against. 35,277,508 abstained entirely. Yet still, Activision Blizzard is only “carefully considering” the report for now, telling Kotaku in a previous statement that the company “remains deeply committed to a respectful, welcoming workplace for all colleagues.”
Kotaku has reached out to Activision Blizzard for an additional comment.
I don’t get it. How could Bobby Kotick, a man who was reportedly complicit in (if not directly responsible for) Activision Blizzard’s ongoing issues, stay on the Board of Directors? Do people not have eyes and ears? Or does money speak in tongues? You’d think that there’d be some sorta consequences after allegedly threatening to kill an assistant over voicemail, supposedly covering up sexual harassment reports, and so much more. But no, it seems Bobby Kotick may also remain Activision Blizzard’s CEO even after the Microsoft acquisition is done. If there was a God, he’d have delivered judgment by now. Guess that answers that.