Editing Blizzard (section)

===The sexual harassment lawsuits===

This refers to a series of 2021 sex crime lawsuits against Activision Blizzard regarding offences that go back several years. Due to the severity of the crimes/charges and their effects along with the related investigation being ongoing, they've been given their own section on this page. 

'''July 22nd, 2021:''' California's Department of Fair Employment filed a civil lawsuit against Activision Blizzard for sexual harassment of numerous employees - especially female employees, some of the incidents going back years. The final catalyst was the suicide of female employee, Kerri Moynihan, identified as one of the victims of said harassment and even speculation that the harassment contributed to her fatal decision. According to the lawsuit, the culprits are from several levels in the company (former Senior Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi and former CTO Ben Kilgore are among them). The charges include unwanted groping, posting intimate pictures without the subject's consent, hidden cameras in toilets and more. Worse, other execs knew of the abuses but did nothing. The situation wasn't helped when several Blizzard employees lashed out at several high-profile WoW commentators and streamers such as Asmongold for criticizing these atrocities, trying to shift blame onto them despite those streamers having nothing to do with the company or the abuse. With morale at an all-time low and widespread stress, the development of new projects was put on a roughly-two-month hiatus. 

'''July 28th, 2021:''' After delivering an open letter to upper management, a portion of Blizzard staff staged a walkout protest that gained considerable news coverage. There was increasing support for staff to unionize, with Blizzard's Board of Directors responding by consulting the same legal firm whose lawyers prevented Amazon's staff from unionizing.

'''August 3rd, 2021''' Sponsors started to turn against Blizzard and executive-level employees, such as J. Allen Brack and Jesse Meschuk, left the company (unclear whether it was voluntary resignations or the standard sugar-coated "golden parachute" dismissals for top level business execs).  Brack and Meschuk are both among those named in the lawsuit, and Brack was succeeded by "co-leaders" Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra following his departure (with further accusations leveled that Brack left to deliberately avoid being confronted over knowing about the abuses but not stopping them).

'''August 25th, 2021''' The California Department of Fair Employment leveled charges of obstruction via witness tampering - requiring employees to speak with Activision Blizzard execs ahead of contacting the DFEH, amending the complaint and even destroying evidence by shredding records from the HR archives. This was added to the lawsuit and could take the case from a civil lawsuit to a criminal lawsuit.  

'''August 26th-27th, 2021''': Characters and places named after developers from the lawsuit are renamed or removed from Overwatch and World of Warcraft. Examples include the Overwatch character Jesse McCree and World of Warcraft's Draenei city Mac'aree - both named for former WoW lead level designer Jesse McCree, being renamed to Cole Cassidy (in a clever move, "Jesse McCree" was retconned to be Cole's criminal alias) and Ere'dath respectively.

'''September 14th, 2021''': A lawsuit is filed against Activision Blizzard accusing them of union-busting and worker intimidation. The latter in particular based on the company executives' response to the sexual harassment lawsuit.

'''September 20th, 2021''':  Activision Blizzard is subjected to a federal investigation as the Securities and Exchange Commission gets involved over how the company has handled employee allegations of workplace discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual misconduct. Bobby Kotick and several other senior executives were given subpoenas, with the court date pending.