[STEAM] Former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick blasts "fake lawsuits against us and Riot Games", claiming union workers used harassment claims to drum up members

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Ex-Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has called a 2021 petition signed by over a thousand Activision Blizzard employees to remove him as CEO "fake", and suggests that harassment claims and legal cases brought against Activision Blizzard were engineered by the Communication Workers of Union in a bid to attract new members. Kotick made the comments during an appearance on

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, a business podcast by American venture capital company

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. He appeared on the podcast with former EA CEO

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Gordon (thanks,

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), to talk about both their company histories.

Kotick's statements reference widely reported incidents alleging a company culture of harassment, intimidation, and pay inequity around the time - coinciding with

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- and the petition referred to appears to be

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, which attracted over a thousand signatures.

That

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followed a

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(paywalled) that highlighted several alleged incidents of harassment by Activision staff, alongside reports that Kotick was aware of these allegations but did not inform the company's board of directors, and intervened to prevent the firing of an alleged harasser. It wasn't just Activision workers who found these claims alarming: a group of company shareholders

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. Kotick denied any wrongdoing.

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