Microsoft has announced that it will be acquiring,
meaning it will be buying Activision Blizzard, for a whopping $68.7 million.
>> Billion.
I'm sorry, billion dollars.
>> Billion dollars.
>> The biggest deal in this industry in history by a lot. >> So apologies
I misspoke because it's really hard for
my brain to really comprehend that figure.
But yes, billion with a B.
Now, with this acquisition, they will inherit acquisition.
I'm sorry, Activision Blizzard's horrific treatment of workers including women. And
that's really what I wanna focus on here.
There's the antitrust angle which I think is in fact interesting and
it's almost as if we don't have antitrust laws in this country.
But I do want to focus on just like the hypocrisy of executives over at Microsoft,
who on one hand pretended as if they were concerned about the treatment of women and
workers over at this company.
And then on the other hand, completely forgot about it once they wanted to
acquire it to the tune of nearly $70 billion.
So there had been a lengthy investigation involving a lawsuit that was led by
the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, that found that
Activision Blizzard had discriminated against women at the company.
And I wanted to give you like the legal background for that because oftentimes
when we do stories involving women being mistreated in the workplace.
People like to pretend like that didn't actually happen, no that happened.
There was an investigation into it.
And I wanna give you some details.
In the office, women were subject to so called cube crawls,
during which men at the company got drunk and crawled through office cubicles and
harassed women, the complaint alleges.
Men played video games for extended periods of time during work hours,
delegating actual work.
The tasks to women.
They joked about rape, commented on women's bodies and groped them,
the complaint continues.
High ranking men at the company engaged in blatant sexual harassment without
repercussions.
Now, in one instance, the lawsuit alleges that a woman at the company killed herself
on a business trip, with a supervisor she was having a sexual relationship with.
The woman had previously faced harassment for
men at the company including a holiday party before her death,
when her male colleagues allegedly passed around a photo of her vagina.
And employees who actually spoke out against this abuse of course were
retaliated against by leadership, Christine,
the Activision Blizzard employee.
Who is suing the company and
who is choosing not to use her last name due to privacy concerns.
Said that during her time at Activision blizzard,
she was sexually harassed constantly.
When she reported this harassment to HR, she said she was demoted and
retaliated against.
Here's a quote, she says I was told not to go to HR I
was told that the harassing men were quote, just trying to be friends with me.
I was told they did nothing wrong by law.
I've been denied my full profit sharing denied shares in the company and
have had minimal raises in the four years I've been employed with Blizzard.
And the CEO clearly knew about it.
There's evidence that the CEO knew about it.
So I'm focusing on the misogynistic culture there, but
it's not just about the misogyny.
Workers overall seemed to have been abused by this company.
Microsoft pretended to be concerned about it as these scandals were being
reported on.
But when it comes to shareholders and
the possibility of acquiring a company like this,
maybe we don't care too much about how the workers have been treated.
Maybe we don't worry about all these scandals by the way,
just to give you more context.
This is a company behind incredibly popular games including Call of Duty,
World of Warcraft, Overwatch and yes, even Candy Crush.
>> Thank you.
Yeah, now, everything that you said about Activision Blizzard is true and
noteworthy in that there were successful lawsuits.
Not that it happened there because it probably happens to some degree,
probably close to this at virtually every gaming company.
Both in terms of the sexual harassment, the culture that makes it impossible and
distasteful for women to even try to advance in it.
But also the antiworker stuff.
Grinding them in the ground in the months or
year leading up to a release that's all very well document at this point.
In terms of the deal, in theory,
a case could be made that them being acquired raises the chances that
whatever remaining management they have for that time gets cleared out.
It is possible that I don't think it's gonna help out at all in terms of
the union stuff, but maybe with the sexual harassment, it could actually help.
>> Yeah, let me be clear about something,
when it comes to these types of corporations,
especially massive corporations like this, there's no, you know what?
Now, that we've been acquired by Microsoft, maybe they'll clean things up.
That doesn't happen unless the workers organized and
the good news is the workers are organizing.
Which is I'll give you more details about that in just a second.
But yeah, I feel like I interrupted you.
Did you have more to say?
>> No, that's okay.
Look, the number is absolutely insane.
It's like several times larger than the previous largest acquisition this entire
industry.
I, to me feels like watching an episode of succession,
let's just make up a random number that we value our corporation at that
doesn't actually represent anything real.
That said, they make absolutely massive games and
gaming as an industry is a very large money maker.
Like if you were to plot out on a chart, individual pieces of artistic work,
what they've made, there'd be no movies that would be close
to some of the top games, make many billions of dollars.
The most popular games.
Things like Legal Legends,
maybe World of Warcraft, overtime called duty makes tons of money.
But when you see the number written out is like nearly $70 billion.
It just seems fake and made up.
And it raises concerns not only about the effect it's gonna have workers and
on workers in terms of unionization, sexual harassment.
But also are you effectively making a monopoly here in that Microsoft is now
both the owner and producer of a console and
the single largest producer of games for the console too.
That isn't necessarily new, but maybe it's a matter of scale.
I don't know, it's complicated and certainly needs to be looked into.
>> No, but like this is why capitalism works guys.
Because capitalism gives you a lot of choices and
capitalism leads to a lot of competition.
And yeah, everything you've been told about capitalism is actually a lie.
There aren't choices.
There are huge conglomerates.
I'm not surprised that this also of course, is gonna impact the gaming,
like gaming businesses.
And yeah, you bring up a really great point and more importantly,
this is where like, I start seeing the perspective of individuals,
like who say like regulations aren't enough.
Because we have antitrust regulations seems like they're pretty
toothless though, right?
Because this keeps happening in every sector.
We see it with telecommunications companies,
how many choices do you have with telecommunications companies?
How many media platforms, media publications,
how many cable news channels, television, local news,
all how many of the sources that you rely on are gobbled up
by these huge conglomerates, corporate conglomerates of course?
>> Yeah, and not, it makes it more difficult for new industries to break in.
It also lowers the quality of the product for end users.
A lot of these, a lot of the games that they make, I believe mostly at this point
PC only, but they make tons of cross platform stuff for now.
But in the future, will it be cross platform,
now that the maker of the Xbox owns them?
It just becomes a mess for consumers.
>> It becomes a mess for consumers.
And when there isn't real competition, what does that actually do to the product?
Right, so these are, you mentioned all the games and how successful they are.
Look, more about this than I do.
So I'm actually asking you, what is the, are there any fears
in regard to the quality of games that will be released in the future?
>> Look, Activision Blizzard already had a lot of concerns about the quality of a lot
of their products going forward.
Call of duty has always been a really spotty, franchise.
Some of the recent ones have done really poorly.
Blizzards main franchises are some of the biggest games in the history of gaming,
but haven't really done much for the past few years.
I don't play World of Warcraft, but
I've read the last two expansions back to back or the worst, back to back expansions
they've had in that game is like a couple of decades long history.
And a lot of their other franchises are sort of sitting follow, waiting for new,
like wants to come out.
But so there were already concerns there.
Maybe this will help maybe a big infusion of money, I don't know.
>> I doubt it, but we'll see.
I just wanted to, do my due diligence and
cover the story from an angle that is easy for me to process, [LAUGH] so.