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The State of New York is advising that Activision Blizzard should prepare an annual report on how it's handling reports of abuse from within its company, but Activision Blizzard's board of directors have urged shareholders to vote against the proposal. New York's proposal would force greater transparency from a company riddled with scandals and would include details such as "the total number of pending sexual abuse, harassment or discrimination complaints the company is seeking to resolve," the amount of money the company has spent settling misconduct claims in the last three years, and the number of pending misconduct charges facing the company. New York is currently looking for similar annual reports from Tesla and Starbucks, and, while such proposals often fail, Microsoft's shareholders recently voted in a mandatory report despite its board urging them not to.

In an SEC filing on Friday, spotted by Axios, Activision Blizzard urged its shareholders to vote against the proposal, saying “The Board believes that, rather than diverting energy and resources toward creating yet another report, we should continue to directly respond to employee concerns." An Activision rep also told Axios that they are "committed to transparency" and intend to continue issuing reports on pay and workplace changes. Activision is also encouraging a no vote on a proposal from the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in America, that would let employees vote on a member to be added to the company's board, saying this would circumvent its own selection process for qualified board members.

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[FAST6191]

Was wondering what New York had to do with things (I know them being a fairly decent port means their courts have a bit more weight than some other places). Apparently though they have publishing and a couple of dev studios
https://www.activisionblizzard.com/location
To that end I guess they have some grounds to stick their beak in.

As far as this. Meh. I think I would probably be on the "just another report" side of things here in that it is more effort to generate something nobody reads, and even fewer care about. Auditing and general compliance is already annoying enough.

 

[AdenTheThird]

That was one hell of a title.

 

[raxadian]

Oh wow, this is terrible PR.

 

[Chary]

tell me you're scumbags without telling me you're scumbags

 

[hippy dave]

Yeah that sounds reasonable and not sketchy at all.

 

[Kioku]

Even with it being Acti/Blizz, I'm on the fence about this one. It just seems to be a brash attempt at mandatory transparency. Even if it did pass, to what extent would the state of New York go to ensure validity? Would they conduct audits? I, as a consumer, would like more transparency from these companies. Especially when you take into consideration things like crunches. Not even looking at the controversies surrounding this specific company. However, unless someone is willing to ensure they don't fudge the numbers, what's the point? It's big business. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Creamu]

Who is blizzard abusing?

 

[Dr_Faustus]

As someone who is a shareholder in a few different companies I am not surprised about either of these things ( The abuse reports, transparencies and of course the company wanting share holders to vote against them being transparent). This is something at a lot of companies dislike and are more or less forced to bring up hoping that when shareholders have the time to vote they will vote in favor of what the company wants rather than what should be done. Hell I had one a few months back with Apple which was 5 times worse than this (Asking for shareholders to vote on whether or not its employees get stock, transparency reports, more options/sick leave for employees, etc) All of which the company was against implementing but was up to us shareholders to vote for or against.

Its not surprising, a lot of companies do this, and of course they would prefer not to do it if their shareholders agree with them. That said given all the recent troubles ActiBlizz has been under, putting this out there for shareholders to vote on just does not do any favors to their already tarnished public perception. This will just add more fuel to the fire for them. Hopefully the shareholders will do what is right, if for nothing else to restore some reputation for the company sake at least stick it to the executives that are currently running the flaming dumpster.

 

[JaapDaniels]

Who is blizzard abusing?

who not?

 

[Creamu]

who not?

Will they go to jail for their evil crimes?

 

[Mayo1990]

lol

 

[JaapDaniels]

Will they go to jail for their evil crimes?

sorry, i was joking, there's only one case i thought of abuse that've been taken to the court, and i'm not even sure it was blizzard.
didn't watch it, so i'm not sure the accuser was right and won the case.
i know for sure that i felt abused when i lost my profile info on starcraft II, and they made me pay full price for the game just to create a new profile.
but then again i didn't read the end-user-license-agreement so technicly they had the right to do so... like the human centipede...

 

[Sir Tortoise]

Right, because a yearly report on how you're cleaning up would take way too many resources next to the *actual* cleaning up itself. Obviously not feasible. Obviously they will clean up even better once freed from the burden of having to say how they're cleaning up.

 

[Creamu]

sorry, i was joking, there's only one case i thought of abuse that've been taken to the court, and i'm not even sure it was blizzard.
didn't watch it, so i'm not sure the accuser was right and won the case.
i know for sure that i felt abused when i lost my profile info on starcraft II, and they made me pay full price for the game just to create a new profile.
but then again i didn't read the end-user-license-agreement so technicly they had the right to do so...

Either way, its cruel of them...

 

[Taleweaver]

... Okay, i admit it: i was inclined to buy Activision/blizzard stock just to vote for the proposal. But that's a pretty hefty expense just to spite that board of assholes, and pretty hard to explain ('yup.. I invested in that toxic company. And it felt so damn good to fuck them over!')

 

[The Catboy]

I really wish Microsoft didn’t buy them so they could just die already

 

[ZeroT21]

Sounds like 'em fratboys having meltdowns

 

[Deleted member 194275]

I really wish Microsoft didn’t buy them so they could just die already

Microsoft got them after a well known widespread abuse situation, a much cheaper purchase was Evo, this time by Sony, and again after knowing nice things such as children rapes.

For those corporations, a scandal is just an opportunity to buy something a little cheaper.

 

[The Catboy]

Microsoft got them after a well known widespread abuse situation, a much cheaper purchase was Evo, this time by Sony, and again after knowing nice things such as children rapes.

For those corporations, a scandal is just an opportunity to buy something a little cheaper.

I am aware but stand by my statement. They deserve to die and I am sad Microsoft stopped that from happening