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New York City is suing Activision Blizzard

New York City is suing Activision Blizzard

Activision Blizzard is facing yet another lawsuit, this time from New York City.

As reported by Axios, the New York City Employees' Retirement System is taking the publishing giant to court in Delaware, claiming that CEO Robert Kotick rushed to sell the firm to get out of facing the consequences for misconduct at the company.

The lawsuit is what's known as a 220 complaint, in which shareholders can demand that a company publish private material that could potentially reveal wrongdoing. New York City is asking Activision Blizzard release documents, such as those related to the Microsoft acquisition, talks with other suitors and board memos.

NYC has been demanding Activision Blizzard release internal docs to show what Kotick knew when it came to misconduct at his company.

“Given Kotick’s personal responsibility and liability for Activision’s broken workplace, it should have been clear to the Board that he was unfit to negotiate a sale of the Company,” the NYC lawsuit said. “But it wasn’t.”

This is the latest in a long list of legal battles that Activision Blizzard is facing. The firm is being sued by California's Department for Fair Employment and Housing, as well as a number of class-action lawsuits from investors. That's on top of the $18 million EEOC lawsuit that it recently settled.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.