Activision Blizzard director Fran Townsend leaves executive duty

Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Activision Blizzard’s exec vice head of state for business events, Fran Townsend, is leaving her executive duty at the firm, Activision Blizzard CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Bobby Kotick revealed Thursday in an e-mail to team. A Wall Street Journal report released Friday initially reported the information.

Townsend, that is a previous homeland protection expert under President George W. Bush, is stagnating away from Activision Blizzard; she’ll currently work as “senior counsel” to Kotick and also Activision Blizzard’s board of supervisors, according to an email from Kotick gotten by Kotaku. Two various other execs, Jen Brewer and also Luci Altman, will certainly likewise relocate right into brand-new functions — primary values and also conformity policeman and also business assistant, specifically.

Activision Blizzard has actually not reacted to Polygon’s ask for remark.

Townsend’s separation comes greater than a year after the exec was slammed for minimizing misuses reported in Activision Blizzard’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) lawsuit, which affirmed widespread sexism and also gender-based discrimination at the firm. Several magnates, consisting of former Blizzard president J. Allen Brack, were called in the suit for their understanding and also absence of activity versus the supposed habits. The DFEH claimed it performed a two-year examination right into Activision Blizzard prior to submitting the fit.

Workers were likewise important of Townsend retweeting The Atlantic’s “The Problem With the Whistle-Blower System,” equally as numerous workers at the firm were speaking up their battles at the firm and also with its society. Townsend later on removed her Twitter account.

After the suit was revealed, Activision Blizzard released an official statement in which it claimed the suit consisted of “distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past.” Townsend herself called the suit “truly meritless and irresponsible” in a declaration that’s because been commonly slammed by existing and also previous team. Thousands of Activision Blizzard employees signed a letter asking that Townsend tip down as the executive enroller of the females’s network. Following the letter, Activision Blizzard workers in California and also somewhere else walked out of work in demonstration of management action.

More than a year has actually passed because the preliminary DFEH suit was submitted. Several more lawsuits followed that, consisting of one from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that was settled for $18 million last year, also as a wrongful death suit that was later on gone down.

Amid Activision Blizzard’s business restructuring, the firm is wanting to federal government regulatory authorities to authorize Microsoft’s $68.7 billion deal to get the Call of Duty and also Overwatch author.

 

Source: Polygon