The legal woes forActivision Blizzardappear to be continuing, even outside the toxic workplace allegations that have consumed headlines around the firm for the last few months. The latest blow is a ruling in favor of formerBlizzard Versaillesemployees in a French court that will allow those workers to seek back pay after their layoffs in 2020.
The appeals court ruling has to do with actions that Blizzard Versailles took two years ago when it deemed about 130 employees “redundant” and laid them off, prior to that branch of the company closing entirely. This was a second round of “redundancies” that the firm had apparently undertaken to save costs, though that first round of redundancies appears to have been ruled invalid when they occurred in 2019. Both rounds were found invalid in short because Blizzard didn’t “do enough forward planning” before the employees were let go.
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French industry publication Gamekult has been working on an in-depth piece on one ofmany lawsuits filed against Activision Blizzard. The ruling by the French court was a bit of a watershed moment in light of the fact that the Versailles office was already closed a few years back. The court ruled that the redundancies were invalid, but it cannot give the workers their job back since their jobs no longer exist at all.
What the former employees can now do is add themselves to the growing list oflegal actions against theWorld of Warcraftstudio. The court has given those workers a chance to sue the company for lost wages, with the court further making it clear that at the very least, they could be entitled to a minimum of six months of backpay.
It’s important to note that the court ruling does not award that money just yet, but does appear to remove a rather large hurdle should they want to file another suit for those lost wages. The ruling is just the latest in what has been seriouslegal and financial trouble for Activision Blizzardover the past year.
Earlier this week, the company continued to deal with the fallout of those problems as one step towardsMicrosoft officially purchasing the companywas officially taken. A vote of the firm’s shareholders returned an overwhelmingly positive reaction to the sale ofActivision Blizzardwith 98 percent of the vote in the affirmative. The next steps would appear to be the official green light from the United States government.
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