With a Twitter-wide debate unfolding around the Blizzard sex descrimination lawsuit, a former employee shared what seems to be the beginning of the dispute resolution agreement new hires have to sign when joining the company.
According to this former Blizzard dev (let’s not even name her here, with all the shit flying around, shall we?), all new Blizzard employees have to legally commit themselves to solving all issues they might have with their employer through arbitration, rather than litigation. Essentially, it means you can’t go to court no matter what happens to you in your workplace. Instead, you have to settle the dispute privately, with a certain neutral third party (as opposed to a judge or jury) passing a binding decision.
This explains why it is only now that the lawsuit has been filed against Activision Blizzard for abuses that have persisted for years.
Now, the existence of this kind of agreements is not a revelation. Riot Games is known to have used forced arbitration. Back in 2019, two women sued the company for unfair hiring practices (among other things). Riot’s lawyers motioned to block the legal action publicly acknowledging that the plaintiffs had waived their right go to court when they were hired.