Employees of Activision Blizzard have a manager of the gaming company in their sights: Frances Townsend. She is the “Executive Vice President” at Activision Blizzard and Executive Sponsor of a network for female employees. Thousands of signers of a letter to management are demanding that she step down from her position in the women’s network.
Where is this demanded? More than 2000 employees of Activision Blizzard have signed a letter that was sent to the company’s leaders. This letter has also been leaked to some media.
What is being demanded exactly? The letter states:
We urge Frances Townsend to keep her word and step down as Executive Sponsor of the ABK Employee Women’s Network due to the harmful nature of her statement.
Furthermore, it states that Frances Townsend’s “internal statement” was “abhorrent and offensive.” It is against everything the signers believe Activision Blizzard should stand for.
“Activision Blizzard is a great company with good values today”
What kind of statement was that from Townsend? Journalist Jason Schreier published Townsend’s internal statement on July 23. There, she responded to a lawsuit from a California agency as the “Chief Compliance Officer” and sponsor of the women’s network.
She stated that the lawsuit painted a “distorted and untrue picture of the company,” with “factually incorrect, outdated, and taken out of context stories.”
The company Activision today is a “great company with good values.” She joined a company that she expected would treat her with appreciation and respect and give her the same opportunities as men. It would have been the same during her time.
Activision Blizzard executive Fran Townsend, who was the Homeland Security Advisor to George W. Bush from 2004-2007 and joined Activision in March, sent out a very different kind of email that has some Blizzard employees fuming. pic.twitter.com/BxGeMTuRYF
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) July 23, 2021
The statement was harshly criticized, among other things, because
- Townsend has been with Activision Blizzard for only 4 months
- she assumes her situation as a “high-ranking manager” and apparently cannot empathize with the situation of female employees at lower levels
The internal statement had a completely different tone than the internal statements of the male bosses, Bobby Kotick and J. Allen Brack. They seemed more concerned and understanding.
Manager blocks her own employees on Twitter
Here’s how the situation has developed since then: In recent days, tensions between Activision Blizzard employees and Townsend have increased further.
Townsend shared an article on Twitter that highlights the dangers of “whistleblowing.” This is what it is called when insiders go public with secret information.
This article and especially its timing were harshly criticized on Twitter. As reported by Jason Schreier and other media, Townsend responded by consistently blocking people on Twitter: including employees of Blizzard.
A manager who blocks her own employees is viewed critically.
Townsend is already a controversial figure: She was a spokesperson under U.S. President George W. Bush and defended in this capacity the government’s torture methods.
Between the lines, it becomes clear that many employees at Activision Blizzard are concerned not just about the manager losing her job as “Executive Sponsor” of the women’s network:
Head of Activision Blizzard responds to the scandal: People are being fired
