[UPDATE] Some Blizzard Employees 'Struggling to Make Ends Meet' In New Report

Employees of Blizzard, developers behind World of Warcraft, have started sharing around a spreadsheet which contains salaries, pay increases, and more in a new report by Bloomberg. [UPDATE 8/7/20: Corrections were made to the original Bloomberg report since its publishing. We were contacted by PR on behalf of Activision Blizzard with these corrections in-line below]

It seems that more than 50% of the company’s employees are unhappy in their current compensation. [UPDATE 8/7/20: According to PR on behalf of Activision Blizzard, we received the following statement, "The survey numbers are inaccurate. It was not more than half; it was significantly less than half."] An anonymous spreadsheet was created and circulated around Blizzard. Bloomberg reports that most raises are actually below 10%. This was followed by employees stating they were, “struggling to make ends meet.”

This stands in stark contrast with the increasing revenue of Activision Blizzard, in addition to a few producers and engineers making over $100,000 a year. Testers, and customer service reps, on the other hand, receive minimum wage. [UPDATE 8/7/20: According to PR on behalf of Activision Blizzard, "It is unequivocally not true that employees are paid minimum wage. We pay a minimum of 50% more than minimum wage compared to market minimum wage."] 

This news follows the heels of Activition Blizzard’s second quarter financial results in which they announced a second quarter revenue growth of38% or $1.93 billion. This spreadsheet documenting wage gaps is also contrasted with CEO Bobby Kotick’s compensation in 2019 which was worth $40 million. According to Bloomberg, Kotick’s compensation package has only grown since 2019. Additionally, the company awarded $15 million in stock and bonuses to their new CFO, Dennis Durkin.