Microsoft agreed to pay $69 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard in 2022. One of the Call of Duty publisher’s investors, a Swedish pension fund, thought that number was too low. It later sued Activision Blizzard and CEO Bobby Kotick claiming the deal was rushed to avoid fallout from the sexual misconduct scandal the company was embroiled in at the time. Microsoft has now agreed to pay $250 million, more than the entire development budget of 2020’s The Last of Us Part 2, in order to settle the case, Reuters reports.
The judge overseeing the case at Delaware’s Court of Chancery allowed the case to move forward last fall, prompting Kotick to hire high-profile attorney Alex Spiro and fire back in his own countersuit. As Game File reported earlier this year, it alleged, among other things, that gaming publisher Embracer had somehow helped instigate the litigation by Swedish pension fund Sjunde AP-Fonden (AP7) in an effort to undermine a rival.
“Mr. Kotick intends to shine a light on the gross misconduct of the activists who invented the false narrative of misconduct at Activision, and to expose the relationship between those activists and AP7,” read part of the filing from Kotick’s lawyers. “The Court, and the public, should be aware of the abuse of legal process through which AP7, regulators, and union activists brought false and wholly unsubstantiated claims against Activision and Mr. Kotick.”
Microsoft how now agreed to a $250 million settlement to conclude all of those claims and make this final bit of drama from the Activision Blizzard acquisition go away. Activision Blizzard previously paid $54 million in 2023 to settle a California lawsuit alleging that the Overwatch maker had discriminated against female employees.
The settlement included the statement, “no court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations that: there has been systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard [or] that Activision Blizzard senior executives ignored, condoned, or tolerated a culture of systemic harassment, retaliation, or discrimination.”