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Last week, Activision Blizzard was sued by the state of California after the state conducted a two-year long investigation and found countless cases of sexual harassment and discrimination at the company. Included in the legal filing by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing was a mention of the "Cosby Suite."
Today, while Blizzard employees were staging a walkout in support of the lawsuit, Kotaku published a piece that goes into detail about what they discovered about this Cosby Suite. If you thought the idea of the Cosby Suite was bad before, it's probably about to get a lot worse.
According to Kotaku's findings, a fair number of employees knew about the Cosby Suite beyond the lawsuit named Alex Afrasiabi. The Cosby Suite was the name of Afrasiabi's BlizzCon 2013 hotel room and is indeed named after the (previously) convicted rapist Bill Cosby.
In the lawsuit, Afrasiabi was said to hit on female employees, say he wanted to marry them, attempt to kiss them, and constantly put his arms around them. This was done in plain view of other employees, including supervisors, many of which who tried to intervene and pull him off of the female employees.
Afrasiabi even posted images and comments on his Facebook profile concerning the Cosby Suite. The images were shared with Kotaku from a former Blizzard developer. The Cosby Suite was a "booze-filled meeting place where many, including Afrasiabi, would pose with an actual portrait of Bill Cosby while smiling. It was also reportedly a "hot spot for informal networking at BlizzCon." This would be where people went to try to make inroads at the company and hang out with top designers.
In the photos, Afrasiabi could be seen surrounded by a variety of people. One such photo is of Afrasiabi and members of Blizzard sitting on a bed in front of a photograph of Bill Cosby. A former Blizzard member says that at least one of the people on the bed is a representative from the HR department at Blizzard.
Another image from the same album shows a shot of a group chat called the "BlizzCon Cosby Crew." In the chat, former Blizzard designer David Kosak wrote, "I am gathering the hot chixx for the Coz."
“Bring em,†replies Afrasiabi. “You can’t marry ALL of them Alex,†Kosak writes. “I can, I’m middle eastern,†responds Afrasiabi. Jesse McCree, currently a lead game designer at Blizzard, then writes, “You misspelled fuck.â€
You may argue that maybe these employees were unaware of the many, many allegations of sexual assault by Bill Cosby. That argument really falls apart when the first allegations against Bill Cosby surfaced way back in 2005 for an incident that took place in 1965. Other allegations were made public in the early 1980s, another in 1996. More allegations against Cosby surfaced in February 2000, then again in January 2004, then again in July 2005, and again in 2006. Really, the list goes on. The point here is that the Bill Cosby had sexual assault allegations levied against him many times before Blizzard's "Cosby Suite" materialized in 2013.
“It was such a boys club that creating something like the ‘Cosby Suite’ was seen as funny,†one source told Kotaku. “Only you could get an efficy laid, Alex [Afrasiabi],†reads one of the Facebook comments on the picture. “#CozApproved,†reads another written by Kosak.
Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Activision Blizzard's official public stance said that the allegations are "distorted, and in many cases false." On July 28, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick sent out a letter to all employees about the lawsuit and allegations in which he said the previous remarks issued by the company were "tone deaf." Kotick's letter were met with a response by the employees, which can be seen below.
Since this story first broke, many current and former employees took to social media to share their own stories with the public. Though we included many of these stories in the first story about the lawsuit, countless additional stories have been shared in the time since. This isn't a one-off with Activision Blizzard, but a long and persistent issue with the company.
In case he deletes it: https://i.imgur.com/sfVkmop.png
More:
Here is a tweet that shares the names of the people in the photo on the bed:
And according to Kotaku, Street's explanation (he tweeted it anyway) of the Cosby Suite referencing the ugly decor from either the hotel room or their boardroom matching Huxtable's sweater makes no sense - the 2013 photos of hotel decor didn't show such decor, and Blizzard already changed offices with no ugly boardroom.
Also Street is trying to explain that the "hot chixx" refers to Kosak's wife and another person's wife. So... Apparently people talk about fucking other people's wives now as a joke? I don't do that with my friends, so have I been joking wrong this whole time?