Some background elements by Sonny Ross
Hi! I’m Mikhail Klimentov. You may recognize me from my past video game coverage at The Washington Post, like my investigation into the “culture of fear” at TSM.
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I’ve been working on this story for nearly two years. I’ve written tens of thousands of words across a half-dozen drafts, and participated in countless meetings and calls about it all. Now that the story’s out, I’m lost for things to say.
Earlier today, People Make Games published my latest investigation: it’s a deep dive into threatening letters sent on behalf of Bobby Kotick to publications that referenced allegations in a 2021 lawsuit brought by California regulators against video game publisher Activision, what was led, at the time, by Kotick.
That lawsuit was settled in 2023, with the California regulator withdrawing a major portion of its original allegations. The regulator said, as part of the settlement, that:
“No court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations that: there has been systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard; that Activision Blizzard senior executives ignored, condoned, or tolerated a culture of systemic harassment, retaliation, or discrimination; or that Activision Blizzard’s Board of Directors, including its Chief Executive Officer, Robert Kotick, acted improperly with regard to the handling of any instances of workplace misconduct.”
Since then, Kotick and his team have set out to deter outlets from referencing the allegations in the original lawsuit — as well as references to contemporaneous reporting by The Wall Street Journal. The result has been a weird trail of editors’ notes, redactions and deleted stories, some of which refer to The Journal’s reporting as “debunked.” (The Journal has stood by its story.)
In one instance, the legal threats escalated into a lawsuit, with Kotick suing G/O Media over stories about him in Kotaku and Gizmodo.
I’m not going to summarize the whole story here. I’d love it if you watched the video! The most perfect articulation of the story is in there, where the text I read has been lawyered within an inch of its life. Broadly, the video gets into:
The letters sent by Kotick and his team and the impact they’ve had on smaller outlets.
The legal precedent in the U.S. that makes it (in our view) totally defensible to cover the original allegations in that 2021 lawsuit.
The challenges inherent to publishing a story about a campaign of legal threats against the media.
An indictment against a lobbyist in California that puts a strange twist on the 2023 settlement of California’s case against Activision.
I want to shout out1 People Make Games for being such fantastic partners in this process. Part of the story of this, erm, story, is how hard it was to get it across the finish line. There were really only two outlets that were unreservedly onboard with publishing something like this: The New York Times and People Make Games. I don’t know the exact costs that PMG accrued while working on this video with me, but I know they were substantial. If you’re not a Patreon supporter of theirs, I hope you consider it!
Finally, if you’d like to support me, I’ve opened up a paid subscription offer on the site. Later this week or early next I’ll collect my thoughts about this whole process and respond to questions and feedback around the video in a post exclusive to paid subs.
Thanks for all the support. More ReaderGrev on the horizon. Cheers!
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1 A few more shoutouts: Riley MacLeod and Ryan Fairchild, who are thanked at the end of the video, were tremendously helpful and encouraging at different points in the production of this story. Also, a major thank you to my one-time editor at The New York Times, Jason Bailey, for working through an earlier version of this story with me. It didn’t work out for reasons that have nothing to do with The Times, and he was a dream editor throughout the whole process.
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