SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Activision has issued several preemptive apologies today, seemingly trying to stay ahead of whatever the next few shocking allegations against them are.
“Let me begin today by just generally apologizing for all the shit the public doesn’t know about yet,” began today’s press release issued by Bobby Kotick, the beleaguered CEO of Activision Blizzard “In the days and weeks ahead we are almost certainly going to come under fire for something. Could be anything, really. Inconsistent salaries amongst our male and female employees, unconscionable requests to work nights and weekends with minimal incentive, or I don’t know, something even worse. Lord knows we have some sick puppies on the payroll. Please just know that we’re sorry, we’re going to do better, and we’re going to continue to say whatever we need to say to try and sell more video games.”
The apologies, which come on the heels of employee walkouts and damning media reports, are just the latest attempt to try to smooth relations from the once adored publisher.
“I think the apologies show tremendous growth,” said Clementine Bonner, an employee that’s been with the company for several years. “With these speculative acknowledgements of wrongdoing, Activision Blizzard has evolved from a company that is publicly sorry only when all of their transgressions are made public, to a company that will get out ahead of the bad PR and issue generic apologies before the allegations are even made. All of today’s toxic game companies could really learn a thing from this class act we’ve seen today.”
Others in the video games industry bemoaned the potential changing of expectations for game studios.
“Oh, well this is just fucking super,” said Bob Panaman, a PR spokesperson for Riot Games, Fullbright Studios, Rockstar Games, and Naughty Dog. “So let me get this straight, we have to start apologizing before the inhuman treatment of workers is publicized? You get how ridiculous that sounds, don’t you? How are we supposed to know which of our abhorrent practices are the ones that have upset everybody?”
As of press time, Activision had apologized for whatever insensitive language and misinformation was probably in the apologies they’d issued earlier.
