{"id":864253,"date":"2026-09-29T03:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T03:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/864253\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T03:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T03:12:12","slug":"bobby-koticks-lawyers-sent-me-a-bad-email-and-later-apologized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/864253\/","title":{"rendered":"Bobby Kotick\u2019s lawyers sent me a bad email (and later apologized)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is the top of a four-page letter emailed to me in January and cited in this article. This excerpt shows a demand from the firm to add language to a January 13 Game File article. Screenshot: Game File<\/p>\n

The message I had received was unsettling\u2014for a moment. Then it was just really confusing.<\/p>\n

Back on January 20 of this year, at 5:15pm ET, I received an email with the subject line \u201cLegal Correspondence re Bobby Kotick.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was from the law firm Clare Locke, a firm I\u2019d heard had been emailing reporters in recent years about their coverage of Kotick, the former, longtime CEO of Activision Blizzard.<\/p>\n

The letter was threatening. A lawyer from the firm introduced themselves as \u201cdefamation counsel to Bobby Kotick.\u201d They issued a \u201cdemand\u201d that I \u201ccorrect\u201d a Game File article I\u2019d published a week prior.<\/p>\n

The article that had irked them<\/a> had been a scoop of sorts. I\u2019d written about a a 2022 lawsuit brought by a Swedish pension fund, AP7, over Microsoft\u2019s purchase of Activision Blizzard. The suit wasn\u2019t news, but I was first to review and report about Kotick\u2019s extensive pushback to the fund\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

The pension fund\u2019s core contention was that the sale had been rushed by Kotick to avoid the consequences of sexual misconduct scandals swirling around the company in 2021. (He\u2019d not been accused of misconduct himself in those suits, to be clear.)<\/p>\n

As I wrote at the time, Kotick had denied the allegations of the rushed sale. Beyond that, Kotick used a December 2025 reply to the Swedish fund\u2019s lawsuit to assign blame for those workplace scandals, the bad press and even for the AP7 lawsuit.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d found Kotick\u2019s arguments novel and newsworthy. Across nearly 3,000 words, I explained Kotick\u2019s take: that a Swedish gaming company was behind the Swedish fund\u2019s lawsuit (the Embracer group; they denied it); that the Microsoft-Activision deal was not rushed and was secured at what Kotick felt history had proven to be an optimal price for shareholders; that he believed a conspiracy of people at unions government agencies, PR firms and the media had spun up claims of widespread workplace misconduct at Activision Blizzard in 2021. The article gave context for all of this, letting readers assess the claims and weigh their credibility.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019d later write to Kotick\u2019s lawyers:<\/p>\n

I would be surprised if you could point to any news article about Bobby Kotick in the last five years that has spent more of its wordcount articulating his point of view. He is welcome to do an interview with Game File any time.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, there they were in my inbox that Tuesday evening: Clare Locke, the law firm that secured a $787.5 million settlement from Fox News<\/a> over false statements about voting machines. They were emailing me, threatening that failure to comply with their demand could support a claim of \u201cactual malice,\u201d a legal standard for libel.<\/p>\n

Unless\u2026<\/p>\n

Unless, they said, I added a key paragraph to my article. This was a paragraph that I already knew Kotick\u2019s lawyers had been emailing reporters about for at least a year, and it was a paragraph that was already in my article.<\/p>\n

The paragraph they wanted is from a 2023 settlement that California\u2019s Civil Rights Department struck with Activision Blizzard. The settlement had closed a two-year-old lawsuit over alleged sexual discrimination at the game maker. The paragraph basically said that claims of systemic or widespread sexual harassment\u2014or of execs like Kotick tolerating such behavior\u2014had never been proven. <\/p>\n

I\u2019d already seen proof that Kotick\u2019s lawyers had pushed for the settlement\u2019s language to be added to reports about 2021 sexual discrimination and misconduct lawsuits brought against Activision Blizzard by California and, separately, by the U.S. federal government (both suits were since settled). <\/p>\n

I knew that Kotick and his lawyers felt that the California settlement language should be mentioned in the same breath as references to an article he hated and denied, a November 2021 Wall Street Journal article<\/a> claiming Kotick knew \u201cfor years\u201d of sexual misconduct at Activision Blizzard.<\/p>\n

So, in the Game File article that Clare Locke emailed me about, in the interest of ensuring I was being fair and balanced regarding the person I was covering, I had already included the following excerpt from the California settlement [emphasis added in bold]:<\/p>\n

(Kotick has repeatedly pushed back against that November article in the Wall Street Journal, citing among other things, language from a court-approved consent decree as part of Activision\u2019s 2023 $54 million settlement<\/a> over the California suit. It states: \u201cno 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.\u201d)<\/p>\n

On the evening of January 20, I was incredulous. How do you write a four page legal threat about a week-old article and miss this?<\/p>\n

While scrambling to also make my kids dinner, I wrote a lengthy reply to Clare Locke\u2019s lawyers, basically asking them to cool it with the threats and to start making sense.<\/p>\n

In part, I wrote:<\/p>\n

I hope you can understand why I am having trouble understanding what you\u2019re asking for, when the statement you\u2019re demanding to see in Game File\u2019s article already appears in Game File\u2019s article.<\/p>\n

Actual malice, as you know, refers to a reckless disregard for the truth. I\u2019m not sure what your argument is when my article already states your client\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

Here is where I should remind you, the reader, that I am an independent journalist. I publish on Substack, and have availed myself of the Substack Defender program that provides writers on the platform with legal support. But I\u2019m no Wall Street Journal or New York Times, nor even IGN or GameSpot when it comes to such things as, well, having a legal department.<\/p>\n

There are more fun things for me to do as an independent journalist than writing back to a powerful law firm representing a very rich person. On the evening of January 20th, I was just trying to cook some pasta, broccoli and chicken nuggets for hungry twins.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I wrote back to them. <\/p>\n

Two hours later, I got a reply. Summarizing: A lawyer for Clare Locke said they\u2019d \u201creviewed an incomplete version\u201d of my article and they \u201capologize for the confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

(My guess: Someone didn\u2019t read past the piece\u2019s paywall, even though they\u2019d had a full week to scrounge up the funds to do so. What I\u2019d published above the paywall was balanced, as was what came after.)<\/p>\n

That was almost that, but something about the situation bothered me.<\/p>\n

The letter had been marked \u201cconfidential.\u201d<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t agreed to that, and I disliked the idea that powerful people on the beat that I cover would act like they could unilaterally control what I might tell my readers about.<\/p>\n

On the morning of the 21st, having already gotten the powerful law firm to back off, I oh-so-wisely re-approached them with just one more thing.<\/p>\n

I thanked them for clearing things up the night before but noted that I\u2019d never agreed to keep their letter confidential. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m all for agreeing with a source to keep things off the record, but that\u2019s the thing. We have to agree. You can\u2019t just declare it. I\u2019m not bound by that.<\/p>\n

I wrote to Clare Locke\u2019s lawyer and said, in part:<\/p>\n

I trust the matter is resolved. It was disappointing to have to spend less time with my kids last night in order to address your legal letter. Family time\u2019s precious.<\/p>\n

I will add, for clarity\u2019s sake, that, while your letter stipulated that it was confidential, I did not agree to those terms. In the future, should you wish to communicate with me confidentially, I am happy to agree to classifying our communication as \u201coff the record\u201d prior to the actual communication\u2014as is standard with any professional journalist.<\/p>\n

The firm\u2019s lawyer replied, not directly addressing the confidentiality issue but asserting that the matter was resolved.<\/p>\n

In May, I told this story on an episode of Simon Parkin\u2019s podcast My Perfect Console<\/a>, but I held off on sharing it directly with Game File readers.<\/p>\n

I held off to avoid stepping on the toes of another reporter, the journalist Mikhail Klimentov<\/a>. He\u2019d interviewed me in the spring of 2025 about an investigation he was working on regarding Bobby Kotick lawyers pressing the media to add the California settlement language to stories referencing the 2021 lawsuits. And about how some outlets had changed their stories and how some simply deleted them.<\/p>\n

Initially, I was a third-party source for Klimentov\u2019s reporting, providing on-the-record context about the state of the games media. I\u2019d heard about the letters but hadn\u2019t put the time into pursuing the story. I thought it was interesting, and I was glad he was covering it.<\/p>\n

When the outlet that Klimentov was going to run his reporting in dropped the story, I began talking to him about potentially publishing his reporting on Game File. This was tentative. <\/p>\n

Then, in January, when I got my own Clare Locke letter, I told Klimentov that I didn\u2019t think it would make sense for me to publish him, not with me now being part of the story. I had my own version of this situation to tell. But I wished him well and said I\u2019d refrain from telling my tale until he could get his reporting out there.<\/p>\n

Last Friday, Klimentov finally ran his investigation, in a nearly 48-minute video report for People Make Games. It covers various Clare Locke letters, how media outlets reacted to them and what to make of all this. His video weighs the merits of Kotick\u2019s request and looks at some of the articles that were changed (one of which had a glaring error). I highly recommend watching it:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

(Note, I did some editorial consulting for a People Make Games video last year but nothing to do with this report.)<\/p>\n

While many outlets haven\u2019t left any public evidence that they updated their Kotick coverage at Kotick\u2019s counsel\u2019s request, at least one has. <\/p>\n

Back in October 2025, the mainstream outlet Reuters applied the most transparent article<\/a> update I\u2019ve seen. On the 3rd of the month, they published an article about the state of the Swedish pension fund\u2019s lawsuit. Days later, they added this:<\/p>\n

In an October 7 letter sent after publication of this article, Kotick\u2019s defamation counsel disputed claims of widespread harassment at Activision.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot a single investigation, court finding, verdict, or ruling ever concluded that there was any merit\u201d to the allegations of widespread harassment at Activision, Tom Clare and Nick Brechbill of Clare Locke wrote.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never added a statement to my article on Game File, because none was needed. Not for fairness\u2019 sake, nor to meet any demands of Kotick\u2019s lawyers.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve nevertheless wanted to be transparent with Game File readers. If someone powerful is questioning my reporting, is threatening a lawsuit over it\u2026 if that threat is part of a pattern involving other games media outlets and if, in my case, the whole thing ran into a ridiculous ditch, I want you to know about it.<\/p>\n

I also share this as a real example of how I handle threats to Game File. I stand up for my own reporting, even when it\u2019s not comfortable to do so.<\/p>\n

(In that same category of standing up for the work I do, I\u2019ll point to an incident in late August. Asocial media post I published to X\/Twitter regarding reporting I did about Take Two and GTA VI was hit by bogus copyright claim by a firm working for the publisher. I pushed back and got it reversed<\/a>; even while a bigger games media outlet let themselves be censored.<\/p>\n

This is the other reason I\u2019m sharing this story: To emphasize that dealing with threats from powerful people is one of the costs of covering the video game industry independently and as fearlessly as possible. This is where you come in. Your support, through free and paid subscriptions (sign up here!<\/a>), can help me keep doing that. It can ensure that I\u2019ve got the back-up I need. And it can help make fiascoes like this even less of a worry, so I can spend my evenings dealing with more important things, such as making sure I steam the kids\u2019 broccoli just right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the top of a four-page letter emailed to me in January and cited in this article.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-864253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}