Activision CEO Bobby Kotick and Pen Factory (Getty, Pen Factory)
Contested gaming giant Activision Blizzard has found a home for its largest unit in the Lincoln Property Company West Pen Factory complex in Santa Monica.
Activision Publishing, whose hits include “Call of Duty” and “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater”, is leasing 90,000 square feet from Gilead Sciences company Kite Pharma, according to the Commercial Observer. The complex is located at 2701 Olympic Boulevard.
Health care company GoodRx is renting the other 130,000 square feet of the complex after renting an additional 57,000 square feet earlier this summer.
Activision Blizzard announced in March that it would be leaving its nearly 215,000 square foot headquarters in Boston Properties’ Santa Monica Business Park after 10 years.
Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., took over that spot in June.
Office landlords have struggled to find new tenants since the pandemic. Letting has been slow since last spring and some predictions show it won’t recover until 2023.
Tenants have tried to sublet space and downsize their floor space – the available office space nearly doubled in the second quarter from 3.8 million square feet in the first quarter of 2020 to 7.4 million square feet.
Activision Publishing is the largest segment of Activision Blizzard and also includes several development studios. The company has to reckon with a supposedly toxic workplace culture.
In July, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued Activision Blizzard for discrimination and sexual harassment of female employees, according to PC Gamer.
Since then, around 3,000 employees have signed an open letter asking them to admit misconduct in order to remedy the situation. Since then, the news has reported further allegations of sexual harassment and allegedly unhealthy working conditions.
[CO] – Dennis Lynch
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