The US Securities and Exchange Commission announces it's hitting Activision Blizzard right where it hurts the most. In the change purse. Word is the game developer and publisher, which reported $1.78 billion in net revenue in its most recent fiscal quarter, will have to cough up $35 million to settle charges that it violated a whistleblower rule. Here's a summary of the situation:

According to the SEC’s order, between 2018 and 2021, Activision Blizzard was aware that its ability to attract, retain, and motivate employees was a particularly important risk in its business, but it lacked controls and procedures among its separate business units to collect and analyze employee complaints of workplace misconduct. As a result, the company’s management lacked sufficient information to understand the volume and substance of employee complaints about workplace misconduct and did not assess whether any material issues existed that would have required public disclosure. Separately, the SEC’s order finds that, between 2016 and 2021, Activision Blizzard executed separation agreements in the ordinary course of its business that violated a Commission whistleblower protection rule by requiring former employees to provide notice to the company if they received a request for information from the Commission’s staff.