Enlarge (credit: picture alliance / Contributor | picture alliance )

eBay has agreed to pay $3 million—the maximum criminal penalty possible—after employees harassed, intimidated, and stalked a Massachusetts couple in retaliation for their critical reporting of the online marketplace in 2019.

“Today’s settlement holds eBay criminally and financially responsible for emotionally, psychologically, and physically terrorizing the publishers of an online newsletter out of fear that bad publicity would adversely impact their Fortune 500 company," Jodi Cohen, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Boston Division, said in a Justice Department press release Thursday.

eBay's harassment campaign against the couple, David and Ina Steiner, stretched for 18 days in August 2019 and was led by the company's former senior director of safety and security, Jim Baugh. It started when then-CEO Devin Wenig and then-chief communications officer Steven Wymer decided to "take down" the Steiners after growing frustrated with their coverage of eBay in a newsletter called EcommerceBytes.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / Ubisoft / Aurich Lawson)

Five former Ubisoft executives have reportedly been detained for questioning by French authorities, years after they departed from the company amid widespread sexual assault allegations .

According to a report from France's Libération newspaper (as translated by GamesIndustry.biz ), this week's arrests by the Bobigny public prosecutor's office include Ubisoft's former chief creative officer Serge Hascoët and ex-VP of editorial and creative services Tommy François. Hascoët resigned from the company in July 2020 , while Francois left less than a month later . A year after those departures, French labor union Solidaires Informatique worked with two of the alleged victims to file a formal complaint about the alleged assaults, which seems to have led to this week's move by French police.

It's not immediately clear who else has been caught up in this week's police actions or whether the former executives will be released from detention after questioning. Other high-profile Ubisoft employees who resigned or were fired amid the 2020 allegations include Assassin's Creed Valhalla director Ashraf Ismail, former Ubisoft Canada managing director Yannis Mallat; former Ubisoft PR director Stone Chin; former Ubisoft global head of HR Cécile Cornet, and former Ubisoft vice president of editorial Maxime Beland.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Bungie hitting Comer with nearly half a million dollars of damages for harassing their employee. (credit: Bungie)

A Washington state judge has issued a $489,000 default judgment against a West Virginia man who sustained an extended and targeted harassment campaign against a Destiny 2 community manager. Beyond the direct victory for Bungie and its employee, though, the case sets a new legal precedent for companies seeking to recover expenses related to similar harassment of their staffers.

The judge's order , as shared by paralegal Kathryn Tewson (who worked on the case), details what Tewson calls "sociopathic conduct" by one Jesse James Comer, who became "incensed" after an unidentified Bungie community manager promoted fan art by a black artist. Comer then proceeded with a campaign of what the court describes as "carpet bombing" the community manager with texts and "hideous, bigoted voicemails," including multiple requests "to create options in its game in which only persons of color would be killed."

The harassment extended to Comer sending "a virtually inedible, odiferous pizza" to the target's address, a "pizza-shaped threat" that caused the manager and their family to "legitimately fear... for their safety, as someone clearly was targeting them and knew where they lived."

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The head of Kiwi Farms, the Internet forum best known for organizing harassment campaigns against trans and non-binary people, said the site experienced a breach that allowed hackers to access his administrator account and possibly the accounts of all other users.

On the site, creator Joshua Moon wrote :

The forum was hacked. You should assume the following.

• Assume your password for the Kiwi Farms has been stolen.
• Assume your email has been leaked.
• Assume any IP you've used on your Kiwi Farms account in the last month has been leaked.

Moon said that the unknown individual or individuals behind the hack gained access to his admin account by using a technique known as session hijacking, in which an attacker obtains the authentication cookies a site sets after an account holder enters valid credentials and successfully completes any two-factor authentication requirements. The session hijacking was made possible after uploading malicious content to XenForo, a site Kiwi Farms uses to power its user forums.

Enlarge / Taking a close look... (credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica )

Last November, The Wall Street Journal published a damning report alleging that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick withheld information about harassment allegations from his board of directors. The report also suggested that Activision executives failed to act decisively to address the kind of widespread complaints contained in a California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) lawsuit filed last July.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Thursday, Activision's board of directors said the company has concluded its own thorough investigation of those claims, which it says shows that "we are not a company that looks the other way."

After consulting with external advisers, talking with employees, and reviewing contemporaneous notes, Activision writes "that there is no evidence to suggest that Activision Blizzard senior executives ever intentionally ignored or attempted to downplay the instances of gender harassment that occurred and were reported." The company's board of directors also didn't withhold any information from the company, Activision writes.