In a previous life, Frances Townsend defended the authorized foundation for the torture methodology known as waterboarding throughout George W. Bush’s warfare on terror. In a newer one, she helped lead Activision Blizzard’s initially tone-deaf response to a significant sexual harassment lawsuit by the state of California. Now she’s stepping down because the Call of Duty writer’s chief compliance officer after lower than two years within the place.

CEO Bobby Kotick introduced the transfer to workers in an e mail on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal studies. Despite stepping down from the place, Townsend will nonetheless stay an official advisor to Kotick and to Activision Blizzard’s Board of Directors, over which Kotick presides. This shift within the firm’s governing construction comes as Microsoft tries to persuade regulators to let it purchase the writer of Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV for $69 billion by June 2023.

“She tirelessly and successfully navigated a challenging time for the Company with leadership, conviction, and grace,” Kotick wrote within the e mail, based on The Wall Street Journal. (Last November, over 1,000 workers signed a letter calling on him to resign.)

Others would possibly disagree. Brought on board to assist Activision Blizzard navigate complicated international laws, the previous Bush adviser ended up being one of many faces of the corporate’s reckoning with allegations of sexual discrimination and harassment. Townsend grew to become the messenger for the corporate’s extraordinarily harsh rebuttal to a California lawsuit alleging pay discrimination, a “frat boy” office tradition, and different points.

“A recently filed lawsuit presented a distorted and untrue picture of our company, including factually incorrect, old and out of context stories—some from more than a decade ago,” learn an e mail from her work account largely defending the corporate and denying any legitimacy to the claims. It provoked a walkout from a whole lot of workers throughout Activision Blizzard the next week, and Townsend even began blocking a few of them on Twitter after they criticized her for tweeting an anti-whistleblower article from The Atlantic. Eventually, she nuked her Twitter account completely. However, The Wall Street Journal later reported that the unique e mail from Townsend’s account waiving off the California lawsuit was really drafted by Kotick.

Activision Blizzard later modified its tune, saying quite a lot of new insurance policies to attempt to deal with office points and an $18 million settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The ABK Worker Alliance group that grew out of the unique allegations continues to press for extra reforms and say in how the insurance policies are developed and applied.

Townsend couldn’t instantly be reached, and Activision Blizzard didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.