CEO Bobby Kotick will leave Activision Blizzard on January 1, 2024 | Schreier: Kotick will depart after 33 years, employees are "very excited."

This 1 fucking guy ruined a whole generation of gaming with his greedy dumb fuck business ideas.

This 1 fucking guy ruined ~~a whole~~ future generations of gaming with his greedy dumb fuck business ideas.
Ftfy
To be fair he probably didn't come up with any ideas. Just approved the worst ones that were presented to him.
- That's not the problem. The problem is him not doing anything about all the toxic culture and sexual assault in his company, causing the best employees to leave.
Who would win?
A massive entertainment industry filled to the brim with passionate creatives
One greedy boy
Dude has ruined multiple generations
It would be ruined if people didn't buy the stuff, but they do, so it's a success.
How? Did he force people to buy and subscribe and endorse something?
No. Idiots bought in, sucking balls purchase after purchase.
Edit: gamers who spent tendie money are mad
- They trick people into buying in. The majority of people buyi g these games are extremely susceptible to the tactics they use to get you to buy their games and when you buy thwm they have more tricks to keep you locked in. The people falling for it arent idiots. They just fall for this stuff a bit easier. Or they havent been shown how it works so they dont know what to look out for.
  Things like fomo and gambling mechanics as well as clever pricing tricks are just aome examples. Tbere are conferences and lectures held by industry people for lther industry people where that talk about consumers like they are cattle or other livestock and how we can be manipulated if certain tactics are followed. Games are more like "storefronts" to them. In fact thats literally how the fortnite developers referto fortnite, a storefront. With a game attached.
  So, no, bobby didnt force anyone to buy his games, he didnt point a gun at anyones head (well actually we dont know that and i think there was a rumour aomewhere of something like this, couls be wrong tho) but he did remove all choice and boil everything down to a basic game with an inflated shop which fans of activision and later blizzard games fell for, for far too long. CoD was one of the most popular games in the world and fans of the game took some time to realise that the same game was being re released with a new skin for years.
  Bobby took away that choice by not releasing other games, he just preyed on the susceptable and knew exactly what he was doing.
  So please dont pretend that, for all those people, simply not buying the games or in game purchases was "simple" for the majority of people and that in a round about way, people weren't forced into buying into it. It just shows a lack of understanding and research into the subject.
- Agreed, don’t buy the battle pass, or better yet, don’t buy the game if all you’re going to do is complain.

Hope he burn in hell. He's the best example of how not to run a company. It's insane that he's not been let go for years now.

That entirely depends on your expectations of a company CEO
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ATVI/activision-blizzard/stock-price-history
I can’t think of a company that wouldn’t hire someone with this kind of stock performance over 30 years.
The issue is really that consumers just keep spending money on things that they hate.
If they didnt do that, Bobby would have been gone a long long time ago
- I think you're right. I'm pointing moee to his leadership and how he has allowed sexism and other bad behavior to go on without any consequences. He even told an assistant that he would have her killed.. https://www.pcgamer.com/more-shocking-activision-blizzard-revelations-bobby-kotick-once-told-an-assistant-he-was-going-to-have-her-killed/
  He might earn himself and the stockholders a lot of money.. But in my eyes he's a great example of why I don't like capitalism, but that is another discussion tho!
- ATVI's stock performance only looks impressive if you don't compare it to anything. Here's a graph comparing ATVI to ONEQ, which is an ETF that tracks the NASDAQ composite index. If anything, ATVI has been slightly underperforming the market average for most of Kotick's tenure as CEO.
  To see what "outperforming the market" looks like, compare ATVI to NVDA. NVDA's stock has increased 16,000% in the 15 years that Kotick has been CEO of ATVI.
  Or to see some video game company stocks that have outperformed the market, compare ATVI to TTWO (Take Two) or CCOEY (Capcom).
  From a purely financial perspective, Kotick was middling at best. He deserves no plaudits. There were plenty of other NASDAQ companies that outperformed the market during the time he was CEO of ActiBlizz, including other video game companies.
- Most consumers just don’t care or don’t know at all who Bobby Kotick is. Call of Duty is so popular, but the people that follow the market or the game industry well enough to know the people behind games aren’t that many.

This fucking goblin enabled systemic rape in his organization. He deserves prison.

Which ring of hell is he planning on spending his retirement within?

Edit: Also, give me an example of another human being that looks more like a testicle with eyeballs.

Harvey Weinstein, but using him is practically cheating.
- I hear his actual testicles (testicle?) look like they have eyeballs as well. There were a lot of similar accounts from the women he abused who used terms like "genital deformity" and "botched surgeries" when recounting the sex he forced upon them.
John Riccitiello , former EA CEO, and now former unity CEO
Bing has got you covered

I am so glad he is gone. I stopped playing any blizzaed games partially because of this shmuck... and partially because the games became trash. Here's hoping things will turn around now that he is gone.

Yeah, i'm sure microsoft won't do anything to increase monetization on their 69 billion dollar purchase. The objective is to make blizzard's games better by minimizing highly profitable systems like microtransactions, battle passes, DLC season passes, xp boosters, in game real money stores.
They wouldn't be buying these properties to try and milk as much profit as possible at all. No sir.
- Hey, this is the last hope I have. There's not a lot of it, but there is a tiny chance that maybe maybe maybe things will get better. Very likely not, but, you know, one could hope.
- I paid full price for both Factorio and Skyrim because they are full games that I get to own. No micro transactions, and modding is almost encouraged through Steam. I will never buy another microtransaction game. I will never buy another "subscription based" platform like Xbox. I'm so fucking over not owning the thing I bought
- I expect some changes to integrate better with gamepass, but overall if monetisation is the problem, MS won't fix anything.
- Microsoft-Activision-Blizzard to design pachinko machines and mobile games, exclusively.
Now when I think about it, the chronologically last Blizzard games I've enjoyed were WarCraft III TFT and old WoW on pirate servers. (My favorite is Tides of Darkness, obviously)
So - I don't know in which direction would things be turning around, what is there left even since those times?

Limp dick Kotick should have been fired long ago.

I’m out if the loop. Can someone explain?

He looks like Bilbo Baggins in the scene where he's overcome with desire for the ring and tries to take it from Frodo.

HRAAAAGH!
He looks like the the love child of Bilbo Baggins and Elon Musk.
- Awesome. Also ewwwww.
And yet I would still rather hang out with fiend bilbo
Is there a scarybilbo lemmy sub yet?

While CEO of Activision, Kotick's termination without cause, or "Termination by employee for good reason following a change of control," guaranteed him nearly $300 million. Bloomberg reports that Kotick's windfall will likely be $375 million now that Microsoft's acquisition has gone through.

That'll teach 'em

Such a punchable face. Damn

the shareholders will identify a suitable replacement my dudes, no need to cheer up over this

Blizzard will stay the rotten corpse of something great it is right now

They drag the corpses of their games along for money real good. Sometimes I think about the amount of people still paying a wow subscription and just sigh.

What a piece of shit

Nice to see Microsoft is cleaning house one day after the aquisition went through, starting with the root of the problem. This is very likely part of the deal and is gonna bring about some long needed changes.

This is standard. You always get rid of the upper management. You give them a lot of money and a round of applause and then you put your own people in. Everyone at the top will be Microsoft.
- Kotick gave himself a few hundred million as a bonus a few years ago.
This was likely the plan before the acquisition. I doubt this came as a surprise to Kotick.

Remember when kotick threatened to kill an assistant, and then they were fired and paid to not talk about it?

We've replaced Kotick with Microsoft lol

- We don't know that yet. I dislike Kotick as well, but doubtful that much changes from the monetization standpoint of the company.
  From a purely morale standpoint, it's mostly a W. But it's not like Kotick isn't getting his golden parachute and wiping his tears away with $100 bills.
And there was much rejoicing

Microsoft must have a policy of no stealing breast milk, poor guy lost his job to that (fr tho, he will get a really nice bonus and will never 'pay' for the terrible work environment he created)

employees are "very excited."

Time to polish up my resume.

Add some kielbasa
Fuck yeah, brother! I'm excited to apply for the new Activision Blizzard, too! What a time to be alive! <3
- Damn I already got competition?

Vote me as a CEO I will

bring back original maps from several CoD titles, make more, compact 3-4 row maps.
remove skins from the game and replace buyable weapon skins with unlocks
create 4-5 paid dlc with good content.
revert matchmaking to OLD days…. No SBBM
Actually invest in an working Anti-Cheat
Reduce the amount of „Celebrities“ in-Game and Trailer
continuing zombie lore
console crossplay no pc

Sounds good but that is the job of the development lead, the CEO is there to make sure the money keeps flowing. These things cost money and with the removal of skins less profit.
So what would your strategies be to bring more money on the table for Activision blizzard?

ITT: people who think the guy getting a $375M golden parachute is taking a huge L.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

It's "a massive change for the video game industry," Schreier writes, which seems almost restrained, given Kotick's longevity and recent history.

Kotick, who has led Activision for more than 30 years and orchestrated its merger with Blizzard, had considered stepping down in late 2021.

Activision was also sued by its shareholders and pressured by state treasurers over its secrecy and responses regarding the California lawsuit.

In early 2022, Microsoft announced its intent to buy Activision, and the timing, according to reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, was not a coincidence.

Kotick told VentureBeat after the Microsoft announcement that he didn't believe the harassment and mismanagement accusations hurt the company's stock.

He cited delays in shipping Overwatch and Diablo titles, along with Call of Duty's sales performance.

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So many CEOs stepping down now

Article related

good boss lol

What are people's predictions on what will happen to ABK after he leaves? Personally, I've never played COD and the last Blizzard game I played was Diablo 2, so I don't know what they've been doing.