Schreier: Kotick will depart after 33 years, employees are "very excited."

Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, emailed employees after news of Microsoft’s successful $69 billion acquisition to say that he was “fully committed to helping with the transition” and that he would stay on as CEO through the end of 2023.

  • Knusper@feddit.de
    4·
    9 months ago

    …and just like that, all of the issues and shitty work culture at Activision Blizzard disappeared and they lived happily ever after.

  • ijeff@lemdro.id
    English
    3·
    9 months ago

    Great news! I’m normally not a fan of mergers but hope Microsoft will do a better job with the Blizzard IP.

    • thepixelfox@kbin.social
      2·
      9 months ago

      Considering Microsoft own Bethesda and they pulled the whole ‘xbox and pc exclusive’ bullshit. It seems like Microsoft are trying to create a monopoly of gaming companies so they can compete with and try pull people away from Sony. They hate that Sony continues to beat them in console sales.

      So my concern is they’re going to stop selling things on Sony, such as overwatch, diablo etc. They only promised call of duty for 10 years. I didn’t read any other games with this promise in the merger deal. I honestly think it should have been blocked cause they are trying to monopolise the gaming industry and basically force a switch to their game pass or console.

      Yes blizz was a shit show. But Microsoft are children who don’t like that people have friends other than themselves.

        • thepixelfox@kbin.social
          1·
          9 months ago

          I was meaning more the fact that Bethesda released on playstation until Microsoft bought them. If Bethesda only ever released on Xbox I wouldn’t have an issue. But my issue is Microsoft are already pulling their bullshit with another company they acquired.

          • Gordon_Freeman@kbin.social
            4·
            9 months ago

            I was meaning more the fact that Bethesda released on playstation until Microsoft bought them.

            Sony has been playing this game for a longer time, as @CoderKat said, and nobody cared

            Do you know Psygnosis of WipEout fame? They developed multiplatform titles for Staturn, PC and N64, when Sony aquired them that stopped (Well, they launched WipEout on the N64 and that angered Sony but they stopped after that)

            Sucker Punch (Ghost of Tsushima) first game was for the N64

            Guerrilla Games (Horizon Forbidden West) started developing on the Game Boy Color, and also made games for the GBA and Xbox

            And a very long list of developers now owned by Sony, most of them developed for a bunch of different platforms before Sony’s acquisition

            But the thing is most people think those studios were created by Sony rather than purchased

        • CoderKat@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          The frustrating thing is they’re both being shitty for consumers. It’s terrible that they’re acquiring these previously cross platform publishers and making them exclusives, but at the same time, this is what Sony has been doing for a while (at best, they very recently have started doing PC releases but with a multi year delay, which I don’t really count as truly cross platform).

      • ijeff@lemdro.id
        English
        2·
        9 months ago

        I’m not into consoles so as long as there’s PC support, I’m good. I wouldn’t call something exclusive if it’s on PC… As long as there isn’t a crippling anti-cheat, that means it can be played on Linux!

        • thepixelfox@kbin.social
          1·
          9 months ago

          But there’s people who don’t play on pc. That’s a pretty crappy thing to say. ‘i don’t care about it unless it affects me.’
          I console game, cause I grew up on consoles, I can’t do the whole sitting in a pc chair thing. There’s more than just people who play pc. And if it’s on pc only, that is pc exclusive.

          • ijeff@lemdro.id
            English
            4·
            9 months ago

            Picking up a console means locking yourself down to (and supporting) a platform designed around creating exclusives. PC games aren’t locked down and can work on a much wider range of hardware and even operating systems.

            I use my PC almost exclusively from the couch with my OLED TV. Sometimes from bed with a tablet on a flexible arm via Sunshine/Moonlight.

  • BudgieMania@kbin.social
    1·
    9 months ago

    I can’t help but feel that he got a disproportionately large reward from lucking into getting Zampella and the bois

  • Conyak@lemmy.tfEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Maybe they will replace him with someone who has actually played a fucking video game.

  • Computerchairgeneral@kbin.social
    1·
    9 months ago

    Good riddance, but the fact that he’s getting to walk away with a presumably hefty payout kind of sours the whole thing. Hopefully, Activision employees get better management out of the merger, although that is a pretty low bar to clear.