CEO Bobby Kotick will leave Activision Blizzard on January 1, 2024 | Schreier: Kotick will depart after 33 years, employees are "very excited."
arstechnica.com
CEO Bobby Kotick will leave Activision Blizzard on January 1, 2024 | Schreier: Kotick will depart after 33 years, employees are "very excited."::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.
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?
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.
There are limits to this argument ... at some point buying a shitty game is on gamers and they need to shop around for something else.
There aren't that many tricks prepurchase of a whole new game publishers can use. The big one is non-refundable preorders and at this point I'd hope people have learned their lesson on that (I still do it for, e.g. Bungie, but I don't trust many studios to that degree).
If you've got a refundable pre-order or you bought it post release and the game gets overwhelming negative reviews and you're personally dissatisfied with your purchase, keeping the game is on you and presumably your friends that also did so. There's plenty of other stuff out there to play, especially in the shooter space.
Doesn't this argument assume that all gamers are equal?
Remember that gamers range across all ages, genders, and preferences of genre. There are vast quantities of gamers that will buy whatever is going to be popular at any given point, there a purists who require nothing but quality. There are nostalgists who crave what gaming once was.
Buying habits are mostly dictated by the sorts of factors
Saying rhat gamers need to vote with their wallet, or something to that effect as you have, doesn't consider the fact that not every gamer is in it for the same reasons and capitalism will always cater for what is popular first and foremost. So if you aren't someone who is happy to play fortnite or cod for the rest of your life without longing for change then you are likely part of a minorty. A subset of gamers who want things to get better even though that is very unlikely to happen.
This argument acknowledges that we got it wrong when we started putting up "warning jumping off this cliff will hurt" signs.
If someone buys a bad game and they're happy with it, then it's fine, it's not a bad game to them. If someone buys a bad game, they don't like it, and they keep it, that's on them.
There are so many ways to spend money here and so much competition. If someone doesn't like the game then they just shouldn't buy it, one shouldn't blame Activision for making a game one doesn't like and saying "they tricking me."
Activision is not going to hit their numbers solely on people who are clinically lacking impulse control. Activision is going to hit their numbers on apathetic people that blame Activision for the poor purchase they decided to buy anyways.
This isn't "the grocery store gives plastic bags and it's on the consumer to recycle them, so therefore it's consumers fault that plastic bags are littered." This isn't "the only option in town is unhealthy food so that's why I eat poorly." This is an expensive game, the primary product, something that exists purely to entertain that nobody needs to buy. Truly if ever there was a case, this is the case where consumers needing to stop paying for junk they don't want (or heck what do I know, maybe they do want it).
Like i said. It's a varied market, but the companies will always follow the money.
You can deny the landscape of games we have that are made solely for the purposes of making ridiculous amounts of money from minimal effort all you want, but this is the marlet we have these days.
The fact that "gatcha games" are even a thing should be all the proof you need. You know about Diablo immortal and Diablo 4 dont you? And overwatch 2? And destiny 2? Apex? Fortnite? Fifa? Cs:go? And all those mobile games? The ones that make billions from microtransactions?
I feel like tour argument comes from a lack of research. You are standing in a storm and telling me it's not raining.
Theres plenty of resources out there that prove the game indistry is outright manipilating its customers and its all in the name of profit.
Theres a reason so many companies were scared of Baldurs gate 3. Somehow a game with a 6 uear dwvelopment cycle with around 400 employees was able to release one of the best games of the last decade. One that is smashing records and making crazy profit but it has no microtransactions, you buy the game and you plau the qhole game. Where activision wigh a studio of more than 1000 employees spent the same amount of time developing the addition of the number 2 to the previously popular overwatch. It took 6 years to draw a number 2. Because thats all thry did. They took away features of a widely popular game, slapped a 2 on it and told us all we should give them more money for the privilege.
But people pay for it. They buy into it. And its ot because its good. Its because most people dont hold the industry to the same standard as others. And they arent the ones who complain about it being a mess.
The ones who complain are the ones who see through the bullshit.
The ones who buy into it are the ones steering the ship.
You're telling me I haven't done enough research while not pushing anything more than your own opinion. Where's your research and sources if your opinion is more than that? If you have sources, great, otherwise you're just misleading people and being self indulgent about how your opinion is backed by research and mine is backed by a lack of information and understanding.
Who says there's anything wrong with cosmetic micro transactions. I pay for them, I know others that pay for them. It's fine, it gives me some cool looking stuff, and gives the game developer some extra cash. You're moving the goal post going from badly reviewing games to games with microtransactions.
There are plenty of resources out there that cite manipulation in terms of loot boxes and gambling. Destiny 2 doesn't do that, but it was in your list. Bungie is largely actually releasing content people appreciate and the game is overall very well received, as is CSGO in spite of its lootboxes.
Actually purchasing the base game of CoD, which has numerous issues, and is what we were originally talking about (at least I thought) also doesn't involve any of those shenanigans... But people keep doing it, and that's the biggest part I'm saying needs to change.
Its late for me right now and ive just read this. I dont have the sources ready to go. Ill reply tomorrow night once ive had time to collect them. I dont k ow why you thought i would have these ready to go? Plus tbh, you dont need me to link them. Just look it up. Watch some youtube videos which often have collated their sources in the descriptions. Read any articles about it. Do a cursory google search. Its not hard.
But yeah, if not. Then wait for me to have the time and ill post them tomorrow.
Just before i start this, i wanted to say, destiny 2 presents itself as a free game but as a new player in 2023 it costs over £120 if i want to catch up to everyone else just for the story content. Some might call that good value as there is alot of content in the game, except other than new powers which the expansions offer there is little to be gained by playing any expansion before the most recent as the gear you get will be useless once you hit the current expansion. Not to mention all the vaulted content that you will never get to play. The game is good. I dont dispute that. I played destinh 1 for years and 2 up to the first expansion, but its not a cheap game and on top of that the in game micro transaction give you easy access to all the best cosmetics which is quite manipulative at its core.
Types of mechanics used to trick money out of players
https://medium.com/@uthayakumarabiram/how-video-games-trick-you-into-spending-money-9c764d3225ad#:~:text=Microtransactions%20and%20In%2DApp%20Purchases,likely%20to%20make%20impulse%20purchases.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/14/video-games-gambling-big-spenders
https://youtu.be/7S-DGTBZU14?si=a8nb2BNO6VwBsiAG
https://youtu.be/uvjjOtxSKdQ?si=qlSRe9HcMDYWllrm
Diablo immortal: it costs 100k to max a character
https://www.eurogamer.net/it-costs-88000-to-fully-upgrade-your-character-in-diablo-immortal#:~:text=It%20costs%20%C2%A388%2C000%20(%24,a%20character%20in%20Diablo%20Immortal.&text=Players%20in%20Diablo%20Immortal%20have,equipment%20level%2C%20and%20Legendary%20Gems.
Diablo immortal it actually costs 500k - 1mil to max a character
https://gamerant.com/diablo-immortal-requires-500000-dollars-max-character/
Will that do for now or should i go further?
That's not true at all, there are plenty of old guns and pieces of gear from previous expansions that are still great guns.
Not to mention it's a game... Playing the campaign itself, learning the story, etc, is something to be gained.
And you're not paying for that... Everything that was vaulted is no longer charged for or charged for at a significantly reduced price (e.g. the Foresaken pack for exotics). The prices on old content (even the sticker price) also drops over time.
No it's not a cheap game. Yes it's free to play, and then you need content expansions to really unlock the whole game. Destiny is free to play in the old school "free to play" sense. It's free to access some content and do some stuff with your friends then you either buy expansions (the route Destiny and WoW went) or you pay a subscription (the way RuneScape) went. These are very old models and they're not scummy in the slightest. They're the moral equivalent of a free trial.
We literally just brought someone in, unfortunately the best way to do it is to wait for a sale. It's ~$20 for the majority of the old content (legacy 2023), ~$15 for bonus content (armoury collection -- what's left of foresaken and the 30th anniversary celebration DLC), ~ $40 for the current expansion and season pass (lightfall + annual pass), and I think a fixed $10 for the 2022 dungeon key.
That's $85 for the better part of ~4 years of game content/development and ~4 more months of yet to be released paid and free content.
Then yes, $100 for next year (which if it was a subscription would be <$10/mo). To put that in perspective, if bowling was your hobby, it would be significantly more expensive. We're all adults and can afford it... No harm is being done and it's all in all a good deal for the hundreds of hours we've spent in the game.
Cosmetic micro transactions where you know exactly what you're getting are again not a problem.
I didn't watch the videos (I don't even watch long videos friends send me half the time) but I skimmed the articles. The first is just some person's blog not exactly "research worthy." It's also not talking about what I've been talking about (i.e., if you just bought a $70 game you didn't like, you haven't been tricked, just refund the thing and/or don't buy it).
The second is much more credible as a source, but they're talking about loot boxes and gambling mechanics... And yes, those are a problem 100% (especially in mobile gaming, but also definitely Relevant in things like CSGO and as you mention Diablo, and also these days, RuneScape 3) but they have nothing to do with Bungie/Destiny 2 and they have nothing to do with people buying the Call of Duty base game despite its numerous issues and horrible reviews ... and then also not refunding it ... and/or buying it again next year.
I paid £60 for baldurs gate 3. I dont have to subscribe to anything.
You spent 5 or 6 paragraphs telling me about how a free game is not free, but also, it is free even though it was one game of many that i mentioned as an example.
I get itm you like destiny. So do i. It's great. But it's expensive, and you can't deny that. It's a slightly different model to most modern games, but that doesn't mean it's not predatory. It's just a different kind of predatory. One that gives all its players stockholm syndrome.
Those resources were all i could find in the moment. I sort of rushed a bit. If i wanted to write a novel about it, i would spend more time citing resources. I lived through 95% of the evolution of video games. I've watched them turn from a fun pastime to a toxic time and money sink. I've grown tired of the shit they pedal, that they can't afford to make these games if they dont make literal billions in sales. Which is utter shit. Absolute bollocks. Verifiably false and an outright lie. The proof is in plain sight. It's not even hiding.
Go look for the evidence yourself. Humour me if you dont believe me. If you dont find what im saying is true, then therea no harm in looking.
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If people are addicted, they need help.
Most of these games are made for adults. So if children agree addicted to them, then the parents are responsible for the habits/ purchases.
If adults are addicted, they should seek help.
I don't blame beer companies for making beer, and people being addicted to that. I blame mental illness, and to a secondary degree, poor responsibility.
Life is tough but responsibility isn't dead. That doesn't mean there isn't space for mental illness, but it must be acknowledged. Game companies aren't evil.
Point being: if you act like cattle, don't complain.
The biggest problem this 'buyer beware' stance is that issues with alcoholism and driving after drinking are well known and well communicated. But the predatory practices in the gaming world are not well known or communicated. People know pretty well nowadays that when they walk into a casino they're probably going to lose their money.
But do they know that when they sit down to relax and boot up their favorite game that it has been literally engineered to get them hooked and take their money? Probably not, it's really only talked about at all in niche gamer communities like this one.
Should they be allowed to have storefronts in games? We still have alcohol and casinos so why not? But shouldn't there be some work put in to make sure people understand what's at play here so they can make that responsible choice?
I don't act like cattle, so I'm gonna continue complaining 😃
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!
He’s obviously a terrible human being, I think you have to be to be a wildly successful CEO.
But those are the people who are best at running companies. I wouldn’t be good at it, because I’m not a piece of shit
That's what sucks about capitalism. We're allowing thhattype of trash to run it.
Wow I'm very anti capitalist today!
The thing that sucks even more about it is no one even has to 'allow' that type of trash to run it, it's just what tends to happen if the profit motive is the main driver of people's behavior.
History isn't over. We humans can do better.
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.
When is ONEQ a baseline to track against? Compare it to S&P500 and ATVI looks ahead.
Take two is three times smaller via market cap and Capcom is 8 times smaller, just saying looking at stock price alone doesn't tell the full picture.
Activision has also done multiple stock splits over the last 30 years.
Stock price charts account for all splits/reverse splits, so it wouldn't be a factor when comparing price over time.
I agree with the first point though. Even just performing slightly below the market with such a massive company would make Kotick very desireable as a new CEO, unfortunately. Maybe some corps would not be fine with his reputation, but I doubt he will struggle to find a position in a new board room.
The stock price itself does account for it in the charts, but it doesn't speak to the market cap aspect.
The charts are in percent, not dollars. It doesn’t matter that Capcom is 8 times smaller if investing $1 in it still yields a higher return on investment.
Also, Take Two may be smaller, but… Grand Theft Auto.
Not true, because of stock splits
Also all I'm looking at is market cap, it doesn't matter what games you like from them lol
Nah because you're fundamentally misunderstanding what "investing 1 million" would mean after a stock splits happens.
I do this shit for a living lol
Also profit doesn't directly translate to a higher stock price, as there are various other aspects (rational and not rational) that can move a stock up or down.
Here's an example, using your invested a million starting point, for simplicity we'll say we bought in 1 share for $1 so we have 1m shares.
Price rises to $2, our position is now worth 2m, simple.
Stock does a 1:4 split, we now have 4m shares with a purchase price adjusted to $0.25 that is now trading at only $0.50 but our position is still worth $2m
Stock moves back up to $2 after some time, our position is now worth $8m
Another stock split 1:2 this time, putting us at 8m shares and stock price is back at $1, still $8m position.
Stock moves back up to $2 after some time, our position is now at $16m
On a chart it won't look like the stock has increased all that much, yes they do get adjusted for splits as you mentioned but that alone still doesn't really speak to how stock splits effect your gain/loss when held since they continue to grow at a faster rate, higher shares outstanding generally means harder stock price to move since it effects the market cap so much more.
I understand stock splits completely, and I now see that you do too.
Looking at the charts again, they do not measure what I initially thought they did. I thought each line represented profit (investor profit, not company profit) as a percentage of the original investment. I did not realize that the lines to not meet at 0% at the earliest time all three stocks could be purchased on the market.
I tried to get my parents to buy NVDA during its IPO.
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
What the big developers see when they read this is that you're a low-value customer and marketing to you will be less profitable than milking 14yo kids who use their birthday money to buy fortune gift cards.
Most underaged individuals are being taken advantage of and the government does jack shit. Gambling is banned but this you never gain money at least in gambling you have a chance to gain which makes all of this so much worse.
Yes, and if you teach this to your friends and children, the big companies will eventually adapt to what the market is offering vs trying to dictate the market
I hate to break it to you but you don't really "own" the games on steam either. You have a license agreement with valve which they can revoke at any time, and you lose access to the games you paid for.
I mean, if it’s playable offline there isn’t much they can do about it, right?
Yeah but most people don't have their library installed at all times. I don't have the space for that.
I have them all downloaded. 25 years of old hard drives and nerdy piracy have me well stocked for the apocalypse
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.
Konami docet
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?
the shareholders will identify a suitable replacement my dudes, no need to cheer up over this
Such a punchable face. Damn
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
We've replaced Kotick with Microsoft lol
And there was much rejoicing
Remember when kotick threatened to kill an assistant, and then they were fired and paid to not talk about it?
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)
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?
Time to polish up my resume.
Add some kielbasa
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.
The original article contains 376 words, the summary contains 128 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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.