After 32 years, Bobby Kotick has retired at Activision Blizzard King, and possibly, from the video game industry as a whole.
Kotick agreed to this retirement as part of finishing up the Activision deal with Microsoft, but as reported by The Verge, it was made official on December 29, 2023, hours short of the end of the year.
As head of Activision, and later Activision Blizzard King, Kotick was one of the most successful executives in the business – and in the same breath, one of the most reviled. His trek to success started when he acquired Mediagenic in December 1990. He fired all but eight of its employees and brought back its original name, Activision.
With Activision nearly bankrupt, Kotick pushed the company back to recovery by rereleasing its original titles on PC, and publishing the Mechwarrior games in the early 1990s. Kotick then started pursuing the business strategy Activision had for the rest of his tenure, acquiring studios to publish their games and rake in the profits. That included Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Toys for Bob.
Then in 2008 came Bobby’s greatest success, forming Activision Blizzard. This came about as a result of merging with French media conglomerate Vivendi, whose games division owned Blizzard and Sierra. In the terms of this deal, Bobby would remain head of the company, but Vivendi held 52 % in shares.
Kotick would continue pushing his business, and the industry, adapting to the times. He brokered Vivendi’s buyout from the company in 2013, putting him back in charge, and in 2015, Activision Blizzard bought King for $ 5.9 billion.
In that time, Activision Blizzard brought many all-time classics and powerhouse franchises to video games, including Call of Duty, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, World of Warcraft, and Destiny. Even the games that burned and faded along the way, such as Skylanders and Guitar Hero, prove Bobby’s winnability in the industry.
But alongside this success and the recognition of Bobby’s business acumen were decades long stories of bad behind the scenes behavior, that predate even the 2018 allegations.
The big issue that Call of Duty fans may remember was the 2009 firing of Infinity Ward founders Vince Zampella and Jason West. In the back and forth between them, Zampella and West and Kotick accused each other of acting in bad faith. Zampella and West would go on to form Respawn Entertainment, now under EA.
The big issue LucasArts and Double Fine fans may remember is Bobby Kotick cancelling Brutal Legend, and then threatening to sue when Double Fine found a new publisher in competitor EA. More recent personal fumbles include acrimonious splits with Destiny developer Bungie and Chinese business partner Netease. On another level, Kotick also made a habit of fumbling the same multimillion dollar franchises he made, including the aforementioned Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Skylanders, and Guitar Hero.
The spectre of the 2018 allegations leading to the 2021 workplace harassment and misconduct lawsuit is unavoidable. California state eventually dropped most charges in the lawsuit, settling for $ 54 million to pay its female employees in unequal pay. However, stories of various misconducts by Bobby continue to be retold to this day.
As shared by Eurogamer, former Demonware employee Christina Pollock shared an incident where Bobby threatened to kill one of her coworkers. An Overwatch community manager, Andy Belford, shared another story of Activision denying to give the studio or their community team support as they were warned in advance that Overwatch 2 was going to be review-bombed.
Bobby may be leaving Activision and the industry with a huge bag of money, but he won’t be remembered fondly like the likes of Satoru Iwata. In Pollock’s words, Bobby made their games worse, and it’s those things that the industry will take from him, much like the likes of Randolph Hearst and Steve Jobs would go on to be reviled by many in their own industries after the fact.
