After 32 years, Bobby Kotick is no longer CEO of Activision Blizzard. Following the video game company’s memorable merger with Microsoft, Kotick resigned on Friday, December 29th. Less than 24 hours after his departure, current and former Activision Blizzard employees took to social media to share claims that the former CEO did not listen to their concerns, threatened employees and was a poor leader.
X former Call of Duty programmer at Demonware Christina Pollock broke her silence following Kotick’s last day as CEO, claiming that FPS games were performing “worse” because of his “decisions.”
In the first month of my work, it turned out that he had threatened to kill one of the employees. At the general meeting that followed, no one wanted to speak first. So I demanded his dismissal in front of everyone… We all need to speak out against such people.
This statement refers to a situation that arose in 2006, when Kotik left a voicemail threatening to kill his assistant. A representative for Kotick told the Wall Street Journal in 2021 that Kotick “deeply regrets” his words, but employees are not convinced.
Current Community Development Manager for Activision Blizzard Andy Belford in X spoke about Kotik’s refusal to respond to employee concerns. The staff knew Overwatch 2 would be poorly received on Steam and begged senior management for more resources, but their requests were reportedly “rejected outright.” Andy learned that Kotik had insisted on launching on Steam without any additional help from the community support team.
This is just one example of the culture that Kotik has created in AB: [всё] flowed from the top down, usually landing on the lowest paid and most overworked people. Management was too busy reacting to wildly fluctuating direction and decisions that made no sense.
Kotick’s legacy as CEO may have brought record profits to Activision Blizzard, but it’s clear from employee reviews that his tenure hasn’t been a holiday for everyone. The hope for current workers is that his departure will inspire a positive new era for the company under Microsoft, but only time will tell what will happen.
We’ll likely hear more in the coming weeks and months about what the folks at Activision Blizzard really think of Bobby.
2023-12-31 08:00:00
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