Blizzard president sends a message | This Week in Business

gamesindustry.biz:

Morale at Activision Blizzard took a hit this week, which is probably a lead we could have used for any This Week in Business column of the past year and a half.

This time the problems stemmed from a Blizzard Entertainment all-hands meeting that was reported on by Game Developer. The intent of the meeting was to discuss the results of an internal employee satisfaction survey, but whatever those results were, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra put on a performance that probably made them worse.

In the Q&A section of the meeting, Ybarra addressed the recent decision to cut employees' profit-sharing bonus by almost half, which couldn't have gone over well considering Blizzard had just finished one of its strongest quarters in years, nearly doubling its operating income thanks to the launch of Overwatch 2, the mobile hit Diablo Immortal, and recent World of Warcraft expansions.

Now, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has made no secret of his desire to create a company that "really rewards profit and nothing else," so it's probably a little galling to hear that your business division produced the kind of banner results that might give you a profit-sharing windfall (relatively to your normal pay, at least), only to find out that the company has mysteriously decided now is the moment to claw back that profit-sharing deal.

It's probably extra galling when executives see that anger and re-center the discussion on themselves.

QUOTE | "If you think that executives are making a lot of money and you aren't, you're living in a myth." – Ybarra suggests executive bonuses have been cut as well, which probably doesn't carry a lot of weight with an all-hands meeting full of people who would probably trade compensation packages with