Kotick: EA's Riccitiello was "worst CEO" in games
pcgamesinsider.bizJohn Riccitiello (pictured) was apparently the "worst CEO" in the games industry.
That's according to former Activision Blizzard chief exec, Bobby Kotick – himself a controversial business figure for the market – who said on the Grit show that he would have paid to make sure that his rival kept the top job at EA. Kotick appeared on the show with former EA chief creative officer, Bing Gordon.
"I'm not saying this because [Gordon is] sitting here," said Kotick, as transcribed by GameSpot.
"Our fear was always that Bing was going to run [EA]. And we would have paid for Riccitiello to stay a CEO forever... like we thought he was the worst CEO in video games."
Despite the animosity towards its CEO – the rivalry between the two companies – there were many merger talks over the years between EA and Activision Blizzard.
"[EA] tried to buy us a bunch of times. We had merger conversations," recalled Kotick.
He went on to add that EA's "business [was] in a lot of ways was better than ours."
Riccitiello joined EA in 1997 as its president and chief operating officer, before leaving and returning to the company in 2007 as its CEO. He left in 2013 due to Electronic Arts' poor fiscal performance. The following year, he became chief exec of engine giant Unity, before leaving amid controversy in 2023.
Before leaving Unity, however, he did give this interview with our sibling site PocketGamer.biz in which he called some developers "the biggest fucking idiots". What a guy.
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