Microsoft confirms they are keeping Bobby Kotick after buying Activision, which is already a bad look
Barring any monopoly-based discussions on Microsoft basically buying the entire industry at large, there’s one thing that really stuck out for me this morning after the Activision-acquisition was officially confirmed: Bobby Kotick is staying on.
In an immediate blow to Activision’s rep, and by proxy, Microsoft’s, Kotick will remain in his current role as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and nothing has changed in the short term outside of an internal org chart.
Naturally, this is buried in the myriad front-facing elements of the announcement, save for one:
“Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming.”
Kotick will now report to Spencer, meaning, he can be ousted if needed (provided the terms of the deal allow for that). But this is just two months after Kotick reportedly “told senior managers he would consider leaving Activision Blizzard if he can’t quickly fix the culture problems at the publisher.” Since then, the ABK Workers Alliance (Activision Blizzard King) have been tirelessly providing updates on how Kotick has continued to make things worse for the company, and has not lived up to the promises of meaningful change.
Microsoft had a chance to completely change the messaging here day one. Just a week ago Phil Spencer noted that they “changed the way they did business” with Activision, noting that there’s clearly a culture problem at the company (something LEGO even outright came out against). Some of this condemnation has been performative (including in
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