Workers Share Bobby Kotick Horror Stories After He Finally Leaves Activision Blizzard

thegamer.com:

It's official: Bobby Kotick has left Activision Blizzard. After 32 years of leading the company, originally just Activision before the Blizzard merger, the controversial CEO is gone, having seen the Microsoft acquisition through to the end.

Now, current and former Activision Blizzard workers are sharing their accounts of working with Kotick, and none of them are favourable. Adding onto previous claims of Kotick being a poor leader, these workers share alleged instances of the CEO not listening to their concerns, and in some cases, being outright abusive himself.

"I worked on [Call of Duty] for two years as a programmer at Demonware. Bobby's decisions made our games worse," says former Call of Duty developer, Christina Pollock. "In my first month it came out he threatened to have an employee killed. In the all-hands that followed, no-one wanted to speak first. So I demanded his firing in front of everyone."

This refers to an incident in 2006, in which Kotick threatened to have his assistant killed in a voicemail. This came to light in late 2021 thanks to the Wall Street Journal, and Activision admitted that the incident took place. A spokesperson said: "Mr Kotick quickly apologized 16 years ago. [...] he deeply regrets the exaggeration and tone."

Another anecdote comes from Andy Belford, a former community development manager for Overwatch.

"When we planned OW2’s Steam launch, my team warned (months in advance) that we’re going to be review bombed", says Belford. "We begged for more information, more details, and more resources to help us with the anticipated influx, all flatly denied.

"Moderation of Steam was put on the community team [...] despite my refusal to want to expose members of my team to that level of toxic