At a time when the video game industry is going through an unprecedented crisis, and this for several years, many have wondered how Microids managed to keep the head out of the water. Indeed, despite a bad reputation with the community of players, and after a year 2023 not very glorious, punctuated by many critical failures as commercial (Goldorak, Tintin, Inspector Gadget and Flashback 2 to name a few), the French publisher managed to straighten the bar in 2024 with two titles which were able Ants.
But everything was not pink in 2024 for Microids, whose production methods have often been pointed out through many surveys, revealing exhausted teams and a half -mast in the face of the accumulation of critical failures. Microids also has not escaped the contrigence of an increasingly demanding and costly industry in production. With often tight budgets and a fiscal year which ends in December (and not March 31 like most video game publishers), Microids has always multiplied outings between September and December, sometimes to drown its calendar (14 games released in 2023 in the space of 4 months).
Michael Sportouch, former CEO of Activision France, replaces Stéphane Longeard
A way of doing things that will perhaps change in the coming months, since the media-participations group (Midroid mother house) has decided to separate from Stéphane Longeard, CEO of Microids since April 14, 2000. A change of direction which had already been revealed by BFM Tech & Co February 28, 2025 and which is confirmed by the lalettre.fr siterevealing that it is Michael Sportouch who will take control of Microids. Former president of Activision-Blizzard France, Michael Sportouch therefore arrives in the districts of Rosa Park in Paris in the context of a overhaul in the direction of Microids, required by the director general of Média-Participations, Vincent Montaigne.
Stéphane Longeard is not the only one to have to leave Microids, since Marc Laumet, the deputy director general, has not been in office since February, still according to the site lalettre.fr. With BFM Tech & Co, we learned that employees feared a profile that not corresponds to the cultivation of Microids: “It’s always complicated to have a new boss, and we are above all afraid that it will change the atmosphere to Microids.” explains one of them anonymously. If Michael Sportouch is instantly associated with his former post as director general of Activision-Blizzard France, it must also be remembered that he directed Atari France, Infogrames but also Game One in the early 2000s. And if we go back even further in his career, it is good to remember that he started As a graphic designer on the video game Space Harrier in 1988, under the leadership of Paul Cuisset, the dad of the cult flashback and abominable flashback 2. Thirty-seven years later, the two men find themselves again in the same society. To make sparks again?