The head of Blizzard quits. CEO Bobby Kotick will soon have his last day at work and will then make room for new things.
It has been demanded for many years, now the time has finally come: Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is packing his bags and leaving the company for good. His last day at work will be December 29, 2023, after 33 years at Blizzard. This marks the beginning of a new era at Blizzard, now under the management of Microsoft.
Why is Bobby Kotick leaving? With the takeover of Microsoft it was foreseeable that Bobby Kotick would lose his job. As soon as the deal was concluded, he announced that he would only work as CEO until “the end of the current year” in order to make the merger with Microsoft go as smoothly as possible.
Kotick had already been heavily criticized. Many employees even staged protests to get rid of him beforehand. However, he decided to stay until the end of the handover and only then leave the company.
Then who is the boss? The position of CEO of Activision Blizzard does not currently appear to be filled. The other bosses, such as Blizzard President Mike Ybarra and Activision Publishing President Rob Kostich, will report to Matt Booty in the future. This is the “Game Content and Studios President” at Microsoft.
This is how the community saw Bobby Kotick: Especially in recent years, Bobby Kotick has had a rather negative reputation among the community of various Blizzard games. Whether in the official forums or in the subreddit, the core of every negative decision, layoffs and changes to monetization were attributed to him. Whenever there was money to spend, it rained “Bobby needs a new yacht” memes, fueled by the massive bonus payments he received over the years.
At the same time, there was also a lot of controversy surrounding Kotick. On the one hand, he is said to have massively threatened an employee, and on the other hand, the major sexism and discrimination scandal at Blizzard happened under his leadership. Reports were not taken seriously and important documents were shredded or not made available to the authorities.
Roughly speaking, the opinion in the community (e.g. in the WoW subreddit) can be summarized as “It’s finally gone.”
It remains to be seen whether everything will change for the better at Blizzard, now under the auspices of Microsoft. At least some games, such as World of Warcraft, are on the right track, while others still have room for improvement.
What do you think about Kotick’s departure?