Activision boss Bobby Kotick is known around the gaming industry to gamers as pretty much the devil. The man has single-handily taken an entire publishing company (Activision) and turned it into a money factory in the most negative ways imaginable. Not only has the man pushed the milking of franchise after franchise, but has openly admitted he doesn’t want gaming to be fun and that he’d have no problem charging gamers for cut-scenes. If this sounds incredibly stupid to you, you’re probably one of the sane ones.
Now, Kotick has been up to his old antics once more. In discussions with EDGE, Kotick has thrown developers under bus, he’s thrown the industry under the bus and we’re sure if offered enough money, we could convince him to throw himself under the buy as well. His latest targets is of course Jason West and Vince Zampella, the former heads of Infinity Ward over at Activision.
Kotick believes that West and Zampella backstabbed him out of no where and had Kotick himself been the one to attempt what they did, it would have been illegal.
“It shook my belief in two specific people, who were my friends,” he said. “The frustrating thing about that is, the stuff that these guys did, I never would have expected them to do. We’re a public company, we’ve got ethics obligations, and the things they did were… I would go to jail if I did them.
“You can’t use the company and the company’s assets for your own personal benefit, and you can’t use the leverage that you might have for personal benefit – you’re not allowed to do that! And so we didn’t have any choice.”
Furthermore, Kotick went ahead with the removal of these iconic figures within his company despite knowing that it would probably tear apart Infinity Ward as a whole and result in a large percentage of employees leaving with them — but that’s okay, because he’s doing his part to keep the bonuses.
“When we bought the company, they were 20 or 30 guys – these were guys that shared vacation homes together, they were all best friends, they were at each other’s weddings. We knew that when we had to fire Jason and Vince we were going to lose a lot of really talented people,” Kotick added.
“That’s one of those really difficult decisions as the CEO of a company, where you step back and say, ‘No good is going to come of this. They’re going to leave and probably have a really hard time ever being productive or successful ever again, and we’re going to lose some talented people, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ And there wasn’t.”
To be frank, I don’t understand why Kotick continues to stay in the public eye and instead doesn’t run the company from inside his office, hidden from everyone. I have a feeling a lot more people would be willing to support Activision if this guy dropped the ability to talk to press and just ran the business side of things.
He’s also quoted elsewhere as stating that EA are “struggling” and that “great people don’t want to work for them.”
Nyeeesssss… Respawn Entertainment say ‘hello’, Bobby.
The others at Activision need to wake up and see how much hate Kotick is bringing down on their company. They may only be interested in the money, but surely even that won’t last if he keeps opening his gob like this.
So many people moan about him, but then go out and buy Activision games anyway. Seriously people, don’t just whine and buy anyway – have the guts to back it up by avoiding the next CoD and any other Activision titles.
This guy is taking gamers for mugs. The more you keep buying their games, the more smug he’ll get. If you think this guy is a tool, vote with your wallet and don’t buy Activision products. When profits dive, they’ll get rid of him, and the whole industry will be better off.
“that he’d have no problem charging gamers for cut-scenes”
You made it sound like Activision would take the cutscenes out of the game and make people buy them. He just said that they are going to make dvds that have the game cutscenes on them. While I wouldn’t buy it, I am sure their are some who would and I don’t have an issue with that.
@One-Shot
charging for game cutscenes, its just wrong
and if you dont hawe anything against that, than thats just wrong
lol you don’t have to buy them. Their is nothing wrong with just selling a dvd or bluray with them on it.
“himself under the buy as well.”
@One-Shot
dude, its the most greedy idea iwe ewer, ewer heard of
but youre right theres nothing wrong with it, just like its nothing wrong with selling a game that has no cinematics and hasent went through beta testing, or selling a music game whit 20% of all songs and then selling the other 80% of the songs for 3$ each
yea, just let them do it
on Wikipedia theres some stuff about “the devil” it sais that:
…he stated that focusing on franchises that “have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million franchises” has “worked very well for [Activision Blizzard]”. Kotick described this business strategy as “narrow and deep” or “annualizable”…
or as i call it “i want youre money”
@Reigen
I love how you couldn’t win the argument so you try to make a comparison of something that is completely fine to somethings that are wrong and irrelevant.
Its not greedy to come up with new product ideas, its called good business. It is not going to affect you in any way so what do you care?
I was under the impression that the cutscenes would be removed from the game to be sold separately, but if they’re still in the game, then I have to problem with it, and I agree with One-Shot.
“no* problem with it”
Yeah of course that would be a problem, but no the scenes would still be in the games just if you want you can buy them to watch whenever you want on dvd or bluray. That is why I took issue with how the artical made it sound for the sake of getting the reader into the “hate Kotick” mindset.
I’m always in the “hate Kotick” mindset.
@One-Shot
i understand when sometimes someone dosent get the big picture
if people(and when i say people i mean 4 year old cod kids) buy these things, than activision will continue to release such products and you and me will se more of this stuff on the store shelfs
@Reigen
lol
you were talking about MW2 and GTH right?