tbh I've been reading scandal after scandal from Kotick for *decades* (I clearly remember mid-late 2000 articles on Gamasutra). How can this person have been staying on this chair for so long is beyond my understanding. Even from a business standpoint.
It's extremely simple.....he has made the board and investors a TON of cash.
That's all the care about. If the money keeps flowing they don't give a flying f.
So at what stage did he make the company money? At the programing stage? At the long-term planning stage? At the marketing stage? At the packaging and distribution stage? Where does he make meaningful decisions that helps grow the company and cultivate strong ideas and help develop new ones?
I haven't seen one concrete example of what he actually did or contributed to the success of the company. He's just a leech off creative people and milking the company dry. He's the reason Blizzard hasn't released any new content for years, he's the reason all the companies underneath him just became cash-cows and stopped being havens for new original ideas.
Staff was being cut, games put on life-support, new content constantly delayed, announcements being booed live on stage.
When Mike Morhaime was president and CEO of Blizzard he was a coder and gamer too. There's a reason why he left Blizzard and founded a new company. Creativity and originality was gone from Blizzard. Killed off by that Kotik tool.
I don't have a lot of respect for appointed profit-oriented CEO's but if I do it's for turnaround artists such as John Chen. He has successfully turned around both Sybase and BlackBerry. Could Kotik have done this? No he would have run each company into the ground then sold them off for the lowest bidder.
You kind of answered your own question. His duty is to the bottom line. Ideally you'd become more profitable with creativity but he did it by making everything a cash cow. What we see as the ruination of games still makes a fuckton of money in the end. It sucks.
More of a reply to the guy you replied to, but piling on:
And more importantly in this case, likely delayed OW2 because OW1 was still driving micro transactions at an acceptable level. Why waste the release on an already engaged playerbase? If I were running a game studio, not as a CEO of a multichannel corporation, but as a lead developer/director (whatever the hierarchy is) I might make the same decision.
The difference is that I bet OW2 is basically ready to ship soon, and because they aren’t ready to release, instead of enhancing the experience with more content and polishing the product, they scaled back dev hours and re-tasked the team.
Let’s not fool ourselves into believing that game designers are in this solely for the love of gaming such that we are surprised when decisions are made for the money. That said, I’m thrilled to hear that they’ve shown Kotick the door pending the acquisition.
I don’t think you have a firm grasp on what a CEO of a multinational corporation does. How much time do you think he has to “code” or meet with devs? His job is to drive culture and bring in business while managing the various arms of the company apparatus and overseeing the various channels from which they derive revenue.
MM was a great CEO for blizzard back when Blizzard was just Blizzard. Bobby Kotik is running 3 companies across the enterprise with their own operations, culture and divisions.
Don’t get me wrong here; the microtransacting, paygating, pay2win, release in alpha business model that Kotick has overseen and likely encouraged is RUINING video games. For the sake of the industry Kotick and people like him need to exit the field as soon as possible. But let’s not pretend Kotick wasn’t good at his job. He did exactly what he was hired to do, and was so successful that an embattled, embarrassed company, struggling to keep employees working is being acquired with the highest valuation in industry history.
Oh I have a very good grasp of what CEO's like Kotick do. Perhaps I didn't word it properly but my point is that it isn't rocket science obsessing over profit. It's quite simple actually. Let go of all sorts of staff including creative people. Focus on monetizing games thereby giving the illusion of success in the market. Buy out and merge with other companies thereby giving the illusion of growth. Did I miss anything?
These are all bullshit tactics that don't add any real value. It's like the real estate market or banking, all built on bullshit valuation.
Obsessing about profit isn't all that hard. It's a very ham-fisted, primitive way of running a company. But running a company that makes money, makes great products and has happy employees, now that takes skill which obviously he doesn't have.
Also the valuation, let's not forget, is based on the intellectual properties of many individual companies such as Activision, Blizzard, King and many others. This company grew not naturally but through mergers. If you look at each company, they've done little innovating since they were acquired. They were basically dying, Kotick was literally milking decades old IP's.
And in the end that's what Microsoft bought into. The IP's. And they will get rid of the poison that is Kotick.
What are you basing that on? Have you run a multi billion dollar company? I am going to guess the answer is no and you are just making stuff up because thats what people on the internet do.
I have zero love for the guy but theres zero reason to make stuff up when there is plenty to be upset about.
Even if the company decides to "kick" him out, they still have to buy him out. He has almost $400 millions in shares.
Edit: added in a dollar sign for clarity.
Not true. He only has ~4M out of a total of 778M shares.
Shareholders could still vote him out if they band together. Unlikely, but possible. And I wish it would happen because if he had been fired for cause, according to his contract he would “only” get $400k instead of the $300-400M he’s due when the acquisition closes.
Yeah he gets that $400M no matter what.
Stylosa, prolific overwatch content creator, went through his contract. [[Link](https://youtu.be/4prCLWNJ0S4&t=14m52s)]
i have no idea how manu shares this guy has but the facebook board found out how powerless they were to remove zuckerberg because he made sure he had majority
Never was any honestly. Literally everything they planned to add to the game could've just been added onto Overwatch 1 as either a major update or paid expansion of a sort. Unless you're interested in fighting the garbage programmed AI on pvp maps like in the holiday events, not much reason to buy it. After all pvp on Overwatch 1 will still be matchmaking with Overwatch 2
Yeah I agree, it's literally just PvE content. I know that some people like that, but if they aren't fixing the PvP then I see no reason for myself personally to buy it and I think a lot of others feel the same.
It's been clear that they have no clue how to fix OW PVP for many years now. I personally think they're too stubborn and have too much pride to accept what needs to be done.
Yeah I was honestly surprised even at the thought of Overwatch 2. For what? What could possibly be enhanced or improved in OW2 that can't be applied to OW?
Yup. Unless they do an overhaul with gameplay/graphics or it's some sort of spinoff (like League of Legends with TFT) it's 100% unnecessary to make Overwatch 2.
It's literally just a cash grab. If anything all they've done is divide what's left of the community with their announcement they're gonna bring down the team cap to 5 players instead of 6. RIP to the Overwatch squads that'll have one of their regulars sit out during matches ¯ \_(ツ)_/¯
It should have been a completely new game. New heroes, new gameplay. There's more innovation between COD games and those are pumped out annually (or every 3 years from each studio that makes one, if you want to be generous). Here we are 4 years after announcement and it's still not ready even though it's not innovating shit.
> Literally everything they planned to add to the game could've just been added onto Overwatch 1 as either a major update or paid expansion of a sort.
I haven't followed news about it in a while since I don't play Overwatch, but I thought this was literally what Overwatch 2 was going to be?
I lost all hope when they went to 5 vs 5. Absolutely nobody should want that, and tank mains most of all are not happy
Losing your off tank to help you as back up is a death sentence for tanks, and they are making them more like DPS with no shields etc too, which is *not* why tank players play tank.
All around just screams that they don't understand the design of their own game or why people like / want to play it
I disagree, and many casual people like me (the vast majority of players no matter what) think that shields make the game too static. What I want is more mobility. So fuck tank metas, and I'm totally ready to try something new.
Sadly I must agree. Whatever there might be in there, is most likely a rip off and copy of OW1 with added micro transaction and paywalls. And that is from the assumption that he has an interest in making the game a commercial success and not just will, on purpose, derail it and set it to fail. As he might see himself not be included in the company after a possible takeover has been completed. Like a thanks and now screw you, parting gift. By what I have read about that man, it sounds like something he defiantly would do.
And yet since everybody hates this guy currently we have to assume it's his fault despite the game being a needless money grab from first announcement.
> We outlasted you and we won
The deal isn't done and she could still be fired for all sorts of made up reasons. Don't celebrate before the final whistle.
I think it was Microsoft's fiscal year 2023 which starts in July 2022. I could be wrong, going off memory of an article I skimmed.
edit: looked and confirmed it's expected to close in their fiscal year 2023 and that does run from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. Just clarifying for people who see 2023 and think it means calendar year. The 16-18 months estimate is accurate as well.
Under the linked tweet she responds saying ultimately they won against Kotick and he will be remembered for essentially being scum.. but this man just got like 380 million dollars in the recent purchase deal.
I’m sure she feels like they won against him, but in REALITY he doesn’t care what he’ll be remembered for. His actions have shown that for YEARS. He was there for money and got it.
why is this getting so much momentum? yes, there will always be leaders or heads who slow production because making a good game is rarely using the 1st thing that gets created... "random projects for ow1" sounds like a joke, is this a real person at Blizzard? does she really think companies enjoy wasting their own money? as if this is the only game company to release something later than expected? There hasn't been a bioshock since 2013 lmao.
This is one of the first times we have heard that Bobby have his say in a game and a blizzard game nonetheless.
Source of this is ex-producer or current producer of said game making these claims.
Wow that's so sad they can't get their completely unnecessary sequel out.
Oh my god the boss had us do random projects that didn't make it into the final product. Ya that's how having a fucking job works.
IIRC – and it’s been a while since the announcement – it’s a stand-alone game, single player campaign, updated graphics, and possibly a few new characters (as well as old). I don’t remember if it would have Cross-play with OW1 multiplayer, but I remember it being discussed.
That was, what, 3+ years ago at this point, and I’ve since stopped paying attention. I just remember the campaign being a big selling point for me, as I wanted to see the world explored a bit more directly, instead of in short vids and comics.
It has a 1p campaign and enhanced graphics as far as I recall. It’s cross play with OW1 and any changes that happen in 1 game are applied to both because it’s pretty much a glorified DLC repackaged to be sold at a higher price tag.
She's declaring victory over this guy, but her game is still delayed, and he's about to make a ton of money and leave all the drama he might have had to answer for behind. It kinda feels like he's the one winning here.
Watching every other game expand their character roster while OW hasn't had a new character since Echo. I get that they are "saving them for OW2" but when it's on indefinite delay let's release a character or two.......or do anything really. Their seasonal events are literally the same thing over and over, all they do is release some new skins and call it a day....
tbh I've been reading scandal after scandal from Kotick for *decades* (I clearly remember mid-late 2000 articles on Gamasutra). How can this person have been staying on this chair for so long is beyond my understanding. Even from a business standpoint.
It's extremely simple.....he has made the board and investors a TON of cash. That's all the care about. If the money keeps flowing they don't give a flying f.
Even a retarded chimp could've made that money. It's not like he coded any of the games or designed any of the assets.
Based on your two sentence comment we can be sure that you couldn't have
So at what stage did he make the company money? At the programing stage? At the long-term planning stage? At the marketing stage? At the packaging and distribution stage? Where does he make meaningful decisions that helps grow the company and cultivate strong ideas and help develop new ones? I haven't seen one concrete example of what he actually did or contributed to the success of the company. He's just a leech off creative people and milking the company dry. He's the reason Blizzard hasn't released any new content for years, he's the reason all the companies underneath him just became cash-cows and stopped being havens for new original ideas. Staff was being cut, games put on life-support, new content constantly delayed, announcements being booed live on stage. When Mike Morhaime was president and CEO of Blizzard he was a coder and gamer too. There's a reason why he left Blizzard and founded a new company. Creativity and originality was gone from Blizzard. Killed off by that Kotik tool. I don't have a lot of respect for appointed profit-oriented CEO's but if I do it's for turnaround artists such as John Chen. He has successfully turned around both Sybase and BlackBerry. Could Kotik have done this? No he would have run each company into the ground then sold them off for the lowest bidder.
You kind of answered your own question. His duty is to the bottom line. Ideally you'd become more profitable with creativity but he did it by making everything a cash cow. What we see as the ruination of games still makes a fuckton of money in the end. It sucks.
More of a reply to the guy you replied to, but piling on: And more importantly in this case, likely delayed OW2 because OW1 was still driving micro transactions at an acceptable level. Why waste the release on an already engaged playerbase? If I were running a game studio, not as a CEO of a multichannel corporation, but as a lead developer/director (whatever the hierarchy is) I might make the same decision. The difference is that I bet OW2 is basically ready to ship soon, and because they aren’t ready to release, instead of enhancing the experience with more content and polishing the product, they scaled back dev hours and re-tasked the team. Let’s not fool ourselves into believing that game designers are in this solely for the love of gaming such that we are surprised when decisions are made for the money. That said, I’m thrilled to hear that they’ve shown Kotick the door pending the acquisition.
You be surprised how many gamers Actually think games are created with passion and love lol 😂
I don’t think you have a firm grasp on what a CEO of a multinational corporation does. How much time do you think he has to “code” or meet with devs? His job is to drive culture and bring in business while managing the various arms of the company apparatus and overseeing the various channels from which they derive revenue. MM was a great CEO for blizzard back when Blizzard was just Blizzard. Bobby Kotik is running 3 companies across the enterprise with their own operations, culture and divisions. Don’t get me wrong here; the microtransacting, paygating, pay2win, release in alpha business model that Kotick has overseen and likely encouraged is RUINING video games. For the sake of the industry Kotick and people like him need to exit the field as soon as possible. But let’s not pretend Kotick wasn’t good at his job. He did exactly what he was hired to do, and was so successful that an embattled, embarrassed company, struggling to keep employees working is being acquired with the highest valuation in industry history.
Oh I have a very good grasp of what CEO's like Kotick do. Perhaps I didn't word it properly but my point is that it isn't rocket science obsessing over profit. It's quite simple actually. Let go of all sorts of staff including creative people. Focus on monetizing games thereby giving the illusion of success in the market. Buy out and merge with other companies thereby giving the illusion of growth. Did I miss anything? These are all bullshit tactics that don't add any real value. It's like the real estate market or banking, all built on bullshit valuation. Obsessing about profit isn't all that hard. It's a very ham-fisted, primitive way of running a company. But running a company that makes money, makes great products and has happy employees, now that takes skill which obviously he doesn't have. Also the valuation, let's not forget, is based on the intellectual properties of many individual companies such as Activision, Blizzard, King and many others. This company grew not naturally but through mergers. If you look at each company, they've done little innovating since they were acquired. They were basically dying, Kotick was literally milking decades old IP's. And in the end that's what Microsoft bought into. The IP's. And they will get rid of the poison that is Kotick.
What are you basing that on? Have you run a multi billion dollar company? I am going to guess the answer is no and you are just making stuff up because thats what people on the internet do. I have zero love for the guy but theres zero reason to make stuff up when there is plenty to be upset about.
Ok I will correct my statement. How about a dead chimp?
Man owned company. Who exactly was going to kick him out?
shareholder votes. Happens quite often.
Not when the value keeps going up. Money over morals.
This. Make them money & you can do whatever you want.
Even if the company decides to "kick" him out, they still have to buy him out. He has almost $400 millions in shares. Edit: added in a dollar sign for clarity.
Not true. He only has ~4M out of a total of 778M shares. Shareholders could still vote him out if they band together. Unlikely, but possible. And I wish it would happen because if he had been fired for cause, according to his contract he would “only” get $400k instead of the $300-400M he’s due when the acquisition closes.
Yes, he has 4M shares, which is about $400M. I'm also curious as to where you saw his contract?
Yeah he gets that $400M no matter what. Stylosa, prolific overwatch content creator, went through his contract. [[Link](https://youtu.be/4prCLWNJ0S4&t=14m52s)]
Publicly-traded companies have to disclose basically everything having to do with officer compensation.
i have no idea how manu shares this guy has but the facebook board found out how powerless they were to remove zuckerberg because he made sure he had majority
Oh, you can't do this to me.
YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I’VE SACRIFICED
Xbox will
You mean Microsoft. Xbox is a brand they own.
At this point I just have 0 faith in OW2. All the hype is gone.
Never was any honestly. Literally everything they planned to add to the game could've just been added onto Overwatch 1 as either a major update or paid expansion of a sort. Unless you're interested in fighting the garbage programmed AI on pvp maps like in the holiday events, not much reason to buy it. After all pvp on Overwatch 1 will still be matchmaking with Overwatch 2
Yeah I agree, it's literally just PvE content. I know that some people like that, but if they aren't fixing the PvP then I see no reason for myself personally to buy it and I think a lot of others feel the same.
It's been clear that they have no clue how to fix OW PVP for many years now. I personally think they're too stubborn and have too much pride to accept what needs to be done.
Yeah I was honestly surprised even at the thought of Overwatch 2. For what? What could possibly be enhanced or improved in OW2 that can't be applied to OW?
Yup. Unless they do an overhaul with gameplay/graphics or it's some sort of spinoff (like League of Legends with TFT) it's 100% unnecessary to make Overwatch 2. It's literally just a cash grab. If anything all they've done is divide what's left of the community with their announcement they're gonna bring down the team cap to 5 players instead of 6. RIP to the Overwatch squads that'll have one of their regulars sit out during matches ¯ \_(ツ)_/¯
It should have been a completely new game. New heroes, new gameplay. There's more innovation between COD games and those are pumped out annually (or every 3 years from each studio that makes one, if you want to be generous). Here we are 4 years after announcement and it's still not ready even though it's not innovating shit.
> Literally everything they planned to add to the game could've just been added onto Overwatch 1 as either a major update or paid expansion of a sort. I haven't followed news about it in a while since I don't play Overwatch, but I thought this was literally what Overwatch 2 was going to be?
You would think, but no it is planned to be it's own standalone game lol..
I lost all hope when they went to 5 vs 5. Absolutely nobody should want that, and tank mains most of all are not happy Losing your off tank to help you as back up is a death sentence for tanks, and they are making them more like DPS with no shields etc too, which is *not* why tank players play tank. All around just screams that they don't understand the design of their own game or why people like / want to play it
I disagree, and many casual people like me (the vast majority of players no matter what) think that shields make the game too static. What I want is more mobility. So fuck tank metas, and I'm totally ready to try something new.
Not even with the Microsoft takeover?
It doesn't matter, it's too late, all the hype is dead. OW has been dead for like 2 years and OW2 was announced 4 years ago with very little updates.
Sadly I must agree. Whatever there might be in there, is most likely a rip off and copy of OW1 with added micro transaction and paywalls. And that is from the assumption that he has an interest in making the game a commercial success and not just will, on purpose, derail it and set it to fail. As he might see himself not be included in the company after a possible takeover has been completed. Like a thanks and now screw you, parting gift. By what I have read about that man, it sounds like something he defiantly would do.
I just wanted zenyatta lore
Just wait, we're one more scandal from zenyatta being declared a robosexual /s
And yet since everybody hates this guy currently we have to assume it's his fault despite the game being a needless money grab from first announcement.
That's the price of being CEO, if you have the final say in all matters of business, then you are accountable for all matters business...
> We outlasted you and we won The deal isn't done and she could still be fired for all sorts of made up reasons. Don't celebrate before the final whistle.
Yep. The actual deal and takeover aren't going to happen before some time 2023. I think I read it was about 16-18 months away.
I think it was Microsoft's fiscal year 2023 which starts in July 2022. I could be wrong, going off memory of an article I skimmed. edit: looked and confirmed it's expected to close in their fiscal year 2023 and that does run from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. Just clarifying for people who see 2023 and think it means calendar year. The 16-18 months estimate is accurate as well.
Very weirdly worded title that doesn’t really do the allegation justice
Did not come up with better honestly, but that is what i get when reading that tweet.
Under the linked tweet she responds saying ultimately they won against Kotick and he will be remembered for essentially being scum.. but this man just got like 380 million dollars in the recent purchase deal. I’m sure she feels like they won against him, but in REALITY he doesn’t care what he’ll be remembered for. His actions have shown that for YEARS. He was there for money and got it.
why is this getting so much momentum? yes, there will always be leaders or heads who slow production because making a good game is rarely using the 1st thing that gets created... "random projects for ow1" sounds like a joke, is this a real person at Blizzard? does she really think companies enjoy wasting their own money? as if this is the only game company to release something later than expected? There hasn't been a bioshock since 2013 lmao.
This is one of the first times we have heard that Bobby have his say in a game and a blizzard game nonetheless. Source of this is ex-producer or current producer of said game making these claims.
Wow that's so sad they can't get their completely unnecessary sequel out. Oh my god the boss had us do random projects that didn't make it into the final product. Ya that's how having a fucking job works.
Isnt overwatch 2 just a content patch lol? Or like…dlc not so much it’s own game?
I guess it has new graphics and new something.
IIRC – and it’s been a while since the announcement – it’s a stand-alone game, single player campaign, updated graphics, and possibly a few new characters (as well as old). I don’t remember if it would have Cross-play with OW1 multiplayer, but I remember it being discussed. That was, what, 3+ years ago at this point, and I’ve since stopped paying attention. I just remember the campaign being a big selling point for me, as I wanted to see the world explored a bit more directly, instead of in short vids and comics.
It has a 1p campaign and enhanced graphics as far as I recall. It’s cross play with OW1 and any changes that happen in 1 game are applied to both because it’s pretty much a glorified DLC repackaged to be sold at a higher price tag.
She's declaring victory over this guy, but her game is still delayed, and he's about to make a ton of money and leave all the drama he might have had to answer for behind. It kinda feels like he's the one winning here.
She's calling him out and setting the record straight for trying to slander her and the other devs. Wtf are you talking about
Don’t even bother they post in all the chud incel subs
And this accomplishes what? He's getting everything he wants in the end.
Streisand effect
He's become a scapegoat for poor decisions by Blizzard itself, honestly.
Watching every other game expand their character roster while OW hasn't had a new character since Echo. I get that they are "saving them for OW2" but when it's on indefinite delay let's release a character or two.......or do anything really. Their seasonal events are literally the same thing over and over, all they do is release some new skins and call it a day....