After allegations were reported in depth by The Wall Street Journal, about 1,000 Activision Blizzard employees signed a petition urging Bobby Kotick to resign as CEO. He says his biggest mistake was failing to forcefully defend the company and his legacy.
Blizzard drops this nugget early on while sitting at the company’s Santa Monica headquarters for his first extensive interview since 2012. It’s a Friday afternoon in mid-April, which means the office is mostly deserted. Huge replicas of characters and actual backdrops from the video game giant’s roster of franchises — including Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch and Candy Crush — dot the landscape of the open-architecture space.
The executive says he has been both humbled and outraged by what he considers malicious distortions about the company that he has taken to great heights over 32 years. He makes no apologies for Activision or its culture. He says that the company is preparing to release a slew of data drawn from the EEOC investigation that he hopes will combat the perception that Activision was run as a “frat house.
“Corporations choose to be disruptive when they run anti-union campaigns,” says Beth Allen, communications director for the CWA. “Workers who join together to improve their workplaces intend to make constructive changes for the benefit of all. When employers voluntarily recognize unions and engage in good faith contract bargaining, it builds trust and strengthens companies.”
Michael Pachter, media analyst at Wedbush Securities, who has covered Activision since 2002, says Kotick is a force-of-nature leader who has proven his ability to galvanize teams to take massive swings on properties that take years and many millions of dollars to develop and produce.
Activision has operated mostly on the fringes of traditional Hollywood. Kotick grew up in Roslyn, N.Y., and has the kind of Long Island street smarts that have helped many East Coast expats in Hollywood. He’s well liked among the showbiz elite with whom he has rubbed elbows for many years. Despite the severity of allegations around the company, Kotick has not been drummed out of the in-crowd.
The public and private personas of Kotick are hard to square. Ask many of his C-suite counterparts in Hollywood and the first words blurted out are usually, “Bobby’s done a great job with Activision.” But there is no disputing that Kotick has long been a favorite punching bag of a key constituency in the video game universe: hardcore gamers. As The New York Times observed in a 2012 profile, “The disdain heaped on Mr.
Longtime Kotick colleagues and competitors say he is exacting but Activision’s results and track record speak for themselves. The company has been able to keep growing by prioritizing quality over quantity and setting a high bar for improving the gaming experience.Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag “Playing games is such a visceral experience,” Kotick explains. “We’re getting to the point that the game itself is able to create its own content in real time. That will be exquisite.”
“These guys were on their asses,” says Clay Griffin, video game analyst for MoffettNathanson Research. “All these negative headlines about sexual harassment. The new Call of Duty came out, and it flopped. The stock was weak; some Blizzard titles were delayed.”
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