After 32 years, Bobby Kotick is now not the CEO of Overwatch 2 maker Activision Blizzard. Following the videogame firm’s monumental merger with Microsoft, Kotick stepped down on Friday, December 29. Not even 24 hours after his depart, present and former employees at Activision Blizzard have taken to social media to share claims of the previous CEO not listening to considerations, threatening workers, and being a poor chief.
On Twitter, a former Name of Responsibility programmer at Demonware, Christina Pollock, broke their silence after Kotick’s remaining day as CEO, alleging that the FPS video games got here out “worse” as a result of his “selections.”
“In my first month it got here out he threatened to have an worker killed,” Christina added. “Within the all-hands that adopted, no-one wished to talk first. So I demanded his firing in entrance of everybody…All of us must revolt towards folks like this, each time.”
This assertion refers to a state of affairs that transpired in 2006, the place Kotick despatched a voicemail threatening to have his assistant killed. A spokesperson for Kotick advised the Wall Avenue Journal in 2021 that Kotick “deeply regrets” saying that, however employees aren’t satisfied.
A present Activision Blizzard group improvement supervisor, Andy Belford, spoke on Kotick’s refusal to address employee concerns on Twitter. Staff knew Overwatch 2 would have reviewed poorly on Steam and begged higher-ups for extra assets, however calls for had been reportedly “all flatly denied.” Andy discovered that Kotick had pushed for a Steam launch with no further assist to help the group crew.
“This is just one instance of the tradition Kotick bred at AB: [everything] flowed downstream, normally touchdown on the bottom paid and most overworked people. Administration was too busy reacting to wildly vacillating path and selections that made zero sense,” Andy wrote.
Kotick’s legacy as CEO might have introduced in report income for Activision Blizzard, however it’s clear from worker accounts that his run wasn’t celebrated by all. The hope for present employees is that his exit evokes a brand new, optimistic age for the corporate below Microsoft, however solely time will inform.
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