Most unsurprising gaming news this month.
More surprised that any founders remained at the zombified husk of a company that used to be Blizzard.
I suppose Morhaime and Metzen have to wipe away a tear once in a while when they see their brainchild being violated in every possible way, but they can do so using fat wads of cash Harrelson-style, so I can’t say I feel the least bit sad for them. This is what happens when you prostitute your (and others’!) dreams to the highest bidder. I hope it was worth it.
Blizzard might be the hardest I’ve ever seen a company crash.
RIP Blizzard.
Anyone else has the head canon of them having daily physical fist fights? I would get annoyed by that as well.
Oh look it’s the thing everyone said would happen way back when Activision bought Blizzard
Was this not already well known? I feel like this was very well known amongst anyone in any blizzard game community at the time.
Yeah, but Kotick was not really the real issue. He’s a straw man of sorts, a target dummy, designed to draw fire for unpopular decisions.
It is the board and shareholders who massively incentivized him into that behaviour. CEOs are brought in to act in the interests of shareholders, while also abstracting them away from blame and direct culpability.
The goal of blizzard (and any other publically listed company) is wealth creation for shareholders via share price growth, not making games per se.
So basically the bit in Succession when Mattsson tells Tom he wants to fuck his wife and is looking for “a pain sponge”
What are the names of the people on the board, and the main shareholders?
Are you sure about that ? I don’t know that much about these kind of dynamics because I am not a soulless capitalist ghoul, but I remember reading that Kotick actually did that kind of stuff mostly by himself and was quite good at it (which did translate into more money being made, which probably kept investors happy and cemented his position)
I dunno if you could say that shareholders incentivized the sexual misconduct.
Let me try.
By creating a culture that singularly valued money and production over all other concerns, including the well-being of staff, Kotick created and cultivated the conditions needed for abuse to set in.
And Kotick is the kind of sociopath that leads to this when other things are swept under the rug.
Maybe it wasn’t a line item on his payslip though.
