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Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard

Cael

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Interplay IP
R0Tbeek.jpg
In before Microsoft purchases Interplay solely for the Battle Chess IP.

SKm1UY7.png


The best-selling game ever developed or published by Interplay.
Wait... Battle Chess was Interplay? Dang. I never realised. I just played the game.
 

Hobo Elf

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Activision is mainly a games publisher, technically speaking they don't "make" games anymore since the late 90s, they either release games by wholly-owned developers or bankroll the development and do the marketing/distribution for outside developers via publishing deals, which they mostly did before they had the cash to purchase Raven, Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Toys for Bob, Blizzard etc. starting around the 00s. If you pay for the development of a game and then market and distribute it you're pretty much "responsible" for it though.

Activision may have paid for the PC port of EWJ, but the actual development cost of the game was footed by Interplay since it was made for consoles. It wouldn't be correct to give Acti the credit for being responsible for creating the game. Hexen 1 and Heretic were published by Id and had nothing to do with Activision. Hexen 2 was released in 1997 and according to wikipedia that was also the year when Activision acquired Raven, so it gets a bit fuzzy how much we can credit them for it. It says that the game was published by Id under Activision, whatever that means. My guess is that Id had been funding the development of the game but once Activision bought Raven they handled distribution and packaging and slapped their name as the publisher, but that's just speculation.

Activision certainly does have some decent games under their belt, but as publishers, and most of them over 20 years ago. The only recently interesting game they have published was Sekiro, which while wasn't to my tastes was at least something out of their own comfort zone. Anything Activision has done internally has been industrial slop for the masses and the studios have only gotten worse under their leadership.
 
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Wirdschowerdn

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https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/d...illion-as-a-result-of-the-microsoft-deal.html

Disputed Activision CEO Bobby Kotick might earn $375 million as a result of the Microsoft deal

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 01/20/2022 10:25 AM | source: nu.nl | 4 comment(s)


Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, quite possibly receives a $375 million bonus if the company's sale to Microsoft is completed. The game publisher is best known for the Call of Duty series, but has recently been in the press for misogyny and workplace misbehavior. Kotick would have been aware of it.

Kotick stands to earn hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of the Microsoft transaction. In October of last year, the CEO requested a compensation reduction from the board of directors until the company's issues with sexual harassment and discrimination are rectified. Activision Blizzard will be acquired by Microsoft for over $69 billion, the largest transaction in the history of the game business.

Kotick will continue to lead the game company, but it is unclear what will happen after the acquisition is complete. Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal anticipate him resigning as CEO. In mid-November, The Wall Street Journal reported on sexual misconduct charges against Activision Blizzard, stating that Kotick had been contacted. The American business newspaper cited interviews, internal emails, and other internal papers, among other sources. The CEO was made aware of the abuses in 2016 and 2017. The Wall Street Journal also reported on cases against Kotick. The CEO's resignation was then demanded by a number of Activision Blizzard employees.

The company has disputed the charges, and the board of directors has affirmed its support for Kotick. Activision believes that firing Kotick would cost up to $265 million. The CEO owns roughly 400,000 shares of the company.

Microsoft reportedly reached out to Activision to provide support during a tough period and to address concerns about the game publisher's treatment of women. Microsoft would also have signaled an interest in acquisitions during those meetings.

Guaranteed Basic Reward.
 
Joined
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Codex Year of the Donut
Why do the articles seemingly pretend Kotick is just some guy who became the CEO through luck rather than the guy who purchased Activision when it was getting out of games(they even renamed it to Mediagenic temporarily) just to put it back on track to making games.
Activision wouldn't exist without Kotick.
 

Grimlorn

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https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/d...illion-as-a-result-of-the-microsoft-deal.html

Disputed Activision CEO Bobby Kotick might earn $375 million as a result of the Microsoft deal

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 01/20/2022 10:25 AM | source: nu.nl | 4 comment(s)


Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, quite possibly receives a $375 million bonus if the company's sale to Microsoft is completed. The game publisher is best known for the Call of Duty series, but has recently been in the press for misogyny and workplace misbehavior. Kotick would have been aware of it.

Kotick stands to earn hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of the Microsoft transaction. In October of last year, the CEO requested a compensation reduction from the board of directors until the company's issues with sexual harassment and discrimination are rectified. Activision Blizzard will be acquired by Microsoft for over $69 billion, the largest transaction in the history of the game business.

Kotick will continue to lead the game company, but it is unclear what will happen after the acquisition is complete. Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal anticipate him resigning as CEO. In mid-November, The Wall Street Journal reported on sexual misconduct charges against Activision Blizzard, stating that Kotick had been contacted. The American business newspaper cited interviews, internal emails, and other internal papers, among other sources. The CEO was made aware of the abuses in 2016 and 2017. The Wall Street Journal also reported on cases against Kotick. The CEO's resignation was then demanded by a number of Activision Blizzard employees.

The company has disputed the charges, and the board of directors has affirmed its support for Kotick. Activision believes that firing Kotick would cost up to $265 million. The CEO owns roughly 400,000 shares of the company.

Microsoft reportedly reached out to Activision to provide support during a tough period and to address concerns about the game publisher's treatment of women. Microsoft would also have signaled an interest in acquisitions during those meetings.

Guaranteed Basic Reward.
Remember Kotick refused to step down during the bad PR that came out against Activision, no doubt plummeting the price down further for Microsoft. I'm sure he'll be well rewarded.

I wonder if the dumb employees at Blizzard realize they've been bamboozled. Their sexual misconduct complaints, vague complaints of bosses being "abusive", and walkouts used as a PR campaign so Microsoft could become an even bigger monopoly. Useful idiots has never been a more apt term.
 

Reinhardt

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I wonder if the dumb employees at Blizzard realize they've been bamboozled. Their sexual misconduct complaints, vague complaints of bosses being "abusive", and walkouts used as a PR campaign so Microsoft could become an even bigger monopoly. Useful idiots has never been a more apt term.
Combined worth of "blizzard employees" is 0$. Useless trash every single one of them.
 

:Flash:

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Star Wars sold for way fucking less than it was worth, that's why it sold for $4 Billion.

I agree, when the sale happened, I considered 4B quite low. But at the time of the sale, apparently no one wanted to pay more (or Lucas wanted it to go to Disney, because they had the power to revitalize (lol) and globalize the IP).
The difference is that Kotick is a savage CEO who bought a failing publisher and turned it into one of the winners of the publisher battles of the 90s and 2000s.

Lucas is a director who stumbled into commercial success because of a movie he made, and let his IP slumber for more than a decade because he was sick of it. If Lucas was the kind of guy Kotick is, he could have taken LucasArts public and created a movie distributor to rival the big ones. Because he isn't (which makes him kinda likable despite all his faults), he was in a far worse negotiating position.
 

Grauken

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If you get 4B for your life's work, you still come out on top even if somebody else gets more
 

Delterius

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If you get 4B for your life's work, you still come out on top even if somebody else gets more
spoken like some sort of tax paying peasant

bobby lost hundreds of millions of dollars over the state of california's investigation and lawsuit. at least. he is not chill about that. hence his screaming at employees about killing them.
 
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copebot

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The lesson here is that when you are trying to make it in M&A, you must assemble a crack team of bimbos to go gather dirt on the nerds at the company for years, then get them good representation for the hostile workplace environment lawsuit, and you have to be ready to buy when the company goes into the toilet.

Riot Games was never a public company, but this may help to explain how Tencent was able to get favorable pricing on the rest of their shares as they went from partial ownership to full ownership of the company over the last several years or so. This is how you make money from getting women into the games industry: not any of that stupid crap about them actually doing work. With Activision, it's a bit more transparent because their shares are publicly traded and we can see just how much the stock price was hammered by the bimbo implosion. The thing with the nerdettes is that they think small, they think "ohh jinkies, I'll get a whole $10,000 after I finish paying the lawyers," whereas the money guys are keeping their eyes where it really matters.
 

Tacgnol

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The lesson here is that when you are trying to make it in M&A, you must assemble a crack team of bimbos to go gather dirt on the nerds at the company for years, then get them good representation for the hostile workplace environment lawsuit, and you have to be ready to buy when the company goes into the toilet.

Riot Games was never a public company, but this may help to explain how Tencent was able to get favorable pricing on the rest of their shares. This is how you make money from getting women into the games industry: not any of that stupid crap about them actually doing work. With Activision, it's a bit more transparent because their shares are publicly traded and we can see just how much the stock price was hammered by the bimbo implosion. The thing with the nerdettes is that they think small, they think "ohh jinkies, I'll get a whole $10,000 after I finish paying the lawyers," whereas the money guys are keeping their eyes where it really matters.

What do you do with all those women in the industry once they've gathered dirt/created honeytraps for you?

Not like you can trust them long term.
 

copebot

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The lesson here is that when you are trying to make it in M&A, you must assemble a crack team of bimbos to go gather dirt on the nerds at the company for years, then get them good representation for the hostile workplace environment lawsuit, and you have to be ready to buy when the company goes into the toilet.

Riot Games was never a public company, but this may help to explain how Tencent was able to get favorable pricing on the rest of their shares. This is how you make money from getting women into the games industry: not any of that stupid crap about them actually doing work. With Activision, it's a bit more transparent because their shares are publicly traded and we can see just how much the stock price was hammered by the bimbo implosion. The thing with the nerdettes is that they think small, they think "ohh jinkies, I'll get a whole $10,000 after I finish paying the lawyers," whereas the money guys are keeping their eyes where it really matters.

What do you do with all those women in the industry once they've gathered dirt/created honeytraps for you?

Not like you can trust them long term.

Easy. Fire all of them and relocate everything to Asia.
 

copebot

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Fire a crack team of dirt gatherers all at once so they are all angry with you? Bruh

No, if you're working with the buyer, you want to tank the target's stock price so that acquiring them becomes realistic, like what happened between MS and Activision. You wouldn't even really need to be that hands on about it. Just fund "Girls Can Code" or whatever, encourage them to go work at the target, and let nature take its course. They will start complaining about dongles in 5 seconds flat.
 

Caim

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Fire a crack team of dirt gatherers all at once so they are all angry with you? Bruh
Liquidate them in the other sense of the word. If you do business like you're straight outta Shadowrun you should't be scared to get the hands of the subcontractors's operatives hired by your middlemen dirty.
 

:Flash:

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If you get 4B for your life's work, you still come out on top even if somebody else gets more

Until the super-inflation hits, at least...
As he got most of it in Disney stocks, it wouldn't matter to him. The inflation would just wipe out Disney's $60 million debt.

Still not worth seeing your life's work destroyed by a bunch of idiots. It's not buying him anything he didn't already have.
 

Wirdschowerdn

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/01/20/xbox-activision-blizzard-phil-spencer/

Xbox CEO Phil Spencer on reviving old Activision games as Microsoft positions itself as tech’s gaming company
Listen to article
6 min

By Gene Park
Today at 12:52 p.m. EST

With its $68.7 billion acquisition of mammoth embattled video game publisher Activision Blizzard, Microsoft will be taking on a lot. It will be absorbing a company criticized by its employees for its workplace culture, one that is embroiled in lawsuits alleging gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment. Microsoft will also be taking on game development studios that have inched closer to unionization over the past several months.

But it will also be adding an element that newly minted CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer sees as core to Microsoft’s strategy for consumer acquisition: A slew of video games and long-abandoned franchises.

Asked about the workplace complaints faced by Activision Blizzard in a 10-minute interview with The Washington Post Wednesday, Spencer said “I believe the leaders there believe in the opportunity they have in their plan,” noting his confidence the issues will be resolved. In addressing the potential of bringing on unionized workers, he said his company will aim to empower its new employees to “do their best work.”

The games created by Activision Blizzard’s developers provide the centerpiece of Microsoft’s strategic thinking around the acquisition. The titles are some of the most popular in the world. And those Activision Blizzard properties extend well beyond Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush.

In discussing some of the intellectual properties owned by under Activision Blizzard, Spencer’s excitement may have mirrored the enthusiasm of a “Starcraft” player noticing the long-dormant franchise’s logo in Microsoft’s acquisition announcement.

“I was looking at the IP list, I mean, let’s go!” Spencer said. "‘King’s Quest,’ ‘Guitar Hero.’ ... I should know this but I think they got ‘HeXen.’”

“HeXen,” indeed an Activision Blizzard property, is a cult hit first-person game about using magic spells. Microsoft’s pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard also means owning the rights to many creations from gaming’s past, including Crash Bandicoot, the original Sony PlayStation mascot. There’s also the influential and popular Tony Hawk skateboard series, and beloved characters like Spyro the Dragon.

Toys for Bob, one of the studios working under the Activision Blizzard banner, successfully launched games like “Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time," but later get folded into supporting Call of Duty games. Spencer said the Xbox team will talk with developers about working on a variety of franchises from the Activision Blizzard vaults.

“We’re hoping that we’ll be able to work with them when the deal closes to make sure we have resources to work on franchises that I love from my childhood and that the teams really want to get,” Spencer said. “I’m looking forward to these conversations. I really think it’s about adding resources and increasing capability.”

The $68.7 billion acquisition is an attempt to showcase Microsoft as distinguished in the global gaming space, Spencer said. This move is made amid tech giants like Apple, Google, Meta, Netflix and Tencent in China encroaching into the gaming space with various projects and investments.

Spencer said he’s concerned about tech companies unfamiliar with the gaming industry barging in to the space, as opposed to the current, experienced competition against Nintendo and Sony.

“They have a long history in video games," he said. “Nintendo’s not going to do anything that damages gaming in the long run because that’s the business they’re in. Sony is the same and I trust them. ... Valve’s the same way. When we look at the other big tech competitors for Microsoft: Google has search and Chrome, Amazon has shopping, Facebook has social, all these large-scale consumer businesses. ... The discussion we’ve had internally, where those things are important to those other tech companies for how many consumers they reach, gaming can be that for us.

"I think we do have a unique point of view, which is not about how everything has to run on a single device or platform. That’s been the real turning point for us looking at gaming as a consumer opportunity that could have similar impact on Microsoft that some of those other scale consumer businesses do for other big tech competitors. And it’s been great to see the support we’ve had from the company and the board.”

Spencer has also been key in informing and charting the company’s path toward the metaverse, the still-theoretical evolution of the Internet. The metaverse concept has been explored for decades within the video game industry, but Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of a virtual-reality-driven metaverse has driven conversation since he announced his company’s name change last year to Meta.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella publicly invoked the metaverse before even Zuckerberg did, when he spoke of Microsoft’s possible role in creating an “enterprise metaverse” in May of 2021. Nadella again mentioned the metaverse in the acquisition announcement Tuesday.

Spencer cautioned against a “workspace-only” vision for the metaverse.

“I’ve really been advocating internally in the company that gaming will be a catalyst for us and I can see how some of that functionality moving into enterprise scenarios and workplace scenarios can be beneficial,” Spencer said. “But I don’t think anybody should pretend that all this stuff isn’t being rewritten. I had a meeting today with the ‘Elder Scrolls Online’ team and we did our leadership team [meeting] in game. That’s as much of a Zoom call as anything else!”

Activision Blizzard makes “World of Warcraft,” which has attracted more than 116 million active players who signed up through its Battle.net digital distribution service. The online RPG players are an audience primed for metaverse-like experiences, Spencer believes.

“For us as a platform company, what we’ve been doing with Xbox and Windows for years is ask how do players seamlessly move between these different worlds and they can have different identities and different clans and groups, but they also still feel anchored in an overall platform experience,” Spencer said.

Spencer said the Activision Blizzard acquisition process began toward the end of 2021, and part of that process included Microsoft absorbing the many reported challenges Activision Blizzard has faced over the past year, including the lawsuits alleging charges of gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment, as well as a nascent effort to unionize by the company’s workers.

“We spent time with the Activision team looking at the incidents, looking at employee polls and then had a good discussion with them about their plan, both the progress they’ve been making and what their plan was,” Spencer said, adding that during the lengthy regulatory process Microsoft would have no involvement with Activision’s legal woes. “We had to look at that forward plan and ensure we had a kind of confidence in that.”

Microsoft’s employees, like those at most big tech companies, are not unionized. When asked how his company feels about unions, Spencer said, “I’m going to be honest, I don’t have a lot of personal experience with unions. I’ve been at Microsoft for 33 years. So I’m not going to try to come across as an expert on this, but I’ll say we’ll be having conversations about what empowers them to do their best work, which as you can imagine in a creative industry, is the most important thing for us.”

TL;DR

Phil mentioned King's Quest and Hexen.
 

copebot

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Oh shit, I just realized that this means that they could integrate World of Warcraft guild applications with LinkedIn. Welcome to Hell.
 

mediocrepoet

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Oh shit, I just realized that this means that they could integrate World of Warcraft guild applications with LinkedIn. Welcome to Hell.

Maybe all those old things about how being a guild leader or officer could be something for your resume will actually be true.

"While completing my MBA, I also ran a world leading progression guild through AQ40...“ :cool:
 

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