Former ActiBlizz employees reflect on Bobby Kotick's legacy

2024 starts off strong: Controversial Bobby Kotick, former CEO of Activision Blizzard King, will no longer head the company Call of duty, World of WarcraftAnd Monitoring 2 publisher. We knew this would happen – soon after Microsoft has completed its massive $68 billion purchase From ActiBlizz, the company announced that Kotick will finish the year in his position before his position is activated The alleged golden parachute worth $15 million.

Then, shortly before the holiday break, it was revealed that Kotick would be stepping down just days before December 29th. He wrote a farewell letter. On the final day of his 32-year term, social media weighed heavily on his legacy (which includes accusations of contributing to… Toxic and discriminatory work environment, Writing a tone-deaf email pretending to be a woman In ActiBlizz to answer those accusations, and their cost Monitoring 2 Development Team “Months of Development”). Some of his former employees got involved as well.

“I break my silence to share a fun fact: when we planned OW2When Steam launched, my team warned (months in advance) that we would be review bombed. We have begged for more information, more details, and more resources to help us deal with the expected influx, and have all been flatly denied. ActiBlizz's former senior director of community development Andy Belford wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Moderate pressure has been placed on the community team (not a community function in Blizz), although I refuse to expose my team members to this level of toxic content/posts.” When asked who made the decision to release the game on Steam without any additional help: Bobby.

Monitoring 2 It was released on Steam on August 10, where it was immediately bombarded by disappointed fans of the series. For a while, it was The worst rated game on the platformalthough it has since moved to the second worst place.

Belford continued his conversation with X, saying that Kotick's handling of the Steam launch was “just one example of the culture [he] I was born in AB.” He claimed, “The filth flows downstream…usually to the lowest paid and most overworked individuals. Management was too busy responding to trends and decisions that fluctuated wildly and made no sense at all.

Christina Pollock, a former programmer at Demonware (a subsidiary of Actiblizz), also shared her experience working on Call of duty Commercial franchise. “Bobby’s decisions made our matches worse.” She said on Xbefore returning to 2021 Wall Street Journal investigationKotick allegedly left a voicemail on his then-assistant's phone in 2006 threatening to kill her. According to Pollock, magazine The investigation went down just before Thanksgiving that year, around the time Kotick “personally” gave employees extra vacation days.

Kotaku I've reached out to Blizzard for comment.

While it's good to see that former employees are feeling more comfortable speaking out against Kotick, it's important to remember that the man left ActiBlizz almost unscathed and with a good salary. Less so in 2024, please.