Remember Bobby Kotick? He is the CEO of Activision Blizzard, which was acquired by Microsoft a while ago. The story of Activision Blizzard has come to an end, but the story of Bobby Kotick is not over. He was recently sued by New York City for "suspecting that he harmed the company's interests in Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard".
Because the price given by Microsoft at the time of acquisition is $95 per share, while the highest share price of Activision Blizzard not long ago was $104.5.
The decline was due to the sexual harassment scandal of Activision Blizzard, which led to the suicide of employees, and hundreds of employees of Activision Blizzard marched and demanded the resignation of Bobby and several senior executives involved.
Finally, it led to the collapse of the trust of a generation of legendary game companies, and the share price also plummeted.
At this time, he wants to sell the company, pat his ass and leave. Isn't it a big loss for the remaining shareholders? So these shareholders united to sue him.
For Activision Blizzard, he is very important, because during his tenure, Activision's share price has increased dozens of times.
But it is also because of him that the trust of players, employees and shareholders in the company has dropped to the bottom, and there have even been large-scale sexual harassment and office bullying culture.
Bobby Kotick used to have many titles, such as CEO of Activision Blizzard, Coca Cola, member of the board of directors of the Los Angeles Art Museum and Harvard West Lake school.
Games, beverages, art, academia, so many unrelated industries, he can get involved.
If you want to refine a word to describe him from so many complex ingredients, it can only be "born businessman".
According to Bobby's mother, this trait began when he was very young: the young Bobby sold her ashtray to a friend who came to play at home and made $3.
It's really a thin horse with long hooves and fat hooves. It's not a thief for a son to steal his mother, is it?
After that, Bobby was full of thoughts about how to make money. He had his own business card in junior high school.
When he got to high school, Bobby, who was getting bolder and fatter, began renting Manhattan nightclubs on rest nights, giving parties to underage children, and making crazy explorations on the edge of breaking the law.
Although all kinds of businesses have been done over the years, Bobby didn't delay his study and successfully entered the University of Michigan.
With his temperament, naturally, he won't finish college safely and then work for others. In fact, like many successful bosses, he dropped out of school before finishing school.
We have to start with Bobby's entrepreneurship. Not long after entering college, he and his friend marks founded a company called arktronics to develop software for Apple II computers at that time.
If the company has, we must find a way to get some start-up funds, right? After all, neither of them can program and have to pay for someone.
So Bobby, 19, flew to Dallas to attend a charity ball called cattle Baron's ball.
The charity ball was full of celebrities. Bobby stopped a middle-aged man like a fool, introduced his company and business to him, and gave them a check for $300000.
After getting rich, arktronics made an operating system for Apple II called Jane.
It was very popular with users because it only sold for $295. You know, Apple's Lisa operating system sold for $10000 at that time.
The French version is called Janet ▼ "=" "color = & gt;
After hearing about the software, jobs wanted them to develop a set of software for the new Apple II GS, so he specially came to meet Bobby.
Bobby disagreed at first because he promised his parents that he would finish college even if he did business.
Jobs said on the spot that if Bobby didn't drop out of school, he would take arktronics and Apple My contract was torn apart.
Facing his studies and the company, Bobby chose the latter without hesitation and immediately went through the dropout procedures.
Although jobs apparently forced Bobby to drop out of school, in fact, jobs probably saw the young man's ambition, so he pushed the boat to help him.
Facts have proved that Joe is very accurate in looking at people.
Bobby officially set foot in the game industry in 1990.
At that time, he found that EA could make a lot of money by looking for a game.
At that time, a company called medianic was in bad business. Its assets were only $2 million, but its liabilities were as high as $30 million. It was about to go bankrupt.
But Bobby found that the company was founded by four former employees of Atari.
You should know that yadali was a well deserved game leader, and the development strength of these people is also worthy of affirmation.
So Bobby and several of his partners spent $440000 on the spot and got a third controlling stake in medianic. Kotick became CEO and held 9% of the shares.
Later, they renamed the company Activision and conducted a fund-raising in 1994. Naturally, Kotick came forward. With his eloquence and "drawing big cakes", he successfully raised $42.5 million.
According to Forbes, Kotick himself is not a person who is particularly keen on games. When he was a teenager, he liked an arcade game called defender. He basically didn't play any games in college.
Even so, Kotick at that time gave at least what several studios under Activision needed most: Creative autonomy.
It is said that at that time, these studios could decide their own projects, how many people to hire, how long to spend and budget, and were responsible for paying for them as soon as possible.
From 1997 to 2003, Activision acquired nine studios successively, and launched the popular game Tony Hawk's Pro skater in 1999.
Since its launch, the game has brought $1.6 billion in revenue to Activision. In that year, it was a major breakthrough in sports games and brought skateboards to the virtual world for the first time.
Kotick contacted a group of developers who had worked with EA and gave them $5 million to set up a studio called Infinity Ward.
With a wave of this small hoe, he dug out the most valuable shooting game IP in the history of the game - "call of duty".
"Call of duty" series games are the Enlightenment of shooting games for almost all millennial players in Europe and America. They have an unshakable position in the game industry and can bring hundreds of millions of dollars to mobile TV every year.
In 2006, Kotick spent another $100 million to win a game called guitar hero.
This is another lucrative investment, which proves once again how vicious Bobby's business vision is.
Looking at these games, there is only one field that Activision did not set foot in, that is the hottest large-scale multiplayer online game (MMORPG) at that time.
Compared with buyout games such as call of duty and guitar hero, MMORPG, which can charge continuously every month, is obviously more profitable.
So in 2008, Activision focused on the world's most popular online game world of Warcraft.
Just at this time, Jean Bernard L é vy, the new president of Vivendi, also found the desire of movision for world of Warcraft and wanted to use world of Warcraft to control movision.
If the original game departments of Activision and Vivendi were directly merged, Activision would still hold the controlling stake in the new company according to the share price.
L é vy insisted on giving an additional $2 billion in cash for 52% of the company's control.
Dynamic vision is Bobby's own "baby brought up". If he agrees, it means Bobby has given up control of the company he spent 18 years building.
They bought northern blizzard that year and pointed out the game development, which led to the resignation of the four founders of Diablo.
Known as the "big four" ▼ "=" color = & gt;
After that, a total of more than 30 people left blizzard in the north, which greatly damaged the vitality of blizzard in the north. In 2005, it was directly declared closed, and Diablo 3, which was being developed at that time, was also extended indefinitely.
In the eyes of outsiders, in the face of such a bully, maintaining the company's independence must be a better choice.
For the eighth work of Tony Hawk series, the player's score is only 6.2 ▼
On the other hand, Bobby realized the influence of world of Warcraft after meeting Mike Morhaime, the creator of world of Warcraft.
Take China at that time for example. Pirated games were rampant, and foreign game companies could hardly make money here.
But "world of Warcraft" can blossom everywhere in 160000 Internet cafes in China, making these players spend $150 million on "world of Warcraft" every year.
Finally, Bobby decided to agree to Vivendi's conditions, holding 2% of the shares of the new company Activision Blizzard and giving up the control of Activision Blizzard.
I don't know if it's a black man. After that, although Bobby still served as the CEO of Activision Blizzard, his image in public opinion is more and more inclined to an evil capitalist.
For example, in 2009, he fired Jason West and Vince zampella, the creators of call of Duty: Modern War 2, just before the bonus.
You should know that "call of Duty: Modern War 2" set a sales record of $1 billion at that time. According to the agreement, the two main creators can receive millions of dollars in bonuses.
As a result, Activision sued them, saying that when they were in the company, they wanted to be twenty-five children and planned to run to EA's new studio with project funds and 40 employees.
This is not the end. The moving vision also sued EA together.
Finally, in 2012, they and EA reached an out of court settlement with Activision Blizzard, and the specific terms were strictly confidential.
However, after that, it was revealed that Bobby had planned the resignation of Jason and Vince for a long time, and specially asked Thomas fenady, the then it director, to "dig a hole" for them and plant the blame.
Giant Bomb News
Activision , Infinity Ward , and Project Icebreaker ▼
But even if he finally exits in such a notorious way in the game industry, it still can't change the fact that he is a successful businessman.
He did well in completing his task. After acquiring Activision, he turned a company on the verge of bankruptcy into a game giant with a market value of tens of billions of dollars.
His ability also makes him the highest paid CEO in the game industry in the past ten years. He can get tens of millions of dollars a year, and the salary in 2020 is as high as 154.6 million dollars.
It can be said that how much investors love him, players hate him. Therefore, players even made a lot of stem pictures about him, such as turning Bobby P into a demon image.
After the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, maybe players and investors will be very sad.
But the most sad thing is that for Bobby Kotick, the money he made from lying on these people is enough for him to spend his whole life.
Does he care what others think of him? I don't think so.
Author: Xiaofa editor: xiaoxinxin & amp; Cover line: Xuanxuan "=" color = & gt; "= ""color=>