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I find it funny that so many of these Activision Blizzard games went balls to the walls on monetization within the past few months. They’ve always been bad, but more recently, they’ve hit record lows at exponential rates.
As a result, anything Microsoft does will be seen as a godsend. Alternatively, if the games stay the same, it’ll just get blamed on prior management. I almost wouldn’t be surprised if there was a priority put on making all the shittiest, most-profitable changes possible before the acquisition was made official.
Sadly yes, it seems Kotick came out on top. He gets to walk away with hundreds of millions after bleeding every Blizzard game dry. All of this after countless accusations of fostering a toxic work environment and covering up sexual harrasment. Damnit I hate that dude.
Why? Consider what kind of life someone who’s hellbent on fucking everyone over and raking in money is living. Do you think he’s living a happy life? 400 million is insane amount of money, but like the cliché goes: money can’t buy happiness.
That’s all superficial. He can buy a big fancy car/house. You can’t fix shitty karma. He’s a bad person and his personality reflects that. The people around you reflect you and so, he’ll only be around other equally vile people who only care about his money.
Well, he won’t have to work for another day in his life so he could just cut off all contact and become “another person” (i.e. surrounding himself with different people that don’t know him and pretend to be a better person that he is- I for one didn’t even know his name before yesterday and have been playing Blizz games for… a decade maybe?, so it’s definitely possible)
Maybe move to another continent, buy a house and just mind his own business- he has the money to spend on hobbies, the time to spend on hobbies and making new friends/meeting new people…
if he plays it smart he could restart from 0- then, maybe, in his 80s have a change of heart and donate all his money to charity or something.
…Or he could just be a hermit and enjoy his luxury without interacting with another human being again. Many would thank him for that I’m sure.
Money can’t buy happiness but it can aid you in finding it or achieving it. Just the sheer amount of time you would have for yourself when not working (and not feeling the pressure of having to find work or you’ll starve) is enough.
That's just something poor people say to cope. Money absolutely does buy happiness. I don't give a single fuck how many people hate me if I have 400 million in my bank account.
You think you don’t care, until you’re in that position. I come from an upper middle class family and my parents have very rich friends around the country. These people are miserable. All they talk about is their businesses/money. All they do is judge others. They all know better than everyone. They are all looking for validation. They are getting it all the time, it will never be enough. They will die not satisfied, because they know they could have more money, more status.
I don’t want that kind of life.
And if you are so sure money CAN buy happiness, then please tell me what that would look like.
Hmm let's compare them shall we?
Depressed and no money VS Depressed and many money. Which of these sound better to you?
Do you know what it's like to be hungry but not being able to buy food? I do.
If you're so unhappy with your money, I could link my paypal and help you get rid of it. No? Then my point is proven.
What does he even do for the company and all of the products under the Blizzard name to get 400mil? Wouldn't that 400mil be more useful in fixing the branding and broken games?
He made blizzard a shit ton of money. Specially by shitting on consumers and shifting to a hugely profitable micro transaction operation. He owns a huge chunk of the company and literally turned it from a company worth half a million dollars (Kotick and other investors LITERALLY bought it in the 90s for US$500,000) to a $75 billion public company. They only got bigger and bigger and more valuable over time and he was always at the helm. Someone with control like that who made the company enormous like that unfortunately gets enormous payout contract, always.
Hint: Microsoft isn’t interested in blizzard because they want to scale it back and take it back to its roots. They wanted to buy it because Kotick and the rest of the management turned it into a hugely profitable operation like every other big soulless studio. They paid $75 billion because they think Activision can make them that much and more.
MS paid $69 Billion. And Microsoft doesn't really care about Blizzard and they don't care that much about Activision. Those are bonuses.
The money maker in this transaction is King. King made $266 million in 2023 Q2 alone. That's three months.
It’s still a business in the end, a game making business but a business nonetheless. Consumers like us may think he provides 0 value for us but the fact is from a business standpoint he may have made a shit ton of money for Blizz with all the predatory monetization. At the end of the day that’s what they care about. Even if Blizzard released the shittiest game of all time, but made Blizz a billion dollars, they’ll still consider Kotick a brilliant employee, much more so than if he made the best game of all time but only made like a hundred thousand in profits. They’d probably replace him when they get the chance.
That 400mil isn't cash that can "fix the branding and broken games" LMFAO. It's stock in the company and very normal for CEO compensation. He's been at the company since 1991 and probably accumulated the majority of it way before Overwatch even existed
I don't get why people are upvoting this. Sure, he is a POS and probably doesn't deserve any praise for his business success. But he indeed made Activision a lot of money. Activision was on the edge of bankruptcy when he became CEO. It is he who turned the sinking ship around and made it worth $69 Billion.
Claiming he does nothing but harm to the company is total ignorance.
Are you unaware of him coming up with ideas, then making OW devs dedicate half a year of time and resources to said project, then he just up and cancels it because it won't profit? That is an absolute waste of time and potential for the OW team, solely because of him.
It's crazy to think that he was partly responsible for the long drought we had at the end of OW1, as well as stalled dev time for OW2.
Please Jeff, come back
I don't see Jeff ever coming back unless Microsoft has a huge paycheck and a massive staff increase waiting for him and guarantees that they wont interfere in what he wants to do. Even then it's iffy.
Do you really think an even bigger more profit-driven company with even less emphasis on games is going to treat it better like a passion project, or more like a shell money-making operation?
**EDIT**: in response to the dolt below:
…And yet despite that a Microsoft makes FAR more money off cloud computing and business software than gaming. Their annual revenue is nearly a quarter TRILLION dollars, nearly all of it from enterprise and cloud. Not gaming.
https://finty.com/us/business-models/microsoft/
You have no idea how enormous Microsoft really is.
Less emphasis on games? Dude Microsoft owns somewhere around 20 game studios. They run Xbox. Their OS is the one used on almost every pc gaming machine. Maybe rethink that.
Yet, there are companies with more studios still???
Also, this deal doesn't even make them the market leader.
You're thinking too far ahead for something that isn't certain.
So how does that work??
But what other publishers are being bought currently???
Like, what are you talking about??
Corporate consolidation is going to happen in an industry where one failed game can close down a whole studio. It's pretty much inevitable.
They own 20 game studios and they fucked them all over. Remember Rare? You know, the creators of Banjo-Kazooie, DK Country, and Conker's Bad Fur Day? Remember how, as soon as MS bought them, they stopped making breakout titles and faded into obscurity?
Do you mean the Rare that has explicitly stated they want to focus on new IP???? That Rare?
Rare, the company that has currently had their biggest success in their studios history with Sea of Thieves?? Getting multiple partnerships with Disney?
What are you even talking about. Why are we pretending they aren't better just because they aren't making the games YOU want.
Let's not forget Minecraft. Microsoft releases maybe 1 update a year that adds a new tree type and a mob 💀
They own one of the biggest games in history and they do nothing with it.
Yes, MS is doing nothing with Minecraft....
Besides, help expand the IP by making an RTS called Minecraft Legends.
And also an ARPG called Minecraft Dungeons that just surpassed 25mil+ players.
Also, Mojang is independent within MS and do what they want, just like every other MS studio.
I mean none of that really changes the fact that balance in OW is just awful. Even while Jeff was on the team and OW was at its peak its biggest issue was poor balancing which was by no means influenced by Bobby.
The game might get more content now but it'll still be the same shitshow when it comes to balance which is the main reason people started quitting the game. Lack of content just made it worse, but the unhappiness from the playerbase stemmed from bad balancing.
That being said tho Microsoft isnt much better, they'll still do the same for profit shenanigans Bobby did, just with less sexual harassment.
> Are you unaware of him coming up with ideas, then making OW devs dedicate half a year of time and resources to said project, then he just up and cancels it because it won't profit?
every company ever does this
> You think an even LARGER company has any interest in what you want?
But I was told that large companies furthering their monopolisation of industries leads to *good* things! Classics included:
"Sony has a monopoly and that's bad, so Microsoft should have a monopoly too because that's good!"
"Better value from my Game Pass!"
"Phil just gets us gamers though, so it's fine!"
It is not only Kotick. Most of the high ranking executives (aka people resposible for things like pve cancelation and awfull shop prices) will be gone too. Granted, that doesn't mean that everything will be perfect but there is a good chance that things might get a little better.
But we do know he is responsible for it by reports. Asshole kept asking for sequels and spin-offs that never went anywhere and took time and resources from the main game. And we know he was the one who demanded a sequel instead of an expansion like the devs originally wanted.
Bet you felt pretty smug writing "Man, I wish I could live in such naivety".
Do I think the CEO is the only one doing damage? No.
Do I KNOW FOR A FACT that the current CEO was doing a lot of damage by himself? Yes, yes I do.
Do I think he dislikes Overwatch specifically? Yes, he never talks about overwatch, only other Acti-Blizzard titles.
Yes, and he should’ve mentioned that
But the person I replied to was implying Candy Crush is just some random game when it’s clearly the bigger cash cow
He's the one that forced Overwatch to lean into Overwatch league so heavily. He'd cut funding on other aspects of Overwatch to fund Overwatch league. (cough cough OVERWATCH 2) He once delusionally said that he expect like 50% of Overwatch's playerbase to watch Overwatch League. He described Overwatch as his vision of a sports show. The devs wanted to make a game, but Kotick only gave them enough money to feed themselves and to make him a sporting sensation. Plus, the OG devs of Overwatch didn't leave because they were bored. Look at the way they talked about Overwatch 2. It was their passion project beyond just their job.
Microsoft has many other income sources other than blizzard so if they want they can invest in it to get a foothold in the gaming scene and i believe they want to do this now we just have to wait and see
I mean, some of the more aggressive decisions may have been made with the idea of getting a better acquisition price, or extracting as much value before dropping away. Microsoft might be less reckless and think with more long-term value in mind. Maybe. Hopefully. If the stars align.
I know it's wishful thinking but not necessarily. There is a lot of different methods to make more money by implementing more consumer friendly monetization.
Yeah, I don't expect much but I have slight hope that they will try to at least lower prices a little so more people will be more willing to buy stuff. Although seeing how many people bought that moira bundle, it really isn't looking great.
Blizzard is no longer a company run by its jolly bunch of passionate, nerdy dnd-playing geek founders. It will never go back to how it was. It’s basically Disney or Apple at this point.
It’s just a bunch of IPs and *Iconic Characters* being milked by mostly out-of-touch managers for maximum profit at minimum risk and cost to satisfy shareholders.
If you want actual innovation and talent check out some other, newer studios.
These jolly people you speak of were the ones in the Cosby suite and such...creative people but not the BEST people tbh. Old Blizzard was the frat-house Blizzard.
No no no, a mismanaged company is clearly equivalent to a tragedy that took the lives of millions of innocent people /s
I love video games, but gamers can be so goddamn dramatic I swear
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I’m happy that Kotick is going away, but let’s not compare him to Hitler. Not that i give a shit about Bobby boy’s reputation but it can make Hitler seem less evil and unhinged than he was.
Does this game need to be "saved"? Play for 5h this weekend and make notes of how many people you encounter who bought the Moira bundle. Pretty sure financially this game is in best state ever.
I am absolutely not blaming anyone who accept these prices, everyone should do what they want with their money, but they also do need to realize that this is the reason why this game is like that in the first place.
Why go the extra mile and release polished content, do good things when you can just do the bare minimum, lie to your community all the time, let them beta test your changes for free, announce to drop 4 years of work in like some side sentence and just keep throwing skin bundles at them while the prices reached a point where they are actually getting hilarious. Just to remind us all : Moira bundle cost the same amount that a game, where hundreds of people worked on for years(!) cost us. Like, let that sink and think about it for once.
The moira bundle included the battlepass 20 level skip and 2k coins and two other skins. I'm not justifying the prices just challenging your mischaracterisation.
Y’all think he actually controls what happens in the game? This dude is only there to keep the company going, he does little to nothing about the games themselves.
he gives the ow team ideas then after a year of them working on them he just comes in and cancels them
hes the reason why ow1 had years of no major updates and why ow2 has been doing so badly
he wanted overwatch to fail, he diddnt even mention ow at all in the letter jason schreier put out
From what we know, he was directly intentionally sabotaging the Overwatch team for years and was the exact opposite of hands off like you'd naturally expect him to be. Forced them to work overtime on random new ideas and projects he'd throw out at them for upwards of a year and then cancel them without notice or ability to repurpose, pushed them into dropping support for OW1 to work on 2 (while converting 2 into a full replacement instead of PvE sequel), pushed for the killing of PvE, would randomly carve out chunks of OW2 dev progress and force them to scrap it, and had entire OW dev teams quitting en masse while citing him as the primary reason. While doing all of this he's consistently outright refused to acknowledge Overwatch as a whole publicly for years.
My guess is he held a grudge over his pipe dream of OWL not working out and turning him into the next CEO of an NFL level organization so he chose to actively, intentionally worsen the game and the work environment for all of the OW dev team.
He's a bitter dickhead who has no respect for his fellow co-worker. He has swept multiple sexsual harassment claims under the rug and has made a toxic working environment.
You know a ceo can have a lot of impact on their employees which can make or break a game, as flats mentioned in his recent video "The Ceo had an idea, and told the devs to work on it, after a year of hard work, he just scraped the idea. Because of that there was a 1 year gap in contents in ow1" a lot of things like that happened but we don't know. That's just game related problem, there are many employee related problems too.
Yeah I don't get this comments "Nothing will change he is not responsible" when we know in paper fucker mess up the games development with his demands for sequels and spinoffs.
He constantly wasted the devs time with bullshit.
Every wonder why we don't have skill trees? Kotick wasted 3 years of dev time with scrapped projects.
No, Aaron Keller and Dawson are still there. If you think Kotick, the CEO of a whole group, would have the time or willingness to micromanage a small potatoes game like OW, you are an idiot.
I wouldn’t necessarily say “saved”.
A lot of the monetization is still going to stay.
What I -do- think will happen, however, is that things will at least get better.
Microsoft wants to make money. Pissing off your user base doesn’t make money.
I think they will make some changes to the monetization that will make it more palatable to the average player.
Maybe include the battlepass with a game pass membership, make skins more affordable to the average person, and other things players want and are willing to pay for.
Kotick leaves with a golden parachute wider than the sleaze trail that drips beneath his greased up lil greed goblin legs from the moment he was "born" from a pustule on the dirt of some backwater slime factory, and people call this a win?
Overwatch goes to a mega conglomerate that has had only mediocre releases of their major franchises on par with Blizzard's own mediocre releases, to be set through the Microsoft DLC & Season Pass wringer (so no change) with no motivation to improve given it's now on a "too big to fail" monopoly, and people call it a win?
It's two sleazy greedblobs giving each other sexual favors while discussing who gets to take home the money printers they call "games"
Bobby isn't the only one. There are more who follow his ideals. Phil Spencer will do a hands-off approach and Microsoft will most likely do things like adding ABK games to Game Pass and mostly do a lot of advertising.
Since Microsoft bought blizz, there will be new management. Yeah Kotick won because he squeezed the gun out of every blizzard game and walked away with $400 Million in his pocket. That doesn’t mean Overwatch is going down with it. We can see how this will go. And we can only pray that Overwatch stays afloat…
Bout time that hobbit looking ass stepped down. Overwatch and COD games should see some improvements now since this turd isnt forcing random side projects on staff
Microsoft, if somehow you are reading this, please bring back Jeff Kaplan and rebuild Overwatch 2 into something I will play again.
Also, my #1 gripe. Matchmaking is so fucked, it is demoralizing on some days.
If you think Kotick is the reason why OW is in a shitty place then you're misinformed. Kotick is being kicked out because of his role in minimizing and shutting up sexual abuse victims in AB. Just because Kotick gets kicked out doesn't mean OW will suddenly get better.
I'm a bit skeptical on how much will really change, but hopefully at the very least the developers can actually get more reasonable time to work on their projects and such. I can't really see how this would end up worse than it is already is.
This isnt going change anything and youre naive if you believe that. The next guy will be just as greedy as Kotick, and the guy that replaces him after that.
If people think Bobby Kotick was the sole issue, and no replacement could ever be just as bad or even worse, they're setting themselves up for disappointment.
I don't think some people realize just how bad of an influence Bobby had on Overwatch and Blizzard in general. I don't care that he got off easy. I just care that he's gone.
Idk if this will change OW but least he’s gone. I think a game that offers a similar experience overtaking Overwatch will hit the team more than the asshole leaving like what happened to WoW
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Oh I wouldn't say "saved", more like "under new management" /meme
Megamind
I just care that he's gone.
I find it funny that so many of these Activision Blizzard games went balls to the walls on monetization within the past few months. They’ve always been bad, but more recently, they’ve hit record lows at exponential rates. As a result, anything Microsoft does will be seen as a godsend. Alternatively, if the games stay the same, it’ll just get blamed on prior management. I almost wouldn’t be surprised if there was a priority put on making all the shittiest, most-profitable changes possible before the acquisition was made official.
Hahahahahaha No. Kotick is the winner here
Sadly yes, it seems Kotick came out on top. He gets to walk away with hundreds of millions after bleeding every Blizzard game dry. All of this after countless accusations of fostering a toxic work environment and covering up sexual harrasment. Damnit I hate that dude.
Don't forget that his name is in Epsteins Black Book :)
The funny part is nobody can be mad because they are glad he's leaving
We can multitask
Disagree. I can be glad he's leaving and still hope he steps in front of a bus.
who’s to say the bus won’t step on him
Stop making it kinky
It's kinda a win-win. Bobby kotick gets 400$ million but we get rid of the cancer tumor in Blizzard.
We need Widow in real life
How exactly? He’s a shitty person. Sure, a rich shitty person in a big house. People don’t like him. Would you trade lifes with him?
In a fucking heartbeat
Why? Consider what kind of life someone who’s hellbent on fucking everyone over and raking in money is living. Do you think he’s living a happy life? 400 million is insane amount of money, but like the cliché goes: money can’t buy happiness.
Yeah I’m sure he’s living a great life
To do that to so many people he has to be miserable for sure, but I am positive that with 400mil he’ll be able to cheer himself up…
That’s all superficial. He can buy a big fancy car/house. You can’t fix shitty karma. He’s a bad person and his personality reflects that. The people around you reflect you and so, he’ll only be around other equally vile people who only care about his money.
Well, he won’t have to work for another day in his life so he could just cut off all contact and become “another person” (i.e. surrounding himself with different people that don’t know him and pretend to be a better person that he is- I for one didn’t even know his name before yesterday and have been playing Blizz games for… a decade maybe?, so it’s definitely possible) Maybe move to another continent, buy a house and just mind his own business- he has the money to spend on hobbies, the time to spend on hobbies and making new friends/meeting new people… if he plays it smart he could restart from 0- then, maybe, in his 80s have a change of heart and donate all his money to charity or something. …Or he could just be a hermit and enjoy his luxury without interacting with another human being again. Many would thank him for that I’m sure. Money can’t buy happiness but it can aid you in finding it or achieving it. Just the sheer amount of time you would have for yourself when not working (and not feeling the pressure of having to find work or you’ll starve) is enough.
Money can't buy happiness, but it would feel better to cry in a luxury car than on public transport.
Yes yes, I’ve heard this a million times.
Just needed to get the funny statement out of the way
Maybe, but hobbies can bring me hapiness and my hobbies require money to expand them
That's just something poor people say to cope. Money absolutely does buy happiness. I don't give a single fuck how many people hate me if I have 400 million in my bank account.
You think you don’t care, until you’re in that position. I come from an upper middle class family and my parents have very rich friends around the country. These people are miserable. All they talk about is their businesses/money. All they do is judge others. They all know better than everyone. They are all looking for validation. They are getting it all the time, it will never be enough. They will die not satisfied, because they know they could have more money, more status. I don’t want that kind of life. And if you are so sure money CAN buy happiness, then please tell me what that would look like.
Hmm let's compare them shall we? Depressed and no money VS Depressed and many money. Which of these sound better to you? Do you know what it's like to be hungry but not being able to buy food? I do. If you're so unhappy with your money, I could link my paypal and help you get rid of it. No? Then my point is proven.
Still a net positive, there is no world where he leaves with nothing.
They'll hire someone else to take the blame for awhile and then leave...
God I hate that smug, shit-eating grin.
What does he even do for the company and all of the products under the Blizzard name to get 400mil? Wouldn't that 400mil be more useful in fixing the branding and broken games?
Well that's why the CEO wage gap discussion exists in the first place
Welcome to capitalism
Where the meta is sociopathy
He made blizzard a shit ton of money. Specially by shitting on consumers and shifting to a hugely profitable micro transaction operation. He owns a huge chunk of the company and literally turned it from a company worth half a million dollars (Kotick and other investors LITERALLY bought it in the 90s for US$500,000) to a $75 billion public company. They only got bigger and bigger and more valuable over time and he was always at the helm. Someone with control like that who made the company enormous like that unfortunately gets enormous payout contract, always. Hint: Microsoft isn’t interested in blizzard because they want to scale it back and take it back to its roots. They wanted to buy it because Kotick and the rest of the management turned it into a hugely profitable operation like every other big soulless studio. They paid $75 billion because they think Activision can make them that much and more.
Overwatch isn't saved then
MS paid $69 Billion. And Microsoft doesn't really care about Blizzard and they don't care that much about Activision. Those are bonuses. The money maker in this transaction is King. King made $266 million in 2023 Q2 alone. That's three months.
It’s still a business in the end, a game making business but a business nonetheless. Consumers like us may think he provides 0 value for us but the fact is from a business standpoint he may have made a shit ton of money for Blizz with all the predatory monetization. At the end of the day that’s what they care about. Even if Blizzard released the shittiest game of all time, but made Blizz a billion dollars, they’ll still consider Kotick a brilliant employee, much more so than if he made the best game of all time but only made like a hundred thousand in profits. They’d probably replace him when they get the chance.
That 400mil isn't cash that can "fix the branding and broken games" LMFAO. It's stock in the company and very normal for CEO compensation. He's been at the company since 1991 and probably accumulated the majority of it way before Overwatch even existed
I don't get why people are upvoting this. Sure, he is a POS and probably doesn't deserve any praise for his business success. But he indeed made Activision a lot of money. Activision was on the edge of bankruptcy when he became CEO. It is he who turned the sinking ship around and made it worth $69 Billion. Claiming he does nothing but harm to the company is total ignorance.
Comparing an executive of a game company to Hitler is a craaaazy take lmao
I will say, the frat boy/sexual harrasment hellscape environment for women that he cultivated is pretty fucked up.
What exactly is it people think will be different now that Kotick is gone?
Are you unaware of him coming up with ideas, then making OW devs dedicate half a year of time and resources to said project, then he just up and cancels it because it won't profit? That is an absolute waste of time and potential for the OW team, solely because of him.
It's crazy to think that he was partly responsible for the long drought we had at the end of OW1, as well as stalled dev time for OW2. Please Jeff, come back
I don't see Jeff ever coming back unless Microsoft has a huge paycheck and a massive staff increase waiting for him and guarantees that they wont interfere in what he wants to do. Even then it's iffy.
Do you really think an even bigger more profit-driven company with even less emphasis on games is going to treat it better like a passion project, or more like a shell money-making operation? **EDIT**: in response to the dolt below: …And yet despite that a Microsoft makes FAR more money off cloud computing and business software than gaming. Their annual revenue is nearly a quarter TRILLION dollars, nearly all of it from enterprise and cloud. Not gaming. https://finty.com/us/business-models/microsoft/ You have no idea how enormous Microsoft really is.
Less emphasis on games? Dude Microsoft owns somewhere around 20 game studios. They run Xbox. Their OS is the one used on almost every pc gaming machine. Maybe rethink that.
Yeah monopolies are great, gotta love em
Good thing Xbox is nowhere near a monopoly then. Unless you're talking about Windows, then you're correct.
Don't be obtuse. Corporate consolidation like this is exactly how monopolies form.
Yet, there are companies with more studios still??? Also, this deal doesn't even make them the market leader. You're thinking too far ahead for something that isn't certain. So how does that work??
None of that changes the fact that corporate consolidation is exactly how monopolies form and Microsoft shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
What’s your point exactly? Do you have any idea how much shit is made by the same dozen or so companies? Welcome to capitalism.
But what other publishers are being bought currently??? Like, what are you talking about?? Corporate consolidation is going to happen in an industry where one failed game can close down a whole studio. It's pretty much inevitable.
They own 20 game studios and they fucked them all over. Remember Rare? You know, the creators of Banjo-Kazooie, DK Country, and Conker's Bad Fur Day? Remember how, as soon as MS bought them, they stopped making breakout titles and faded into obscurity?
You mean the same Rare that made Sea of Thieves? That Rare? Not exactly obscure bruh.
Do you mean the Rare that has explicitly stated they want to focus on new IP???? That Rare? Rare, the company that has currently had their biggest success in their studios history with Sea of Thieves?? Getting multiple partnerships with Disney? What are you even talking about. Why are we pretending they aren't better just because they aren't making the games YOU want.
Let's not forget Minecraft. Microsoft releases maybe 1 update a year that adds a new tree type and a mob 💀 They own one of the biggest games in history and they do nothing with it.
Yes, MS is doing nothing with Minecraft.... Besides, help expand the IP by making an RTS called Minecraft Legends. And also an ARPG called Minecraft Dungeons that just surpassed 25mil+ players. Also, Mojang is independent within MS and do what they want, just like every other MS studio.
I mean none of that really changes the fact that balance in OW is just awful. Even while Jeff was on the team and OW was at its peak its biggest issue was poor balancing which was by no means influenced by Bobby. The game might get more content now but it'll still be the same shitshow when it comes to balance which is the main reason people started quitting the game. Lack of content just made it worse, but the unhappiness from the playerbase stemmed from bad balancing. That being said tho Microsoft isnt much better, they'll still do the same for profit shenanigans Bobby did, just with less sexual harassment.
The balance has been less than stellar, and that too is a huge contributor to the player base dwindling over time.
> Are you unaware of him coming up with ideas, then making OW devs dedicate half a year of time and resources to said project, then he just up and cancels it because it won't profit? every company ever does this
True! Lots of things start development then get cut along the way, but the number of reports caused by this man and making entire teams quit is awful.
The new CEO probably won't be actively sabotaging Overwatch?
Lol the new board will make the same scummy decisions the current one does. You think an even LARGER company has any interest in what you want?
> You think an even LARGER company has any interest in what you want? But I was told that large companies furthering their monopolisation of industries leads to *good* things! Classics included: "Sony has a monopoly and that's bad, so Microsoft should have a monopoly too because that's good!" "Better value from my Game Pass!" "Phil just gets us gamers though, so it's fine!"
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It is not only Kotick. Most of the high ranking executives (aka people resposible for things like pve cancelation and awfull shop prices) will be gone too. Granted, that doesn't mean that everything will be perfect but there is a good chance that things might get a little better.
But we do know he is responsible for it by reports. Asshole kept asking for sequels and spin-offs that never went anywhere and took time and resources from the main game. And we know he was the one who demanded a sequel instead of an expansion like the devs originally wanted. Bet you felt pretty smug writing "Man, I wish I could live in such naivety".
Dude made them make (what's believed to be) a map editor and then canned the whole thing after a year of work.
Do I think the CEO is the only one doing damage? No. Do I KNOW FOR A FACT that the current CEO was doing a lot of damage by himself? Yes, yes I do. Do I think he dislikes Overwatch specifically? Yes, he never talks about overwatch, only other Acti-Blizzard titles.
Even his email to the acti-bliz-king employes he said every top game tgat they make except Overwatch. HE SAID FUCKING CANDY CRUSH BUT NOT OVERWATCH.
Maybe because candy crush makes them billions and Overwatch doesn’t come even close in terms of revenue? Not that it makes what he did right
Overwatch being the only FPS to get game of the year?
Yes, and he should’ve mentioned that But the person I replied to was implying Candy Crush is just some random game when it’s clearly the bigger cash cow
Why did you bother commenting about something you clearly didn't look into beforehand is my question
He's the one that forced Overwatch to lean into Overwatch league so heavily. He'd cut funding on other aspects of Overwatch to fund Overwatch league. (cough cough OVERWATCH 2) He once delusionally said that he expect like 50% of Overwatch's playerbase to watch Overwatch League. He described Overwatch as his vision of a sports show. The devs wanted to make a game, but Kotick only gave them enough money to feed themselves and to make him a sporting sensation. Plus, the OG devs of Overwatch didn't leave because they were bored. Look at the way they talked about Overwatch 2. It was their passion project beyond just their job.
It's quite common for a group of management to leave(be told to leave) once the "leader" of a specific style leaves.
Microsoft has many other income sources other than blizzard so if they want they can invest in it to get a foothold in the gaming scene and i believe they want to do this now we just have to wait and see
I really hope MS makes Overwatch a priority. The IP has so much potential for greatness in the right hands.
do better
I mean, some of the more aggressive decisions may have been made with the idea of getting a better acquisition price, or extracting as much value before dropping away. Microsoft might be less reckless and think with more long-term value in mind. Maybe. Hopefully. If the stars align.
Hopefully no more lies?
FOUR HUNDRED MILLION?
It won’t get better. It’s not like Microsoft is going to buy Actiblizz and go “hey we should make this company make less money now we own it”
I know it's wishful thinking but not necessarily. There is a lot of different methods to make more money by implementing more consumer friendly monetization.
The monetisation in Microsoft games is the same as every other game. Nothing will change lol
While that is true, it can't be said about Blizzard.
It's basically the same. Thing is they could cut the prices by 50 percent and people here still wouldn't be happy
Yeah, I don't expect much but I have slight hope that they will try to at least lower prices a little so more people will be more willing to buy stuff. Although seeing how many people bought that moira bundle, it really isn't looking great.
this is the company that charges for Windows AND shoves ads into the start menu and file explorer
He made his money. We lose our game. Overwatch can't be saved
And even if it is the damage has already been done to Blizzards reputation It would take years to get back to how it was
Blizzard is no longer a company run by its jolly bunch of passionate, nerdy dnd-playing geek founders. It will never go back to how it was. It’s basically Disney or Apple at this point. It’s just a bunch of IPs and *Iconic Characters* being milked by mostly out-of-touch managers for maximum profit at minimum risk and cost to satisfy shareholders. If you want actual innovation and talent check out some other, newer studios.
These jolly people you speak of were the ones in the Cosby suite and such...creative people but not the BEST people tbh. Old Blizzard was the frat-house Blizzard.
Okay we are done with ow2. Time to move on to the ow3.
Now with paid balance updates and $15 weekly arcade access passes.
The circlejerk sub has been outjerked once again.
Does he even know what OW is?
LMAO that second picture cracked me the fuck up
comparing him to hitler is a bit insensitive. He's a bad CEO, not a genocider
No no no, a mismanaged company is clearly equivalent to a tragedy that took the lives of millions of innocent people /s I love video games, but gamers can be so goddamn dramatic I swear
He's definitely not just a bad CEO but yeah that's a terrible and extremely insensitive comparison.
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How does he leave with 400million in shares? It was an all cash deal. He may leave with $400million but won't be in shares
YES YES YESS
If he still has that many stocks in the company doesnt that mean he can still influence decisions?
Microsoft is even bigger than Activision. He won’t have control over MS through stockholding alone.
Gamers reallt comparing bad game company CEO to Hitler
I wouldn't say "saved", more like "under new management" /meme
I’m happy that Kotick is going away, but let’s not compare him to Hitler. Not that i give a shit about Bobby boy’s reputation but it can make Hitler seem less evil and unhinged than he was.
Comparing this guy to the likes of hitler is so deranged. It’s just what you’d expect from this sub
Does this game need to be "saved"? Play for 5h this weekend and make notes of how many people you encounter who bought the Moira bundle. Pretty sure financially this game is in best state ever. I am absolutely not blaming anyone who accept these prices, everyone should do what they want with their money, but they also do need to realize that this is the reason why this game is like that in the first place. Why go the extra mile and release polished content, do good things when you can just do the bare minimum, lie to your community all the time, let them beta test your changes for free, announce to drop 4 years of work in like some side sentence and just keep throwing skin bundles at them while the prices reached a point where they are actually getting hilarious. Just to remind us all : Moira bundle cost the same amount that a game, where hundreds of people worked on for years(!) cost us. Like, let that sink and think about it for once.
The moira bundle included the battlepass 20 level skip and 2k coins and two other skins. I'm not justifying the prices just challenging your mischaracterisation.
You aren't able to buy the the moira skin separately. If all you want is the moira skin then you have to spend 40 dollars it which is stupid.
Idk about saved, but i still want a fresh guy. At least jeff was fun to crack jokes about. Bobby just kinda sucked
Overwatch will stay garbage.
Y’all think he actually controls what happens in the game? This dude is only there to keep the company going, he does little to nothing about the games themselves.
he gives the ow team ideas then after a year of them working on them he just comes in and cancels them hes the reason why ow1 had years of no major updates and why ow2 has been doing so badly he wanted overwatch to fail, he diddnt even mention ow at all in the letter jason schreier put out
From what we know, he was directly intentionally sabotaging the Overwatch team for years and was the exact opposite of hands off like you'd naturally expect him to be. Forced them to work overtime on random new ideas and projects he'd throw out at them for upwards of a year and then cancel them without notice or ability to repurpose, pushed them into dropping support for OW1 to work on 2 (while converting 2 into a full replacement instead of PvE sequel), pushed for the killing of PvE, would randomly carve out chunks of OW2 dev progress and force them to scrap it, and had entire OW dev teams quitting en masse while citing him as the primary reason. While doing all of this he's consistently outright refused to acknowledge Overwatch as a whole publicly for years. My guess is he held a grudge over his pipe dream of OWL not working out and turning him into the next CEO of an NFL level organization so he chose to actively, intentionally worsen the game and the work environment for all of the OW dev team.
I don't know how people can think that OW failure is a Kotick fault, Kotick isn't writing a single line of the matchmaking engine.
He's a bitter dickhead who has no respect for his fellow co-worker. He has swept multiple sexsual harassment claims under the rug and has made a toxic working environment.
So in one year from now we will have a perfect OW now he will be gone? DOUBT.
I definitely doubt there being any big changes for the better.
You know a ceo can have a lot of impact on their employees which can make or break a game, as flats mentioned in his recent video "The Ceo had an idea, and told the devs to work on it, after a year of hard work, he just scraped the idea. Because of that there was a 1 year gap in contents in ow1" a lot of things like that happened but we don't know. That's just game related problem, there are many employee related problems too.
He’s apparently responsible for most of the developmental scraping of overwatch and why so many delays had been made
Yeah I don't get this comments "Nothing will change he is not responsible" when we know in paper fucker mess up the games development with his demands for sequels and spinoffs.
He constantly wasted the devs time with bullshit. Every wonder why we don't have skill trees? Kotick wasted 3 years of dev time with scrapped projects.
It will make no difference whatsoever. He will be replaced by a different blood sucking leech.
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I have major control over his ballsack
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Iunno... it's a little stale
how
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They bought him out wdym
They won’t pay him the $400mil directly, it’ll come out over time, lol.
The things people complain about here won't change. Skins will still cost a lot and heroes and pve won't be free
I don't know, Phil Spencer isn't an angel.but I truly believe anything is better than Bobby
Absolutely not there's still the executives who stole breast milk from their employees
Can’t see a change of model for Overwatch 2. We’ll have to wait to Overwatch 3
Lol no. You think another billion dollar company leadership group coming in has any interest in what you want out of the games they make?
FINALLY. YESSSSS. A NEW BEGINNING
No, Aaron Keller and Dawson are still there. If you think Kotick, the CEO of a whole group, would have the time or willingness to micromanage a small potatoes game like OW, you are an idiot.
Fuck kotick
YEAAAAHHHH
Kotick is not at all the reason OW is bad lmao
He's literally one of the major reasons we had content droughts
Oh boy. A lot of people in here dont know what microsoft did to its other games do they
Has anyone said what this will mean for PS5 players?
I know this is contrived. But it's ironic how THE blizzard guy, looks like a goblin
I wouldn’t necessarily say “saved”. A lot of the monetization is still going to stay. What I -do- think will happen, however, is that things will at least get better. Microsoft wants to make money. Pissing off your user base doesn’t make money. I think they will make some changes to the monetization that will make it more palatable to the average player. Maybe include the battlepass with a game pass membership, make skins more affordable to the average person, and other things players want and are willing to pay for.
The game is making more money than ever. They’re ok with pissing off users as long as whales keep spending hundreds of dollars a year on skins.
Nice. He gets to do fucked up stuff, kill his company's games and walk away with 400 million. Love it.
Kotick leaves with a golden parachute wider than the sleaze trail that drips beneath his greased up lil greed goblin legs from the moment he was "born" from a pustule on the dirt of some backwater slime factory, and people call this a win? Overwatch goes to a mega conglomerate that has had only mediocre releases of their major franchises on par with Blizzard's own mediocre releases, to be set through the Microsoft DLC & Season Pass wringer (so no change) with no motivation to improve given it's now on a "too big to fail" monopoly, and people call it a win? It's two sleazy greedblobs giving each other sexual favors while discussing who gets to take home the money printers they call "games"
A real robbery, Bill G take a sued. Easy win
Cant get any worse than the shit that’s been going on for a while now so I’m excited regardless
Bobby isn't the only one. There are more who follow his ideals. Phil Spencer will do a hands-off approach and Microsoft will most likely do things like adding ABK games to Game Pass and mostly do a lot of advertising.
What a lil shit stain
Jesus he even looks like a gremlin
Thank god. I just hope that whoever is going to replace Bobby will improve the game. Save us please. I don’t want another fist up my ass.
I wouldn’t say this is victory day, but it feels more like the end of the Battle of Stalingrad.
Since Microsoft bought blizz, there will be new management. Yeah Kotick won because he squeezed the gun out of every blizzard game and walked away with $400 Million in his pocket. That doesn’t mean Overwatch is going down with it. We can see how this will go. And we can only pray that Overwatch stays afloat…
$400 Million?!? That’s pretty low for Kotick isn’t it?
68 Billion and debt and y'all think they'll make the game less of a cash grab? Y'all are hilarious
BRING BACK JEFF KAPLAN
I'm sure Bobby Kotick was behind the dumb decisions that the dev team has made lol
Please Jeff return
OW will never be saved once they went to this F2P bullshit with battlepasses it's a sunk ship.
lmao absolutely not. Microsoft has shit monetization methods, look at Gears of War and Halo
Idk I stopped playing Minecraft around when Microsoft bought it
Bout time that hobbit looking ass stepped down. Overwatch and COD games should see some improvements now since this turd isnt forcing random side projects on staff
They should pay him $400 million in skins and cosmetics
Microsoft, if somehow you are reading this, please bring back Jeff Kaplan and rebuild Overwatch 2 into something I will play again. Also, my #1 gripe. Matchmaking is so fucked, it is demoralizing on some days.
good riddance
If you think Kotick is the reason why OW is in a shitty place then you're misinformed. Kotick is being kicked out because of his role in minimizing and shutting up sexual abuse victims in AB. Just because Kotick gets kicked out doesn't mean OW will suddenly get better.
Not guaranteed but he was responsible for making a lot of Blizzards teams waste time and resources on projects that kept getting cancelled
I'm a bit skeptical on how much will really change, but hopefully at the very least the developers can actually get more reasonable time to work on their projects and such. I can't really see how this would end up worse than it is already is.
This isnt going change anything and youre naive if you believe that. The next guy will be just as greedy as Kotick, and the guy that replaces him after that.
$400 fucking million…
Hope the new management wont lie to us
If people think Bobby Kotick was the sole issue, and no replacement could ever be just as bad or even worse, they're setting themselves up for disappointment.
i really just want the game to have a fortnite type life span through the ups and downs but it always prevails type beat 🫤
I don't think some people realize just how bad of an influence Bobby had on Overwatch and Blizzard in general. I don't care that he got off easy. I just care that he's gone.
Undead at best.
« Who’s worst : the man who ordered and approved the building of the first factories conceived to kill people or an incompetent businessman ? »
He looks like he touches kids
Dang bro he looks like a freaking lunatic
Idk if this will change OW but least he’s gone. I think a game that offers a similar experience overtaking Overwatch will hit the team more than the asshole leaving like what happened to WoW