Why did Blizzard team up with Activision in the first place?

[Osmeric]

Answer this simple question: Why would they go through all the risk of breaking those laws and being fined by the SEC, when literally all they would have to do is have the board vote to change their corporate bylaws and structure on the legal shareholder's documents?

The entire idea that they are breaking these laws and risking these fines for no reason other than to make it look like Blizzard is making these unpopular decisions instead of Activision when they have had no problem absorbing and being upfront with every other company Activision took over when they and Blizzard bought out Vivendi is just delusional and, quite frankly, a little crazy.

The management of ATVI doesn't have to break any laws to influence Blizzard. For example, Kotick is required by the bylaws to prepare, each year, a plan that dictates what all parts of ATVI, including Blizzard, will do. Far from being prohibited from interfering, he's required to interfere.

[Deleted]

So many Blizz fanboys who have no idea how the world works.

[Deficineiron]

Ive heard many times over the years that activision have had a bad influence on WoW. If it's true or not, I dont know. I would however love for you guys to educate me on that regard

Im curious tho, why did a company that had a monthly income from 7-10 million wow players choose to team up with activision?

IF activision is responsible for the destruction in WoW the past expansions, can Blizzard choose to terminate their cooperation and fly solo again?

Blizzard was a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi (I think part of Vivendi Online). Vivendi chose to merge their game division into bobby kotick's activision, while leaving his management team over the overall new entity. I assume vivendi felt that reverse merging this totally unexpected windfall (wow) into a publicly traded company with very respected management was the best way to leverage their investment. I am not at all sure that it worked for them given how long they owned it and where they sold, though it certainly has for Activision and Kotick.

It's not true. Activision has absolutely zero control over Blizzard's games in any creative sense.

Unless you are using trick words to avoid including Kotick & Team in this claim, you need to say Activision-Blizzard management too. Obviously Activision the internal subsidiary is separate. Blizzard answers DIRECTLY to bobby kotick, and has since day 1 of the merger, with a few bylaws protecting senior blizzard management while vivendi still held their stake.

The only place in the world anyone makes a claim like this is on wow forums. Anyone who has worked in the world of publicly traded companies knows that the buck stops with the CEO, and no competent executive has a rogue division dropping off their numbers for the 10q without any input from him. In fact, to do so would almost certainly expose A-B management to legal liability.

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Believe in unverifiable conspiracy theories if you wish. That's your world. When you're ready to join the real world, we can talk.

you might talk to a securities lawyer about your theory of how blizzard is totally unaccountable in *insert category here* etc. to Kotick, and always has been, and ask how that would work once something went wrong. it is laughable. He is their ultimate boss, and can make any suggestion he wants with great force behind to morhaime. I don't mean he says 'nerf rogues,' but given his public statements over the years, he might well have said 'we need to make this more accessible and broaden our market - work out metrics to measure this and try to implement within game tuning.'

My (responsible adult working in the securities industry) theory is that Viviendi, very reasonably, saw Kotick's extraordinary success with Activision, and after considering the alternatives decided he would be the best option to leverage and maximize wow's huge and unexpected success. In the end, the Vivendi stake seems to have served more as a massive overhang for its lifespan.

I will go one further and state my personal view on how the merger may have impacted wow. Kotick has stated that prior to hearing about this merger he was not familiar with wow, and his comments on this imply he didn't really 'get' the mmo world, e.g. ultima online and from there on. I think he saw this huge asset (wow) which was intentionally restricting its market size by putting all kinds of barriers against player progress/participation, and, from his viewpoint, reasonable thought he could improve wow's potential customer base by working to undo this. I specifically think that this showed up in how wotlk 3.0 content, including heroic dungeons, was tuned, compared to all prior blizzard content, including 2.4.3.

Anyone reading about Kotick's career would have to greatly admire him. he has been extraordinarily successful and ever very, very early on did things I doubt anyone else here has done. I just don't think he has ever 'gotten' what made mmo's so popular, and in fact felt that many of these qualities were problems, not assets. Notable that game hit western sub peak high within a few months of 3.0 release.

[hailey]

I still believe it had something to do with Titan/Destiny. They thought sharing technology/resources with Activision to produce a console based MMO would be in their interest, since Activision has such a stronghold on the console market and particularly console FPS games. It would be mutually beneficial to both companies, allowing Blizzard to focus on the PC market and Activision on console while meeting Blizzard's desire of testing the waters of consoles.

Of course Destiny was kind of a flop and WoW took a tailspin and Blizzard became a glorified F2P cash shop game developer

[Deficineiron]

Simply put: Vivendi bought Activision and Blizzard separately, then merged them into a single aggregate called Activision-Blizzard, with Vivendi detaining 50ish% of the thing. Then, AB bought its own shares back from Vivendi and became its own entity.

actually it was a reverse merger into ATVI, not a buyout. Kotick etc. were never bought out, they just issued a majority stake in their company to vivendi and took control of blizzard, as a wholly owned subsidiary of the renamed activision-blizzard.

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Oh snap, you mean it's exactly like what people who read all the merger details and aren't conspiracy theorists have stated since the beginning? Damn color me not at all surprised.

the question wasn't asked properly, and that guy has a big NDA anyway. he almost certainly can NOT discuss any internal management communications between a/b and b.

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Saying "ATVI is forcing Blizzard to.." is correct and might even be true, when it comes to business results, strategy etc. I highly doubt it has anything to do with creative things.

In fact, the basic creative stuff might be the least touched by the merger. It is implementation of this that is where things can change. I specifically suggest Kotick exported his 'more accessible games to broader markets' philosophy to blizzard right into wotlk release. there are just too many undertuning issues to suggest it wasn't intentional and systemic. I think this would fall within broad marketing strategy.

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Sooooo....you're agreeing with me?

Honestly, I didn't know that part about the parent company being in debt. That would explain quite a lot about Blizzard's recent business practices.

the cute part is the folks narrowly stating no creative interference can still be right - it is everything else that can be impacted.

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Especially given the fact he no longer works with them so he's not constrained by his employment contract.

One assumes he has an NDA which would eat him alive if he revealed confidential internal communications contrary to the public 'narrative' given. also see my prior comment, 'creative' is teh one area you might expect, within certain definitions, blizzard was left alone.

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The ignorance in this thread is sad. You people have absolutely no clue on corporations work in the real world as well as the relationship between a publisher and a developer.

You will only find this view of the matter on a wow board. Go tell an analyst who follows AB this line and he will either just look at you like you are unwell or laugh out loud. It speaks to the great importance the game has to many people that you will get such a broad expression of denial of the obvious. This game (in all seriousness) greatly impacted the lives of some few millions of people in NA/EU, and having to deal with the elephant in the living room (the merger and game changes since then) will bring out the entire range of reactions.

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Actually, they can control the board, so they can determine who the executives of the corporation are going to be. What they can't do is make the company do something that cheats the other shareholders.

i suspect that this merger in particular specifically left kotick as ceo unless some huge number of directors, not just the vivendi ones, voted him out.

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Yep. Proposing a special dividend would have been legally fine, since it would have treated all shareholder equally. Telling ATVI to write Vivendi a check would not have been ok. Getting ATVI to buy back Vivendi shares at below market rates was a gray area; courts said it was ok.

one assumes vivendi just wanted to force the issue and get kotick to put together a deal and get them out. a lot of internal politics looks like this from the outside.

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That is not what anyone is talking about, at all.

In fact, everyone is going in circles to avoid talking about this. Or when they do recognize it, it is a special kind of 'own' where big mean atvi would never tell blizzard how to think about anything in their products.

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To be honest the conversation has branched into such levels of nonsense, like SEC fines, holding companies, secret board members, etc, that it is difficult to tell what you are talking about. However the reason is that ATVI have not absorbed Blizzard, like other studios they have acquired, is mainly because the Blizzard name on a box is valuable.

this thread illustrates some of that.

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The management of ATVI doesn't have to break any laws to influence Blizzard. For example, Kotick is required by the bylaws to prepare, each year, a plan that dictates what all parts of ATVI, including Blizzard, will do. Far from being prohibited from interfering, he's required to interfere.

you need to get back on the narrative mr. osmeric. repeat after me "the self-made CEO of a publicly traded fortune 500 company does not interfere with the division bringing ~~half his revenue in."

p[lease type that 500 times (no pasting!!) before posting on this thread again.