$200m Kotick bonus

[Kaibhan]

4700 blizzard employees. 200 million dollar bonus. If split evenly amongst their employees that's about 42.5k for each and every one of them. Literally a brand new car worth of cash for each employee.

[Grimbold21]

Let's just hope that some of the people that criticize this aren't the same that go "It's my money" whenever they're flamed for perpetuating a system that encourages this.

[Alatie]

Blizzard is already ruined.
Abandoned starcraft 2, ruined warcraft 3 refunded, abandoned diablo 3 years ago, heavily reduced support for heroes of the storm etc.
Ton of gambling mechanics and every other pathetic form of cheap shallow game monetization possible.

They are making billions on the corpse of the old famous and beloved blizzard.
Their product quality is trash compared to 10 years ago.

The Blizzard today is nothing but a result of how Blizzard was ran back in the day. Underpaying staff to the point of them having to skip meals only goes 1 way, Morhaime saw it as nothing more then a cash cow from day 1 i dont like how it is now but i wont pretend it was something special.

[msdos]

Activision-Blizzard took in $8 BILLION last year.

Kotick may be reviled on here (including by me), but it's not his job to be liked. It's his job to take things that make money and squeeze them to make more. And once money stops coming out he throws them away and squeezes something else.

If anything, it's our fault he's getting a $200 million bonus... We're the ones buying his crap.

Yeah bro, it's totally our fault that practice exists.

[AcidicSyn]

I can't help but laugh at the irony of his bonus being 200M and the gift card also being 200. It's a kind of hate-sad-laugh.

[Pohut]

I can't help but laugh at the irony of his bonus being 200M and the gift card also being 200. It's a kind of hate-sad-laugh.

I heard that get mugs and facemasks too. For free. Amazing!

[ONCHEhap]

"to best serve the Bobby, his wallet, his yacht collection and personal mansion"

Wow,I wonder why I'm never wrong about these.

It's almost as if it kept happening for decades all over the industry

[Aleksej89]

The Blizzard today is nothing but a result of how Blizzard was ran back in the day. Underpaying staff to the point of them having to skip meals only goes 1 way, Morhaime saw it as nothing more then a cash cow from day 1 i dont like how it is now but i wont pretend it was something special.

i dont know the details of their business practices but blizzard games in year 2000 and even year 2010 were miles better quality/polish/design than the ones in 2020.

[Zenfoldor]

Wow, hurry up and let vicarious visions release Diablo II so I can move on.

Some companies stayed incredibly good after a ton of years in gaming. Some didn't. Sad, really. It just proves success doesn't have to lead to terrible output, but it very frequently does.

[KrayZ33]

The least he could do is to send the whole department to a 1 week vacation, some sort of resort or whatever, on his wallet .
Seriously.

[ONCHEhap]

Wow, hurry up and let vicarious visions release Diablo II so I can move on.

Some companies stayed incredibly good after a ton of years in gaming. Some didn't. Sad, really. It just proves success doesn't have to lead to terrible output, but it very frequently does.

Going public is one of the big killers,as it means you now are legally obligated to generate profits for investors and shareholders. And shareholders are never satisfied with the amount of money they get

[ZazuuPriest]

Why is it every time he announces he's giving himself an obscene bonus, it's the same week they announce huge mass layoffs?

50 people from a stagnant industry isn't a massive layoff

[Mysterymask]

The only truly sobering fact is that he will be dead some day just like all the execs that in no way deserve obscene amounts of money like that. No it is not envy or anger, just disgust as it seems like almost no one who attains that kind of wealth truly does anything for humanity in the present.

so...you realize when he dies the money doesn't just vanish....like he likely has enough money that his family will basically also be stupid rich for generations to come and will continue to get stupid amounts of money just for having stupid amounts of money. Unless something happens that all forms of money just become worthless which will never happen in our lifetimes.

[ParanoiD84]

Activision, isnt that why the original wow OG's left as they didnt have as much control over wow anymore?

[Zenfoldor]

Going public is one of the big killers,as it means you now are legally obligated to generate profits for investors and shareholders. And shareholders are never satisfied with the amount of money they get

You are right, but I just want to add that sometimes what is good for shareholders in the short-run is bad for a company's reputation(and thus shareholders) in the longrun. Balancing next quarter's profits with long term company health is vital for a lasting company. It seems to me that lately, short term profit is much more valuable in the eyes of impatient shareholders and thus CEOs alike.

[rhorle]

Going public is one of the big killers,as it means you now are legally obligated to generate profits for investors and shareholders. And shareholders are never satisfied with the amount of money they get

The entirety of Blizzard Entertainment has been as part of a publicly traded company. Going public isn't a killer. People romanticizing developers and using silly scapegoat is the issue. Chaos Studios, Inc. renamed to Blizzard Entertainment around the same time Davidson and Associates acquired the studio in 1994. Since then Blizzard has been part of a publicly traded company in Davidson, Vivendi, and then Activision Blizzard.

[Chickat]

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but CEO salary with bonus shouldn't be higher than 50 times that of their lowest-paid employee. If you pay the lowest paid employee 10 dollars an hour the max a ceo should make in a year is 1,152,000. This should be a law imo. Bonuses are okay, but every employee at the company needs to also get a bonus at least 1000 times less than that. Which would still be 200k for every employee. This shows you have ridiculous a 200m bonus is. A 2m dollar bonus would also give every company employee 2k dollars. That's pretty fair for such a profitable company.

Actiblizz has 10k employees. Ceo gets 2m dollar bonus. Every employee gets 2k dollar bonus. Thats only 20m dollars to give a bonus to every employee. Definitely doable.

[Makabreska]

irony of posting that on a WoW fan forum lmao

Last time I checked posting here didn't put any money in Acti/Blizz pockets.

[kranur]

Yeah bro, it's totally our fault that practice exists.

Technically it is. If people stopped paying for products the second they realize they're bullshit, maybe quality would be the go to method to make more money instead of "oh we lost some subs this quarter? throw a mount on the shop" . But as long as people are happy to throw cash to complain on the forums and then throw some more cash at store mounts and at pre-orders 1 year ahead of time that end up disappointing, why try to enforce quality when people give you money anyway? May as well just squeeze some more.

[Unholyground]

so...you realize when he dies the money doesn't just vanish....like he likely has enough money that his family will basically also be stupid rich for generations to come and will continue to get stupid amounts of money just for having stupid amounts of money. Unless something happens that all forms of money just become worthless which will never happen in our lifetimes.

I won't need to worry about money once my house is self sufficient and a greenhouse at least.