BREAKING: Vivendi may siphon funds from Activision-Blizzard. $400 Million in debt

[achromatickang]

Sorry you guys, I didn't mean to turn this into a tangent about Rift VS. WoW, but I do feel like Blizzard slacks a bit. I feel like better management of the Development team due to lower funds might actually be a good thing. Currently Ghostcrawler will come out and acknowledge that something about the game is bad, but players still have to wait for four months for it to get fixed (dailies, warriors in pvp, wintrading in RBGs etc. come to mind).

Take Skirmishes for example. Blizzard acknowledges that players all want these reiterated into the game. Now that you no longer have Arena teams, it makes more sense than ever to implement skirmishes so that players can play with friends without destroying their personal rating. Blizzard's response? Yeah, it would be awesome but we have no way of implementing that at this time. My own theory? They'll introduce it as a "new feature" in the next expansion pack, alongside with new character models that were probably finished six months ago.

[mordale]

Not really. They even stole most of their major ideas directly from Trion. Transmog? Yeah, Rift idea. PVP power and baseline resilience? Both Trion concepts. Those Kor'Kron dailies are basically a copy/paste from Rift Instant Adventures. Challenge Modes that scale item level back? Yeah, also a Rift feature. I could go on and on, but it's already getting redundant. Honestly I can't think of anything Warcraft has come up with in recent times that wasn't directly taken from Trion. Even a majority of the raid mechanics in MoP were copy/pasted from Rift.

most of this shit rift did were taken from other MMORPGs such as DCUO, WAR, and even WoW.

there isn't an original bone in either of their bodies, and thats ok cause if it works, use it.
games are an iterative medium, it doesn't really matter who did it first, it matters who did it better.

back to point, with as much as ACTI-BLZ has in pocket why is the siphoned amt 400mil?

[SamR]

I've seen this happening before several times. It's usually followed with EA swooping in and childing yet another quality company.

Either way they're going to have to tighten their belts a few notches, because whatever apologist arguments people might bring to a biased fan forum that always sees everything with pink goggles, this is definately not good news for Activision-Blizzard. And with Activision being Blizzard's "boss", they're going to do most of the cuts in the Blizzard company instead of in their Call of Duty teams.

Your arguments seem colored more by Blizz-hate than an understanding of how corporate debt markets work.

[Shampro]

Sorry you guys, I didn't mean to turn this into a tangent about Rift VS. WoW, but I do feel like Blizzard slacks a bit. I feel like better management of the Development team due to lower funds might actually be a good thing. Currently Ghostcrawler will come out and acknowledge that something about the game is bad, but players still have to wait for four months for it to get fixed (dailies, warriors in pvp, wintrading in RBGs etc. come to mind).

Take Skirmishes for example. Blizzard acknowledges that players all want these reiterated into the game. Now that you no longer have Arena teams, it makes more sense than ever to implement skirmishes so that players can play with friends without destroying their personal rating. Blizzard's response? Yeah, it would be awesome but we have no way of implementing that at this time. My own theory? They'll introduce it as a "new feature" in the next expansion pack, alongside with new character models that were probably finished six months ago.

Why are you talking about features and Ghostcrawler when it has nothing to do with the topic at hand?

[SL1200]

Quick everyone go buy a name change we have to save wow.

[Methusula]

If anything, we may start to see an increase in urgency from the WoW devs. There may be more things popping up on the cash shop, including transmog sets. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, so we will have to wait and see.

[Wildmoon]

quick everyone go buy a name change we have to save wow.

buy pets!!!!.

[elmoe420]

The linked article and the articles it in turn links to really don't seem to contain a lot of useful information.

It kind of sounds like Vivendi may be trying to force Activision-Blizzard to do a share repurchase/buyback in an effort to reduce the number of shares in circulation and effectively bump the earnings per share. From my understanding a share buyback is essentially the issuing company spending their free cash flow to buy back shares from the public which then get taken off the market. However, I'm still not sure how this helps Vivendi financially unless they assume that the Activision-Blizzard share price will be falling quite a bit in the coming months (share buybacks seem a weird way around insider trading laws too). I also don't know how they could force a share buyback as only the issuing company can do that. I really am not great on finance though and maybe part of owning the controlling portion of the shares gives them authority to force a repurchase? Other than this I'm not aware of how they could 'siphon cash' from Activision-Blizzard.

It would be awesome if someone on these forums who actually knows about corporate finance could chime in and shed some light on what the possibilities here are!

[Lochton]

I am 100% sure that you cant just take that much money out of company over night. (at least by some law)

Some other stuff:
US$ 11.49 billion (2012)
Vivendi (61% stocks)

You can't, you have to process the papers through the legal acts as well as tax system and the board for approval and major share-holders.

[Immitis]

I've seen this happening before several times. It's usually followed with EA swooping in and childing yet another quality company.

Either way they're going to have to tighten their belts a few notches, because whatever apologist arguments people might bring to a biased fan forum that always sees everything with pink goggles, this is definately not good news for Activision-Blizzard. And with Activision being Blizzard's "boss", they're going to do most of the cuts in the Blizzard company instead of in their Call of Duty teams.

ummmm you do know that blizzard is worth more money than ea right? ea couldnt afford to buy blizzard

[ManOluck]

Considering blizzard makes about 80,000,000 a month I'm pretty sure they will be fine. They can practically print money from naive gamers by selling useless mounts etc. Also expect a cash shop.

[Zaelkath]

The only reason I could see this not happening is because of the crazed hot pocket fueled fans out there that would form a real-life raid to kill Vivendi.

[TirielWoW]

That's 10%. Not quite a "drop in the bucket". 40m? Sure. 4m? Definitely. But 10% is a nice chunk of change.

Yes, but it comes in stock shares. I mean, they'll own the stock. It would give them greater control, from what I'm understanding. I think we should see how this plays out, too.

[achromatickang]

Why are you talking about features and Ghostcrawler when it has nothing to do with the topic at hand?

The entire thread is based on the idea that the Quality of WoW may take a massive hit if Vivendi draws funds from the Blizzard branch. I'm simply disagreeing with that as many players, not just myself, feel that the development team is poorly managed. A re-structuring that forced said development team to work more efficiently due to reduced funding may not be such a bad thing. That is all.

Edit: of course I could be dead wrong too. We could see a dramatic decrease in quality, but that's not guaranteed to be the case either.

[Mawnix]

I only present facts.

Fact: Activision-Blizzard share holders are pissing their pants right now. Not even a company like Activision-Blizzard likes to hear that they're suddenly going to be 400m in debt. Do you even realize how greedy and nitpickery they already are with their funds? Blizzard constantly already has to do more with less and less resources because the share-holders want to earn more and more..

Just like your other post was filled with facts like Activision is Blizzard's boss, right?

What actually is a fact is warped by your opinion, which in this case is the opinion that Blizzard is awful. That goes for anyone.

THAT is a fact.

[Tinykong]

Hmm, how could they come up with a quick way of making $400 million?

In-game cash store selling XP boosts and other items? Cha-ching.

[mmines]

They make more than 100 million a month just in subs from wow on blizzards side. I really don't see them not being able to pay that. Though this is still a huge dick move on vivendi's part it's probably for the better if they can own themselves from this. I'm also confused where this 400 million value is coming from. Maybe if they absorbed all of the stocks then it would put them at 400 million in debt? Even then from the last reports it still doesn't add up.

[TirielWoW]

I only present facts.

Fact: Activision-Blizzard share holders are pissing their pants right now. Not even a company like Activision-Blizzard likes to hear that they're suddenly going to be 400m in debt. Do you even realize how greedy and nitpickery they already are with their funds? Blizzard constantly already has to do more with less and less resources because the share-holders want to earn more and more..

As others have pointed out, even if Vivendi wants to do this, there are regulations and laws they have to abide by. This isn't something they can just wholeheartedly force, because the shareholders of Activision/Blizzard have rights, too, even if Vivendi is their parent company.

[Mawnix]

Financially Blizzard is Activision's little bitch, yes. People can deny it all they want because it doesn't fit in their "Blizzard are the Gods of the Universe"-view. But Activision has been having Blizzard by the balls ever since the merge. It's Activision who controls nearly all financing in the company.

......

You're joking, right.

You realize Activision has no control over anything Blizzard does with the games, and thus has no effect financially, right?

They make financial decisions together.

They freaking merged together.

Are you joking?

[Immitis]

I only present facts.

Fact: Activision-Blizzard share holders are pissing their pants right now. Not even a company like Activision-Blizzard likes to hear that they're suddenly going to be 400m in debt. Do you even realize how greedy and nitpickery they already are with their funds? Blizzard constantly already has to do more with less and less resources because the share-holders want to earn more and more..

its obvious you dont realize how much money blizzard makes

- - - Updated - - -

Financially Blizzard is Activision's little bitch, yes. People can deny it all they want because it doesn't fit in their "Blizzard are the Gods of the Universe"-view. But Activision has been having Blizzard by the balls ever since the merge. It's Activision who controls nearly all financing in the company.

activision has no say or control over anything blizzard does, this was part of the deal when they merged