Bobby Kotick, the former CEO of Activision Blizzard who stepped down at the end of last year, is apparently interested in buying TikTok as a new or force its sale. According to a report by , Kotick mentioned the idea of partnering on such a purchase to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others seated with him at a conference dinner last week, and brought it up with ByteDance Executive Chair Zhang Yiming. If TikTok is sold, the WSJ notes, it would likely go for hundreds of billions of dollars.
Kotick led Activision for over 30 years but didn’t exactly leave on a good note. In , the company was accused of fostering sexual harassment and gender discrimination under his leadership, in what was described as a “pervasive frat boy workplace culture.” soon after reported that Kotick was aware of misconduct and assault allegations over the years and did not properly disclose some of these instances to the board. He was also accused of harassment himself, noted at the time. Activision Blizzard called the report “misleading.”
After the information came to light, and demanded Kotick resign, but that did not happen. Kotick ultimately stayed on as head of Activision Blizzard in 2023.
Kotick’s alleged interest in TikTok comes at a tumultuous moment for the immensely popular platform after lawmakers introduced the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” last week, which he would sign, if it passes. Under the bill, which goes to the House floor on Wednesday for a vote, TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, within six months. Otherwise, it’ll be banned from US app stores.
TikTok has been trying to get its millions of US users to rally behind it in wake of the bill’s sudden momentum, and sent out push notifications last week . After the House vote, where it’s expected to be approved after clearing the Energy and Commerce Committee in a unanimous vote last week, the bill would move on to the Senate. While lawmakers’ concerns about TikTok center on fears of data privacy and its connection to China, WSJ notes that involving Altman in its purchase could open the app up to the possibility of being used by OpenAI to train its AI models, which doesn’t exactly sound ideal for users, either.
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Video game publisher Activision Blizzard has been embroiled in controversy within the last few years, from allegations that a culture of sexual harassment was allowed to thrive to reports of union-busting by management. But in January 2024, when a new lawsuit was filed against the Call of Duty and Overwatch publisher, many were shocked to read what it was in reference to: A 57-year-old former ActiBlizz exec alleged that he left the company because of ageism. According to the lawsuit, then-CEO Bobby Kotick said that the company’s problem was that there were “too many old white guys” working there.
Though race and gender traditionally get more attention in calls for a more diverse game industry—one where whiteness and maleness remain the norm—age discrimination is a hot-button issue as well. According to a 2019 survey from the International Game Developers Association, only 9% of game developers are 50 years old or older. As the people behind iconic, genre-defining games approach and surpass middle age, how do their peers treat them? Have they noticed a shift in the way developers work, or how games are made?
I sat down with Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinksi on one call and Ultima Underworld creator Warren Spector, Apogee Software founder Scott Miller, and Nightdive Studios head of business development Larry Kuperman on another, to chat about navigating the game world after spending decades in it.
Photo: Mark Davis (Getty Images)
The demands of game development
“I’m gonna go on record saying I think I’m the oldest person who isn’t running stuff or on the business side,” Spector, who is 68, proclaims early on in the conversation. He’s referencing the phenomenon by which former developers transition to the business side of game dev, which many chalk up to the intense demands of video game development cycles.
Spector started in the board game world before moving to digital games in 1989, Miller (who pioneered gaming’s episodic release format) shipped his first in ‘85, Kuperman has been involved in games since 2001, and Bleszinski joined Epic Games in ‘92. Of the four, Spector is the only one solely working on the development side, while the rest are now mostly focused on the business end or, in Bleszinski’s case, out of games almost entirely.
I ask if the volatility and demands of the industry, which has seen more than 6,000 layoffs in the first month of 2024 alone, are why companies can’t or won’t retain older talent. “Some people find an ever-changing environment invigorating,” Spector suggests. “That’s one of the reasons I’ve lasted this long…things change so rapidly that you’re constantly acquiring not only new knowledge but new skills.”
But he acknowledges how competitive and tough the games industry can be. “The difficulty of the work, the low pay, drives even young developers away,” he points out while suggesting that, in his experience, the average “lifespan” of a programmer is about five to seven years due to the intense nature of their work.
“There’s a certain type of developer that’s a kind of self-flagellating monk that lives for that [intense] work ethic,” Bleszinski says during our conversation. “And then there’s a certain amount of peer pressure where you have deadlines and then someone goes home at six o’clock at night to their family, and then the other people are still at their desks—they don’t say it, but deep down they’re thinking, ‘I’m gonna be here until midnight, fuck that guy.’ A lot of that comes from the top…my producer on Gears, Rod Ferguson, I believe is one of the best in the business, but he lives for the work. He’s just an absolute workaholic.”
With crunch becoming an increasingly popular issue within the industry, and workers campaigning for union protections and a better work/life balance, can studios expect their developers to work the way they once did?
“The industry thrives on hungry game developers that are just happy to get an okay salary and free Mountain Dew and Doritos,” Bleszinski says. “If crunch is enforced, they’ll do it, but they’re gonna be very resentful towards the company…plus you get to a certain age where you hit the point where you’re like, ‘fuck you, pay me’.”
Image: Apogee Entertainment
The promise of indies, the problem of layoffs
Though Spector, Miller, and Kuperman don’t hesitate to disagree on the topics we cover (they playfully throw barbs about the validity of the games-as-a-service business model), they wholeheartedly agree on one thing: The nuts and bolts of game development have dramatically shifted since they started their careers, and much of that shift can be attributed to the availability and approachability of today’s game engines.
“We used to have to create engines from scratch, and that limited access,” Spector points out. “Now, youngsters right out of school, in their garage, can actually make games without learning Assembly, like Richard Garriot [the creator of the Ultima series] had to. So I think that’s a large reason why you don’t see as many older developers, because the youngsters are using those available tools.”
Miller, who is still “deeply involved” in making games, concurs: “We’re in the era now where two people can do what 20 people did back in the ‘90s.” He brings up last year’s action game, Turbo Overkill, which Apogee published. “95% of that game was made by one guy. We helped him up with the music and voiceover, but this is a game that would’ve taken 25 to 30 people back in the ‘90s. It’s just a remarkable piece of work.”
And for them, in today’s game economy, innovation like that can only be found at indie studios. “I like being at the indie level,” Miller says. “I think we can all agree on that,” Kuperman chimes in. “There’s just so much innovation going on at the indie level that you’re not seeing at the big boy level because it’s too costly to take a risk,” Miller suggests.
What about those “big boy” studios, and the thousands of layoffs they’ve doled out in the last month alone? How do industry mainstays feel about the layoffs, and the future of the industry? For Spector, there’s no fear in gaming’s future, just apprehension towards those leading it: “It sounds like [companies] just over-hired during the early days of the pandemic, and it’s bad management that’s resulting in overstaffing. That doesn’t mean there’s a fundamental flaw. It means we have some bad managers at the top of companies.”
Kuperman steps in, pointing out that “Scott [Miller] has been kinda leading the way in hiring back up people from kindred companies.” Miller reiterated Spector’s talking points, suggesting that “games suddenly were selling 30 to 50% better than normal” during covid, and studios went on a hiring spree.
The conversation circles back around, once again, to the promise and allure of indie studios in the modern financial climate. “I don’t have 150 or 200 employees to lay off…but the layoffs are coming at Mega Corp,” Kuperman says. “And in the meantime, there are lots of indie developers that are not only thriving, but are looking to scale up.”
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Ageism and diversity in the video game industry
Though we laugh a bit about how we all came together—thanks to Bobby Kotick (himself a 61-year-old man) allegedly partaking in ageism—the tone does get somewhat serious when discussing the issue of age discrimination. Miller and Spector deny facing any sort of ageism during their decades in the industry, but Kuperman has a personal anecdote that’s stayed with him for years.
After working remotely for GameStop for two years as a business development manager, he was let go at 57 years old. “There I was, with a great resume, you know, successful in games, I had worked with every major company, my client list went from Activision to Zenimax…I sent out my resume, my applications to all of these companies that I had worked with—they all knew what I could do and my capabilities. And they all turned me down,” Kuperman recalls. “And the one that was the most offensive—I won’t say who it was—but they took the time to explain to me that I was not a ‘cultural fit.’ I got this explanation that I was not a cultural fit while I was working from home wearing a Ramones T-shirt. I knew what they meant, right? That I was not gonna fit in with their twenty- and thirty-somethings.”
Bleszinski believes older members of the industry are still in it either because they didn’t get “fuck you” money or because they genuinely love what they do—from our convo, it’s clear that his time churning out AAA games left him somewhat jaded. “Talking about ageism—once a person gets married and has kids and whatnot, you know, they’re going to put in their eight hours and they’re gonna go the fuck home,” Bleszinski says. “I tell people, get ‘fuck you’ money, and then get the fuck out.”
Spector, Miller, and Kuperman are all now indie darlings, so their experience is vastly different from Bleszinski’s, who had to be the face of a massive AAA franchise while still actively working on it. But all of them still agree that game development can often feel like a young person’s, well, game. Part of that has to do with the demands of the work, sure, but there’s an accessibility problem, as well.
“My twitch skills are not what they used to be,” Spector points out. “People don’t believe me that there are physical changes in your body as you get older. But there are, and I am physically not able to work the kinds of hours I used to. I am physically not able to keep up with 12-year-olds, 34-year-olds [referencing my age] playing games anymore. So I need to find a somewhat different role in development, and I’m lucky enough that I’ve been able to carve out a different role. But a lot of people might just say, ‘I don’t want to do that anymore’ and self-select out.”
Image: Naughty Dog
“The thing is, for me, my vision,” Kuperman says. He struggles with contrast in games, and can get frustrated when he can’t see important features like doors. “But I’m lucky because [my studio] NightDive is now part of Atari, so I now have support mechanisms that I didn’t have before.”
But how does the industry, as a whole, do when it comes to accessibility and diversity?
“It’s not just age and it’s not just physical—divergent thinking is not very well-supported,” Spector says. “Every way you can think about diversity, we do a bad job…we don’t get a lot of resumes from older developers or people who think differently or people of color…that’s an area where I think younger developers are going to have to lead the charge.”
He continues. “I’m only speaking for myself but, I like the past when I was able to work until three in the morning and sleep under my desk and drive home and have no idea how I got home. I kind of miss those days of comradery in the foxhole. Younger developers don’t wanna do that, and it’s a good thing ‘cause I can’t do it anymore. So it’s good that they’re thinking that way…the world has changed for the better.”
In 2023, Blizzard opened up Overwatch’s world for third-party collaborations. The first was a set of skins and other cosmetics based on the anime/manga One-Punch Man, which naturally turned Overwatch’s own “one-punch man,” Doomfist, into the titular hero with a new skin. The cape is luxurious, but he’s not the only hero who got to cosplay during the event. Soldier: 76 gets to ride a bike as Mumen Rider, Kiriko’s green wig is wigging as the Terrible Tornado, and Overwatch’s resident cyborg Genji naturally becomes One-Punch Man’s cyborg Genos.
Looking back, the collaboration was strange because One Punch Man hasn’t really been doing much as of late, with the third season still in development and the last one having come out in 2019. But there’s a surprising amount of love shown in the skins, highlight intros, and other cosmetics, as silly as it is seeing Soldier: 76 pedaling like his life depends on it.
The second big collaboration was with K-Pop girl group Le Sserafim, and it was an absolute banger of an event. Take my hand, walk with me. Have you heard the good word of Le Sserafim’s catchy as hell bop “Perfect Night”? Have you basked in the glory of Tracer, Kiriko, Brigitte, D.Va, and Sombra geared up for a K-Pop concert, serving some of the most glamorous skins Overwatch has ever seen? And did you watch the music video, in which all the previously mentioned girlies attend a Le Sserafim concert and use their various abilities to have their own perfect night? It ruled. I’m still wearing the Sombra skin when I play her, and have no plans to take it off.
Le Sserafim / Blizzard Entertainment
While Blizzard looked outside of its stable for crossovers, it also looked to the other side of the office and had a Diablo crossover, as well. Moira mains rejoiced as she finally got a decent skin out of the arrangement, though the Diablo-themed co-op mode was extremely mid and tiresome. Also, John Cena showed up in a viral marketing campaign for some reason, though that had no impact on the game itself.
Even if you don’t watch One-Punch Man or jive with Le Sserafim’s music, Overwatch 2’s collaborative events have felt meaningful, not like they’re just cheap crossovers. The team at Blizzard has done a lot to capture the vibes of its partners without it coming at the expense of its own identity. Crossovers can be exhausting, as games like Fortnite can lose their entire sense of self as they clutter their worlds with pieces of other properties. But so far, Overwatch 2 has found a happy medium in paying tribute to something within its own framework. — KS
Activision Blizzard has been the subject of scrutiny for several years now, due to its widely criticized “Boys’ Club” corporate culture of sleazy shenanigans. And now, late on a Friday evening just before the holiday season begins in earnest, The Wall Street Journal reports the embattled gaming company announced on December 15 that it will pay $50 million to settle a 2021 gender discrimination and harassment lawsuit—the same lawsuit that seemingly prompted Microsoft’s landmark $69 billion acquisition of the Call of Duty and Overwatch publisher that was finally greenlit after an 18-month legal battle in October of this year.
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California’s Civil Rights Department sued Activision back in 2021, claiming company leadership willfully ignored employee complaints regarding pay disparity, gender- and sexuality-based harassment, and discrimination.
Activision has repeatedly denied these charges. Company representatives have also claimed that an internal investigation by its board of directors concluded that the allegations against the company were without merit. When the Microsoft acquisition closed earlier this year, longtime Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was “asked” to stay for another two months, through the end of 2023.
According to the Journal, which broke the story regarding the settlement, the state of California had initially estimated Activision’s liability for a far greater amount than $50 million.
The state in 2021 estimated Activision’s liability at nearly $1 billion to 2,500 employees who might have claims against the company, court documents show. Activision had around 13,000 employees as of the end of 2022.
Citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter, the Journal goes on to claim that state agencies had “initially sought an amount much greater than the settlement Riot Games paid earlier this year to settle its lawsuit.” The Riot settlement in May 2023, which touched upon similar grievances relating to toxic workplace culture, resulted in a $100 million settlement for plaintiffs.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced its decision to block Micorosft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard on Wednesday citing concerns it would hurt competition in the growing cloud gaming market where Microsoft dominates thanks to Game Pass. It’s a shocking turn of events for what seemed like a mega merger that was otherwise cruising toward regulatory approval.
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“We have concluded that the merger would result in the most powerful operator in the fast-developing market for cloud gaming, with a current market share of 60-70%, acquiring a portfolio of world-leading games with the incentive to withhold those games from competitors and substantially weaken competition in this important growing market,” the CMA wrote in its final report. Both Microsoft and Activision Blizzard said they will appeal the decision.
One seemingly likely result of Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard would be that the latter’s hit games likeOverwatch 2, Diablo IV, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II would all get added to Game Pass. The CMA argues this would give Microsoft, already the market leader in cloud gaming, even more anti-competitive control. It also suggests that the company would then have an incentive to raise prices on cloud gaming subscription services like Game Pass, while potentially withholding certain releases from some rival platforms like Sony’s PlayStation Plus.
Microsoft tried to assuage these concerns in recent months by signing tons of deals with smaller cloud computing providers in the UK, promising to make Activision Blizzard’s games available through them alongside its own xCloud service. The CMA seemed unswayed by these overtures, however, calling Microsoft’s proposed remedies too limited in scope, implying they would leave out competing services like Sony’s and that enforcing the agreements would require too much ongoing regulatory oversight.
“We have already signed contracts to make Activision Blizzard’s popular games available on 150 million more devices, and we remain committed to reinforcing these agreements through regulatory remedies,” Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President at Microsoft, said in a statement. “We’re especially disappointed that after lengthy deliberations, this decision appears to reflect a flawed understanding of this market and the way the relevant cloud technology actually works.”
Activision’s response to the news was more harsh. “The CMA’s report contradicts the ambitions of the UK to become an attractive country to build technology businesses,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement. “We will work aggressively with Microsoft to reverse this on appeal. The report’s conclusions are a disservice to UK citizens, who face increasingly dire economic prospects. We will reassess our growth plans for the UK. Global innovators large and small will take note that— despite all its rhetoric—the UK is clearly closed for business.”
That language echoed Activision CEO Bobby Kotick’s previous claims that the UK would become “death valley” if it torpedoed the deal, which promises huge financial windfalls for him and other executives at the company. The merger is still being investigated by authorities in the European Union, who are expected to announce a decision in May, and the Federal Trade Commission is currently threatening the acquisition with an antitrust lawsuit. It’s unclear how the CMA’s initial surprise ruling could affect approval in the U.S. and EU as a result, since failure in any one of the regions could likely doom it.
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Which might explain why earlier today Kotick sent out an email to his entire company—and then posted it on the internet for the whole world to see—which does little but bang his head against the wall repeating the same arguments Microsoft, Activision (and now select US politicians) have been making for months: that the deal is fine, that everything is cool, that Microsoft has made “thoughtful, generous remedies to address regulators’ concerns”.
One thing stands out in this email, though, and it’s a section where Kotick has to juggle maintaining a business relationship with Sony while also wanting to throw them under the bus. Let’s see how he fared (emphasis mine):
The good news is, regulators who initially had concerns about console competition are starting to better understand our industry. The data and evidence Microsoft has been presenting are tilting the scale. You may have seen statements from Sony, including an argument that if this deal goes through, Microsoft could release deliberately “buggy” versions of our games on PlayStation. We all know our passionate players would be the first to hold Microsoft accountable for keeping its promises of content and quality parity. And, all of us who work so hard to deliver the best games in our industry care too deeply about our players to ever launch sub-par versions of our games. Sony has even admitted that they aren’t actually concerned about a Call of Duty agreement—they would just like to prevent our merger from happening. This is obviously disappointing behavior from a partner for almost thirty years, but we will not allow Sony’s behavior to affect our long term relationship. PlayStation players know we will continue to deliver the best games possible on Sony platforms as we have since the launch of PlayStation.
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In other words, “it’s not me, it’s you”. I don’t see any other way he could have put this, to be honest, but then this kind of tiptoeing is exactly why this proposed deal has been so important to the future of the console business: so many grenades have been lobbed by both sides that there’s going to be bad blood here for years regardless of the decision.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) have today filed charges against publisher Activision—a company with a long track record of alleged union-busting—claiming the publisher violated several workplace laws in relation to the firing of two QA testers.
“Two QA testers expressed their outrage using strong language. In response, management set up disciplinary meetings where both workers were fired.”
The CWA argue that “the use of outbursts and strong language in the context of concerted activity by employees was protected by the National Labor Relations Board” until as recently as 2020, before the Trump administration “systematically rolled back workers’ rights, including modifying the standard for determining whether employees have been lawfully disciplined or discharged after making offensive statements, which ultimately limits free speech rights for employees.”
Activision disagrees. “We don’t allow employees to use profane or abusive language against each other,” a spokesperson for the company, Joseph Christinat, told Kotaku. “We’re disappointed the CWA advocates this type of behavior.”
The charges have been filed against Activision CEO Bobby Kotick directly, and allege that the firings—which took place on February 17—were made “in response to [the employee’s] engagement in protected, concerted and union activity”. The CWA also allege that Activision “improperly denied a request to have a coworker witness the disciplinary meeting which preceded the termination of [their] employment”.
“For far too long, Activision has gotten away with treating its employees, especially QA testers, like disposable work horses. Firing two employees for joining with their co-workers to express concern around hasty return to office policies is retaliation, point blank,” CWA Secretary-Treasurer Sara Steffens says. “When faced with unfair treatment by unscrupulous employers like Activision, workers should have the right to express themselves.”
Update 3/1/2023 9:08 a.m. ET: Added comment from Activision.
Rep. Mike Garcia on the campaign trailPhoto: Myung J. Chun (Getty Images)
While it’s normal for prominent business people to donate to both sides of the political aisle, so that whoever wins an election they can call in some favours, as the Republican Party lurches further to the right some of the candidates being supported are deserving of a bit more scrutiny than usual.
As Axios report, the race for a US House seat in California’s 27th District—part of the city of Los Angeles—is expected to go down to the wire on Tuesday, after the 2020 election saw Rep. Mike Garcia win by just 333 votes. His rival this week (as it was in 2020) is Democrat Christy Smith, and to help the incumbent over the line three wealthy donors have handed Garcia $50,000.
Garcia’s campaign, and Kotick’s support of it, deserve extra scrutiny because like so much of the Republican party in 2022, he’s not just a conservative guy. Garcia, a MAGA devotee, was one of 139 representatives who, in January 2021, even after witnessing the violence at the Capitol on January 6, voted to object to the Presidential Electoral College results from two states, in effect protesting the democratic election of President Joe Biden, and giving what has been described as his “tacit support” to an insurrection.
