Bobby Kotick quickly became one of the most hated people in the entire gaming industry during his time as CEO of Activision-Blizzard. He has now left the company, but he is clearly not resting on the huge pile of money he earned.
Bobby Kotick led Activision-Blizzard as CEO for a whopping 32 years before retiring at the end of 2023. For many fans of the studios, this was a real relief, because many blame Kotick directly for the fact that the development of the games was no longer geared towards fun, but rather towards pure profit maximization.
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He is said to have received half a billion US dollars as a severance payment and of course he doesn’t just rest on this considerable sum. Instead, rumors are currently circulating that he wants to buy TikTok.
The immensely popular social media platform is currently threatened with a ban in the USA. The reason: Members of the Senate fear that the Chinese company ByteDance is spying on users and sharing the data with their own government. A sale to an American operator could prevent the ban.
According to Wall Street Journal reports, Kotick has already met ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming and expressed interest in TikTok. He has already made contact with various other bigwigs, for example the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman. He will also need allies because the price will easily be in the billions.
This sum is huge, but not surprising given the sales figures. After all, cumulative user spending exceeded $10 billion for the year. Kotick may have found his next golden goose here.
