Activision Blizzard Staff Recount Bobby Kotick’s Tyrannical Rule As CEO Following His Exit

December 29 has come and gone, marking the end of Bobby Kotick’s 32-year reign as CEO of Activision Blizzard. With Kotick now gone, current and former employees have taken to social media to speak out against his tyrannical rule and poor leadership over the controversial video game company.

One employee recounted the time when Kotick threatened to have his female assistant killed. “In my first month it came out he threatened to have an employee killed,” tweeted Call of Duty programmer Christina Pollock. “In the all-hands that followed, no-one wanted to speak first. So I demanded his firing in front of everyone…We all need to revolt against people like this, every time.”

Pollock also claimed that the Call of Duty games could have been better but came out worse because of the CEO’s decisions.

In Overwatch 2’s extremely poor reviews on Steam. He said that they knew that the game would be heavily criticized on the platform and continually begged the studio’s top brass for more resources, all of which were allegedly “flatly denied.” He also added that Kotick still insisted on a Steam launch without giving the community team the additional help and it needed.

“This is only one example of the culture Kotick bred at AB,” he wrote. “Everything flowed downstream, usually landing on the lowest paid and most overworked individuals. Management was too busy reacting to wildly vacillating direction and decisions that made zero sense.”

While Activision Blizzard managed to rake in record-breaking profits during Kotick’s time as CEO, it’s clear that rank and file employees are celebrating his departure more than his reign. Players are now hoping that his departure will usher in a more positive atmosphere with Microsoft Gaming boss Phil Spencer at the helm.

In related news, Bobby Kotick’s resignation has sparked rumors that NetEase is looking to rekindle its dissolved licensing deal with Blizzard now that the so-called “devil CEO” is out of the picture.

The Blizzard and NetEase partnership came to throwing punches at each other, all while Blizzard’s Chinese studios were shut down and its employees laid off. NetEase also dismissed several hundred employees that were working on Blizzard games and shuffled others into other departments.

Sources reveal that NetEase has reached out to Blizzard to potentially hammer out a new deal, although it’s going to be a far more complicated affair than just g on the dotted line. Blizzard apparently tore down its server infrastructure in the region when the deal went south and will have to start from scratch should the rumored deal push through.