Background and career
Robert A. "Bobby" Kotick (born 1963) is an American businessman who was chief executive officer (CEO) of the video game publisher Activision from 1991 and later Activision Blizzard from its formation in 2008 until 2023. In June 2017, Fortune reported that Kotick had become "the longest-serving head of any publicly traded tech company." He has also been on several boards, including the Coca-Cola Company from 2012 to 2022 and Yahoo from 2003 to 2008. Following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, Kotick retired from the company in December 2023. In 2022, Forbes estimated his net worth at $870 million.
Robert A. Kotick was born in 1963 in the United States and grew up in Roslyn, New York on Long Island. His interest in business began at an early age. In junior high school, Kotick had his own business cards, and in high school, he ran a business renting out Manhattan clubs on off nights, as well as various other small business ventures like "delivering sandwiches, restringing tennis rackets [and] selling wallets." He studied art history at the University of Michigan in the early 1980s.
While Kotick was still a student in 1982 at the University of Michigan, he started a software company called Arktronics with friend Howard Marks in their dorm room. He and his roommate developed a GUI-based integrated software package called Jane for the Apple II. In 1983, casino magnate Steve Wynn (who Kotick had met when he was 19 at the Cattle Baron's Ball in Dallas, Texas) and his wife Elaine and invested $300,000 in their startup. Steve Jobs met with Kotick and convinced him to drop out of college. Kotick took the advice and left the University of Michigan to focus on building his company. From 1985-1991, Arktonics was involved in a protracted legal dispute over the value of shares in the company that employees were given in lieu of pay at the request of the company's leadership including Kotick, that later turned out to be worth little, after Jane had been made obsolete by improvements to Apple's computers. In 1987, Kotick tried to acquire Commodore International. He planned to remove the keyboard and disk drive from the Amiga 500 and turn it into a video game system. He was unsuccessful in persuading Commodore's then-Chairman Irving Gould to sell control of the company. In June 1990, Kotick became CEO of Leisure Concepts, Nintendo's third-party licensing agent. In December 1990, Kotick sold his stake in Leisure Concepts and purchased a 25% stake in the almost-bankrupt Activision, then known as Mediagenic, with business partner Brian Kelly. In 1991, Kotick changed the name back to Activision, restructured the company, and refocused the company on making and marketing video games. Kotick became CEO of Activision in February 1991. An early hit under Kotick's tenure was Return to Zork (1993), which made over $2.3 million dollars in profit for the company with over 600,000 copies sold. Early in on Kotick's career at Activision, having studied rival publishers like Electronic Arts, he emphasised a philosophy of autonomy and freedom for the game development studios under his umbrella, rather than emphasising top-down publisher control, like some rival publishers, which were riven with conflicts between game developers and management. In 1999, Activision had its first major franchise hit with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. In 2003, Activision began publishing the Call of Duty series of first person shooters, following the defection of the heads of the studio behind the EA published 2002 game Medal of Honor: Allied Assault as a result of Kotick providing them funding. Call of Duty would subsequently go on to become one of Activision's most profitable franchises, along with the Guitar Hero series launched in 2005.
In November 2006, Kotick entered into discussion with French media conglomerate Vivendi. Through its Vivendi Games subsidiary, it owned Blizzard Entertainment and Sierra Entertainment. Kotick engineered the merger, which created a new company, Activision Blizzard. Shareholders of Activision Blizzard approved Kotick as CEO of the combined company in 2008. Kotick said he aimed to build on Blizzard's successes, including expanding into Asia. Kotick has used Activision Blizzard's industry position to push partners for changes that he maintains would benefit the gaming community. In July 2009, Kotick threatened to stop making games for the PlayStation 3 platform if Sony did not cut the price of the console. Kotick also urged the British government to reward Activision for continuing to invest in the country's pool of game developers by providing Activision with the same kinds of tax incentives provided by Canada, Singapore, and eastern bloc countries. By 2010, 65% of Activision Blizzard's profit was related to online-playable games. Kotick remarked in 2010 that as leader of Activision Blizzard, he was focusing on profit margins over revenue growth, seeing subscriptions, microtransactions, free to play and digitally distributed games as means to future profit growth. From 2013 onwards, following the cancellation of Project Titan, Kotick curtailed the autonomy of Blizzard Entertainment within the company, pushing Blizzard to focus on increasing revenue from its franchises, resulting in tension with Blizzard employees including President and CEO Michael Morhaime. Kotick expanded Activision Blizzard's mobile presence in 2016 when it acquired King, the creator of Candy Crush. He also acquired the professional esports organization Major League Gaming. Also in 2016, Kotick announced the creation of Activision Blizzard's professional Overwatch League. In June 2017, Fortune reported that Kotick had become "the longest-serving head of any publicly traded tech company." Under Kotick's leadership, Activision Blizzard was named one of Fortune Magazine's “100 Best Places to Work from 2015 to 2018." In November 2022, the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II broke record sales for the franchise after crossing the $1 billion mark in ten days.
In 2007, a flight attendant filed a lawsuit against Kotick, Andrew Gordon, and Cove Management, a company the two created to manage their privately owned Gulfstream III jet. She claimed that a pilot hired by Cove had sexually harassed her, and that she had been wrongfully terminated after she had reported the incidents to Gordon. Cove denied the allegations and eventually settled the litigation with the flight attendant. Kotick then became involved in litigation with the law firm selected to defend him, Gordon, and Cove Management, in a dispute over legal fees. The court ruled in the firm's favor and awarded it damages.
In July 2021, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) announced it had filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard due to allegations of workplace misconduct and discrimination by several employees. Kotick was not named in the suit. In October 2021, Kotick asked the Activision Blizzard board to cut his salary to the lowest amount allowed by California law, and not to receive any bonuses or be granted any equity amid lawsuits against the company. In November 2021, an article from The Wall Street Journal reported, based on sources separate from the California lawsuit, that Kotick had been aware of past misconduct allegations, but had not always reported them to Activision's board of directors. These included allegations of rape made by a Sledgehammer Games employee against her supervisor in 2018 that was settled out of court, but that according to the Wall Street Journal, neither the incident or settlement was reported by Kotick to the company board. The Wall Street Journal also alleged that Kotick had intervened to retain the head of one of the company's game studios that had been accused of sexual harassment, despite the fact that Activision’s human-resources department recommended he be fired after a 2019 investigation. The article also asserted that in 2006 Kotick had threatened to kill an assistant on their voicemail. In response to the Wall Street Journal, Activision did not deny that the voicemail incident occurred, stating that Kotick had "quickly apologized ... for the obviously hyperbolic and inappropriate voice mail". The voicemail dispute was settled out of court. Kotick denied the other allegations in the The Wall Street Journal's reporting. In response to the allegations, Activision's Board itself examined the claims made and retained an outside law firm and other advisors, including Gilbert F. Casellas, the former head of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to conduct independent reviews. In June 2022, the Board filed its findings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and a summary of the independent review's findings in an 8-K filing. The Board's statement expressed confidence that Kotick "appropriately addressed workplace issues brought to his attention" and supported his efforts to lead the company, while over 1,000 Activision-Blizzard employees urged Kotick to resign or to be replaced in light of these allegations. The California lawsuit was eventually settled in December 2023. The settlement agreement stated that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the company's board, its executives, or Kotick. As part of that settlement, Activision Blizzard agreed to pay $54 million including set-asides to deal with pay and promotion inequality. In January 2024, the CRD filed an amendment withdrawing these claims, stating in a publicly-filed settlement agreement: "No court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations that: there has been systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard; ... or that Activision Blizzard's Board of Directors, including its Chief Executive Officer, Robert Kotick, acted improperly with regard to the handling of any instances of workplace misconduct." Following the settlement, several media publications posted corrections and redactions regarding conduct by Activision, its board, and executives, under legal threat from Kotick who has sued news organisations who have connected or continued to connect him with the workplace misconduct allegations. The November 2021 Wall Street Journal story regarding Kotick has not received any corrections or redactions.
