Activision Blizzard sure is in some hot water these days right? Notice how I said “Activision Blizzard” and not “Activision” or even just “Blizzard”? Yeah, there’s a reason for that. Today, I am going to talk about the Activision Vivendi games merger because no one seems to understand it. “Who is Vivendi games?” you might be asking? Why, they’re the company that owned Blizzard and bought out Activision. Yes, Activision was the one bought out; with a very great reason why. Let’s go over this part of modern gaming history that is widely misunderstood and purposefully misrepresented.
Before I continue with the buyout I feel it is important to talk about the original companies. First let’s go over Activision, after all they’re first in the name. Activision was formed when a bunch of Atari programmers left Atari because they were tired of Atari’s shit. Bad management, rushed deadlines, not enough manpower, and no royalties. Atari sued them because Activision was making “illegal Atari” carts. Courts disagreed giving Activision more power to produce more games and allowing more devs from Atari to leave and form their own studios. This is what I believe to be what really killed Atari. After growing they went into more business ventures and then changed their company name. Bobby Kotick, the current CEO, then purchased the company and turned it around from bankruptcy to the powerhouse it is today.
(Please excuse the Read More. I wrote a lot)
One day I was watching a video where Bobby Kotick gave a speech about how and why he bought Activision. As well as how he turned it around. He bought Activision because Mediagenic, the new company, was floundering the Activision games he loved to play. He wanted into the game industry and saw a chance. He decided it was best to fix Activision, due to their IPs. He then went through all their IPs and basically demanded sequels to these games. Return to Zork? Thank Bobby for it. Super Pitfall? Gotta thank him too. See, the thing people don’t know about Bobby is he understands the value of IPs, which is hard to believe considering current Activision Blizzard, and what will be a great game. While his speech makes him seem more…. angelic? I am sure there was a lot of rough shit that happened during this time. I know there were mass layoffs and I am sure it was a stressful time for devs. According to some devs, pre merger, he was very hands on about games that were or weren’t published. Tim Schaffer, from Double Fine, personally blamed Bobby for canceling Brutal Legend. Bobby responded saying he had never met Tim and had no idea what he was talking about. Both parties stand by what they said, last I could find.
Like I said, Bobby was known to be very hands on with canceling and approving games during this time for Activision. It was also this keen sense of gaming business that led him to seek out purchasing World of Warcraft from Blizzard, as he wanted to get into the MMO business but not compete with WoW. Vivendi refused and instead said they were interested in Activision. You may think trying to purchase the most popular MMO on the market isn’t a good business decision. You may think it is something just flying too close to the sun. However, what I think was a good decision here is he didn’t want to compete with WoW. A few companies pitched MMOs to Activision but they didn’t think a single one could take over WoW, or that WoW wouldn’t yoink shit from and kill their MMO. Which is something WoW would do. If an MMO was growing in popularity it’s features would come to WoW.
While the above paragraph may seem overly positive about Bobby Kotick I am just stating the best factual information I could find over the years. Bobby is an insanely good businessman, no doubt. However, from all personal interaction stories I could find about him, he is also a massive piece of shit. Down to groping flight attendants and being verbally abusive to people who made “bad calls” on publishing contracts. If not for Bobby Kotick there would be no Activision. We would not have a lot of amazing games from the late 90’s to mid 2010’s. People ask why he is still involved with Activision Blizzard. This is why. On top of him buying more and more stock in Activision Blizzard throughout the years. Oddly enough, Activision is something super important to him. Not in a money making way. Look at all the CEOs of EA. They change CEOs often. Those CEOs are in it for the money. None of them buy a major amount of shares. None of them really invest in the company. It’s just go there for a paycheck until a higher paying CEO or board of directors role comes up. See, as much as I don’t like him or agree with some of the decisions he has made with the company post merger. I understand why he is there and oddly enough respect the idea he legit cares about the Activision name. I still think he is a piece of shit.
Let’s talk about the company I know the least about! Vivendi! I know little about them as I am an American. Vivendi, outside of their games division, has largely left the US alone. I think they still do to this day. However, their games division was my childhood and teenage years. Sierra? Fuck yeah! They brought us FEAR! They published Counter-Strike! Honestly, a majority of my PC games were Sierra owned published. My copy of Half-life was too. They bought Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon! Oddly enough Blizzard games I didn’t enjoy. Looking into them some more they’re a massive media powerhouse in France, and I think the EU. They bought a lot of game publishers, like Universal Games. Yes, Universal Studios used to have a game studio. They made some pretty fun games back in the day. They’re pretty much the opposite of Activision. They were super successful for a long time and without Activision they are still running. They could have continued without Activision easily.
See, Vivendi was having a very small problem. Their most profitable studio, Blizzard, was putting out games so slow. They wanted more studios to pump their yearly schedule. They saw Activision with it’s Guitar Hero and Call of Duty looking so fine. (Note: At this time Guitar Hero had just come out. When the merger happened Guitar Hero 3 released that year.) Activision looked great to Vivendi. They were a well established publisher with great reviewing, and selling, yearly games. Even their non-yearly games were selling well. They looked to be Vivendi’s answer. Blizzard could keep taking their sweet time and Activision basically boosted the year to year numbers. Sierra was having issues turning a profit at this time as VALVe switched to self publishing after Half-Life 2. Yes, Half-Life 2 was a co-publisher agreement. VALVe handled the digital and Sierra the physical. See, many of Sierra’s publishing agreements seemed to be on the developer’s side. FEAR was still owned by Monolith. Which is why when Monolith was bought out by WB Sierra lost publishing rights. While there were some games Sierra owned from their publishing agreements, there weren’t many. When more and more AAA publishers came into play Sierra was losing a lot of companies they used to work with.
Why do I know so much about the buyout? When it was first announced I was confused. How could Activision, a moderately successful company, buy out Vivendi games? Vivendi games owned Blizzard and many massive IPs. They had owned Universal Games and many more. That’s not even counting the wealth from their parent company. Which is how I came to the conclusion that it is impossible for Activision to buyout Vivendi games. At the time I did a lot digging and found it that everyone was reporting the story wrong, but why? Still to this day, due to this shoddy reporting, many still believe Activision bought out Blizzard. Many don’t even know the merger was between Activision and Vivendi games. Reading the merger documents it was clear Activision was the one being bought out. How so? A majority of Activision board members lost all their stock and were not invited to join the board of the new company. In fact, Vivendi owned a majority of the stock and board member slots. This is what happens when one company is the one buying out the other for a merger. Continuing my research throughout the years it turns out Bobby was scared he’d lose CEO position and actually put in him staying the CEO of the company as part of the merger. However, he lost board members and some stock himself.
So what happened? When Bobby went to go buy WoW Vivendi instead went to buy Activision. Now, Vivendi is known for hostile takeovers. Meaning, if they want your company they will own it. They will buyout all your stock. Bobby basically had no real choice here. He set up the best deal he could to keep Activision going. While it was later revealed the CEO of Blizzard talked Bobby into going through with the sale, as they could help him sell games in China. He really had no choice. Vivendi was going to own Activision if they really wanted to. Like, if you’re a new tech startup and Facebook wants to buy you. Guess what? You’re going to be Zucked. The merge happens and Activision loses a lot of power. This is why after the merger happens you notice tons of studios start being folded into CoD and Guitar Hero studios. A lot of games get canceled, like Brutal Legend, at this time. Vivendi wanted Activision to focus on what made money. If it didn’t? Kill it. If it was a new IP? Kill it, unless contract issues happen. Then force it out. If it was in development and failed 2 milestones? Kill it. The Vivendi board of directors were ruthless.
This is actually something a lot of people, including “journalists”, failed to notice. Why would a company who bought out another company be the one to drastically change? Yet the company they were supposed to have bought out keep chugging on like nothing happened? You can clearly look at Activision having a drastic shake up during this time. Like when Bobby bought them out in the 90’s. Had Activision bought them out they would’ve changed Vivendi studios. This is why now you hear stories about Activision changing the Blizzard side. Bobby owns more of the company now.
There was also a weird plan that happened with the buyout. See, the new company would be Activision Blizzard. Activision had an okay public image at the time and Blizzard an amazing one. To maintain this if Blizzard ever did anything fucky Activision would get the blame and if Activision did anything ok, or slightly ok, Blizzard would take credit. This way people would blow the ok news out of proportion because they loved Blizzard and Blizzard could do no wrong! Where as Activision was teetering on being evil! So, if they did the bad things then it was just Activision being Activision. It also painted the image that despite being “owned” by Activision that Blizzard still maintained their innocence and wasn’t able to be corrupted. This is a trend that still continues to this day.
Look up the recent sexual abuse situation. Activision gets all the blame despite no Activision studio having reported any cases. Only Vivendi ones did. Meaning the Blizzard side. Blizzard’s sexual abuse in the recent investigation actually go back to before 2008. Which is before the merger happened. However, if you look at any gaming news site. “Activision has sexual abuse dating back to 2008” is a headline you will see. Which only helps cement the idea that Blizzard is too good to do anything wrong. By the way, what is it with French companies and sexual abuse? Ubisoft had it and Vivendi did dating back to when they owned all of Vivendi games. Anyway, despite no Activision studio showing any reports they get the blame. However, it is worth pointing out that Activision Blizzard’s HR was found shredding documents about sexual abuse and more. No one knows if these were just from the Vivendi side of the business or both. With that said, no one at any of the Activision side have seems to have come forward. However, a fuckton of Blizzard, and other Vivendi studios, did.
Changing topics entirely. As the years went on Vivendi started to sell their shares. This basically gave Bobby power over the company again. Vivendi was no longer majority owner. It was now split up among more investors. Bobby used this as a chance to buy out investors. He slowly started to buy more until he owned more than 20%. The exact amount isn’t known. It is under 50% but it is at an amount that basically makes removing Bobby impossible. As far as I can tell Vivendi basically owns nothing of the company anymore. The were thinking of buying Ubisoft to get back into the games industry. I’m sure they still own something like 5% but it’s not like before where they owned a massive amount. Their board members were replaced over time and everything got better, right?
Well no. See, even though Bobby has more control over the company then he did before it’s not like Activision Blizzard can return to before. It needs to keep making more profits year to year. Investors will either turn on him or sell off if it doesn’t. So now Activision Blizzard is forever doomed to be a yearly game seller out to maximize profits as much as possible until Activision Blizzard. This isn’t meant to sound like “Oh poor Activision Blizzard”. Not at all. It just goes to show what happens when you get a lot of short term investors in your company. You’re no longer allowed to take risks. I’m sure Activision Blizzard wants to bring back a lot of IPs. Hell, Crash and Spyro both sold well. Same with Tony Hawk 1&2 HD. However, the studio that made them was folded into Blizzard to work on Diablo 2 HD Remake. No one knows if we will get more Crash and Spyro. No one knows what will happen. The only thing we do know is that investors were not happy with the games only selling well. They didn’t sell “fucking amazing” numbers. Though, I am sure Bobby doesn’t care. He’s making money too and Activision keeps on living. Just remember, chasing a big demand comes at a big cost. We lost a lot of great games simply because Bobby wanted to expand to MMOs.
Still not a boohoo paragraph above. Outside of the recent HD remakes of the above mentioned games; I’ve not supported Activision Blizzard. My copy of OverWatch was a gift. I meant to buy Crash 4 but forgot. Yeah, that’s largely it. I’ve no real dog in this race. I don’t like their games and I don’t like the company. I don’t like the Activision side or the Blizzard side. While this came out sounding defensive I really wouldn’t care if Activision Blizzard went out of business tomorrow. I just was frustrated at the constant misrepresentation of what is happening and had happened to Activision Blizzard. As, it has been used for a long time to let Blizzard get out of a lot of shit. Even gaming news websites ran with it to an insane degree. Activision Blizzard is responsible for what happens under it. Not just Activision.