This is really, really disgusting:
https__://www.gamespot.com/articles/investor-group-pissed-activision-blizzard-ceo-is-getting-a-200-million-payout/1100-6488906/
While Bobby the CEO gets a $200M cash payout, the people who get fired left and right get $200 Blizz Store gift cards.
Yeah giving 200$ Blizzard Gift Cards is kinda weird. You fire people and then give them money to buy your merchandise? Kek.
Think about all those kids answering the: What do you want to be when you grow up? question, and them answering: astronaut, police officer, doctor, president, etc
No kids, the right answer is always CEO. 
That’s business for you.
$200 gift card for blizz store is realy a spit in the face. Its like getting fired from mcdonald and getting 1 cheeseburger on the way out.
Yeah, I had a similar reaction. If I got that I’d immediately flip it for $150 in cash or something.
Needless to say, I am dead tired of Bobby Kotick. He gives the entire company a bad name to the point where talent has left over it.
But outside of that, I really don’t care about him much, personally. I support Blizzard because I like what the developers are doing. There are plenty of others just like him around the world - but I’m certainly no fan like I am of Gabe Newell or Mike Morhaime.
I wish Mike would’ve won in the battle of the giants that was Activision-Blizzard.
he got all that money from tokens p2w sl garbage and CoD.
There is an ex costumer support member in my guild who worked at Blizzard for ~7 years. When he got the job he received a personal account that had 10+ years of gametime and he automatically received every expansion free.
The moment he was laid of, the account that was supposed to have a lifetime of gametime was suspended.
Blizzard knows how to handle their ex employees.
That’s amazing.
As it happens I know someone who has 20 years of gametime due to being a friend of a Blizzard employee. Got it back in vanilla, still hasn’t expired. Person hasn’t met anyone in Blizzard for at least a year, still not suspended.
Holy cow, that’s just vindictive. 
all blizzard employees have free access to the games and they get a $200 gift card to keep playing if they so choose while in a transition period.
what’s the issue?
Apparently this was a loophole. I guess the board needs to learn to read the contract next time. And the $200 gift card is just a bonus, they’ll still receive full compensation:
The affected employees are expected to receive at least 90 days severance and health benefits for a year, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier said they will also get a $200 Battle.net gift card. GameSpot has reached out to Activision Blizzard for a comment on the matter.
It’s just such a shame that the company is sucking out all the blood from all the great work the WoW developers have done and are doing. Blizz employees get paid badly, and this applies not just to entry-level support staff, but also artists, engineers, etc. who have really valuable and rare skills.
I love WoW and want this game to continue being great, but WoW’s quality has been decreasing ever since the company chiefs started optimizing from a purely financial point of view. I hope Riot, who compensate their developers fairly, and the new studios found by ex-Blizzard employees, will create some worthy alternative to WoW in the future.
Kotick is an execrable human being, that’s for sure.
Kotick is cringe
I had a limited working contract once, which was 12 months for the duration of one project. After the project was done and they no longer needed me, they gave me a 500 eur gift-card for their stuff (which I used, they sell clothes, I got myself a 600 eur jacket, 100 after gift-card, which I’m using for 6 years now. The one most expensive piece of clothing I’ve ever owned and I love it)
I would say it’s not uncommon to give employees a little gift when they leave. In Blizzard’s case the 200 $ battle.net balance feels a bit cheap though.
Plus leaving a company is not always bad. Some people on Twitter are acting as if those people will now land on the street. They’ll find something else, they’ll be fine. If someone wants to work they’ll find work.
The problem with this is that the Article is from Gamespot, who are, sadly no longer a reliable source since several insistences made by the people who own them, CBS, who have a pretty shady reputation themselves, which is probably why all the three founders of Gamespot have left. One of them, whose NDA had expired revealed the CBS had put pressure on Gamespot to slam certain companies and praise others, regardless of the quality of the product.
Normally this would seem like sour grapes, however at the time, Gamespot had been used to drive down the market value of games that were then purchased by…you guessed it, CBS, and suddenly their market value increased.
Coupled with that it is now essentially a Wiki, where anyone can post an article if they are aged 13 or over (No Proof of ID and age is required) It’s moderators who decide what is seen on their pages also have no actual requirement other than to say they are aged 13 or over, again, no proof needed.
They -were- good, until CBS got their claws in, and used them to devalue products so they could snap them up cheaply and then laud them to the skies. This, whilst not illegal under US Law, is regarded as exceptionally shifty business practice which veer -very- dangerously close to Antitrust Laws.
Now whilst Bobby Kotick is undoubtedly a mercenary scumbag, the same is equally true of the company that owns Gamespot. Given their history of driving down market value of a product then buying said product after having manipulated the markets, I would be interested in seeing a non-biased report on this. Perhaps CBS want to buy up Shares after fomenting a panic selling, which is their modus operandi.
So lets see what comes of this, before buying into a ‘news’ piece that could have been written by 13 years olds, moderated by 13 year olds, working to the agenda of a business with a track record of such practices.
All the founders of Gamespot left or were pushed before this bizarre attitude of letting anyone who -says- they are 13 write for them. Which could explain a lot.
Bobby Kotick is however, still a complete (Redacted).
Maybe Dreamhaven should buy out Blizzard from under Kotick’s nose. Best to switch to Pepsi if you’re not okay with Kotick as he’s a board member on Coca Cola’s board.
I remember laughing at evil CEOs in the 80’s movies like the old man who owns OCP in robocop never even imagined that I would have to live and see these kind of ***** in real life.
Personally I don’t get rich people at all or the chase and stockpiling money.
Imo there really should be a limit how much you can earn and after that rest is given to workers its just sickening how only the man at top collects the fruit and everyone else just gets a handshake and boot to the behind.