Blizzard Breaks For Independence As Kotick Plans $8.2 Billion Dollar Buyout

MojoKid writes "The CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, announced this morning that he would lead an investor buyout of the company worth approximately $8.2 billion dollars. The move would free Blactivision (how has this moniker never caught on?) to become an independent publisher and free it from the clutches of Vivendi, the evil French entertainment conglomerate. Vivendi has reportedly been attempting to sell Activision Blizzard for years, due to an apparent hatred of actually turning a profit, given than the game developer owns some of the most popular franchises on Earth. Kotick has previously been known for his comments regarding exploiting game franchises and for gems like this: 'We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.'"

different goals

[jsepeta]

I thought his goal was to make games that weren't any fun to _play_. After a couple of hundred hours milling in WoW, I just gave up. Beautiful scenery, ok music, shitty combat system, horrible $160 annual fee for playing online plus $50 for new game options. No fucking thanks.

Re:Minimal growth prospects

[Anonymous Coward]

All of it is old, that's my point. The only titles in that that were developed in the last ten years were Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 parts 1 and 2. Diablo 3 is not a good game and the auction house killed it, SC2 is alright but nothing outstanding, and heart of the swarm was straight up just a small expansion pack. More importantly, it's all derivative sequels - Blizzard hasn't put new ideas into a game in a very long time, and are content to milk old ones. That's why they have no growth prospects and no future.

Re:"Blactivision"

[wbr1]

I beg to differ, it is stucking. It may even be jacktarded.

And [not] free it from the clutches of Vivendi

[kiehlster]

Apparently we're getting the TL;DR of the TL;DR. The real truth is this:

Following the close of these two transactions, Vivendi will retain about 12% of Activision Blizzard and will no longer be the majority shareholder. [http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/07/26/activision-buys-majority-vivendi-stock/2588675/]

This is only a partial buy-out. While they would lose the majority reign over A/B, they'd still have a 12% say in everything they do.