Bobby Kotick po 32 letech odchází z Activision Blizzardu. Smutnit nebudeme.

Ear­lier today, Acti­vi­si­on CEO Bob­by Kotick for­mally announ­ced that Fri­day Decem­ber 29th, 2023 will be his last day at Micro­soft Gaming. Under Bobby’s watch, Acti­vi­si­on Bliz­zard in its many incar­nati­ons has been an endu­ring pillar of video games. Whe­ther it’s Call of Duty, World of War­craft, Can­dy Crush Saga or any num­ber of other tit­les, his teams have cre­a­ted belo­ved fran­chi­ses and enter­ta­i­ned hun­dreds of mil­li­ons of pla­yers for deca­des. I’d like to thank Bobby—for his inva­lu­a­ble con­tri­bu­ti­ons to this indust­ry, his part­ner­ship in clo­sing the Acti­vi­si­on Bliz­zard acqui­si­ti­on and his colla­bo­rati­on following the close—and I wish him and his fami­ly the very best in his next chapter.

With Bobby’s impen­ding depar­tu­re, we are taking the next step in alig­ning Acti­vi­si­on Bliz­zard with Micro­soft Gaming, by making the following orga­ni­zati­o­nal changes:

Tho­mas Tip­pl (Vice Chair­man, Acti­vi­si­on Bliz­zard), Rob Kostich (Pre­si­dent, Acti­vi­si­on Pub­lishing), Mike Ybar­ra (Pre­si­dent, Bliz­zard Enter­ta­in­ment) and Tjo­dolf Som­mestad (Pre­si­dent, King) will report to Matt Boo­ty (Pre­si­dent, Game Con­tent and Stu­di­os). The lea­der­ship teams for Acti­vi­si­on Pub­lishing, Bliz­zard and King will rema­in in pla­ce, with no chan­ges to the structu­re of how the stu­di­os and busi­ness units are run.

Bri­an Bula­t­ao (Chief Admi­nis­tra­ti­ve Offi­cer) will report to Dave McCarthy (Chief Ope­rati­ons Offi­cer, Micro­soft Gaming).

Julie Hod­ges (Chief Peo­ple Offi­cer) will report to Cyn­thia Per-Lee (Cor­po­ra­te Vice Pre­si­dent, Gaming Human Resources).

Grant Dix­ton (Chief Legal Offi­cer) will report to Lin­da Nor­man (Cor­po­ra­te Vice Pre­si­dent, Gaming CELA).

Armin Zer­za (Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer) will con­ti­nue to report to Tim Stu­art (Cor­po­ra­te Vice Pre­si­dent, Finan­ce), as we pre­vi­ous­ly announ­ced to the Finan­ce team in October.

Tho­mas, Bri­an, Julie, Grant and Armin will con­ti­nue to help us with the tran­si­ti­on throu­gh March 2024.

Lulu Meser­vey (Execu­ti­ve Vice Pre­si­dent, Cor­po­ra­te Affairs and Chief Com­mu­ni­cati­ons Offi­cer) will be lea­ving ABK at the end of Janu­a­ry. She has agre­ed to sup­port Kari Perez (Gene­ral Manager, Com­mu­ni­cati­ons) on a lea­der­ship tran­si­ti­on plan for the ABK Com­mu­ni­cati­ons team, which will report to Kari. Addi­ti­o­nally, Humam Sakhni­ni (Vice Chair­man, Bliz­zard and King) will depart at the end of Decem­ber. We thank Humam and Lulu for the­ir lea­der­ship over the past year.

For most of you, your day-to-day work will rema­in the same—it’s still busi­ness as usu­al in brin­ging more groun­d­bre­a­king expe­ri­en­ces to more pla­yers around the world. At the lea­der­ship level, these chan­ges will pro­vi­de the cla­ri­ty and accoun­ta­bi­li­ty that is necessa­ry to achie­ve our ambi­ti­ous goals and fos­ter a cul­tu­re that is wel­co­ming, empowering, and com­mit­ted to Gaming for Eve­ry­o­ne. We have an exci­ting 2024 line­up of games across Acti­vi­si­on, Bethesda, Bliz­zard, King and Xbox Game Stu­di­os, and I know that we all look for­ward to sha­ring more details with our pla­yer com­mu­ni­ties when the time is right.

Phil