Former Call of Duty Developer: Bobby Kotick 'Made Our Games Worse' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 January 2024 / 4,726 Views
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick officially stepped down on December 29, 2023 and multiple former developers who worked at the company have spoken out against Kotick's leadership.
Christina Pollock, who previously worked at Call of Duty support studio Demonware as a programmer for two years, says Kotick's decisions made their games worse.
"I worked on [Call of Duty] for two years as a programmer at Demonware," said Pollock. "Bobby's decisions made our games worse.
"In my first month it came out he threatened to have an employee killed. in the all-hands that followed, no-one wanted to speak first. so i demanded his firing in front of everyone."
i worked on COD for two years as a programmer at demonware
— christina 死神 (@chhopsky) December 29, 2023
bobby's decisions made our games worse
in my first month it came out he threatened to have an employee killed. in the all-hands that followed, no-one wanted to speak first. so i demanded his firing in front of everyone https://t.co/yhlM5xqPPg
Former Overwatch 2 community manager Andy Belford has also spoken out against Kotick saying the team warned him the game was going to be review bombed. The Overwatch 2 team asked for more information, details, and resources, which were all denied.
"Breaking my silence to share a fun fact: when we planned [Overwatch 2]'s steam launch, my team warned (months in advance) that we’re going to be review bombed," said Belford. "We begged for more information, more details, and more resources to help us with the anticipated influx, all flatly denied.
"Moderation of Steam was put on the community team (not a function of community at Blizz), despite my refusal to want to expose members of my team to that level of toxic content/posts. When asked whose decision it was to launch on Steam with no additional help: Bobby.
"This is only one example of the culture Kotick bred at [Activision Blizzard]: shit flowed downstream, usually landing on the lowest paid and most overworked individuals. Management was too busy reacting to wildly vacillating direction and decisions that made zero sense.
"At the end of everything, player experience/worker meant nothing to CSuite and exec leadership. It was all about that quarters earnings call."
Moderation of steam was put on the community team (not a function of community at Blizz), despite my refusal to want to expose members of my team to that level of toxic content/posts. When asked whose decision it was to launch on Steam with no additional help: Bobby
— Andy Belford (he/him) 💙 (@andybelford) December 29, 2023
At the end of everything, player experience/worker meant nothing to CSuite and exec leadership. It was all about that quarters earnings call
— Andy Belford (he/him) 💙 (@andybelford) December 29, 2023
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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he might be not the best... but I'm starting to think that alot of people are using him as a scapegoat for lousy products
"Not the best" is one way to put it for someone who threatened to kill his assistant on voice mail.
While I agree that he is a scumbag in this case blaming Kotic seems like an overreach, these decisions are middle management . not your typical CEO whose agenda tend to be much broader in scope . and it is interesting when he says he didn't want his team to be exposed to toxic customers complaints but was seemingly OK with others coping it in their place , who would be less knowledgeable about the game and so have less ability to answer those complaints, plus no one is asking for a one to one address of all the complaints, we have seen many examples of development teams respond to these types of complaints by picking out and answering the main grievances because in the end a response is all that is required.
I've read several more horror stories from devs online that are breaking their silence now that Bobby's gone. I can't imagine how much joy and relief there is at ABK now.
Glad he's gone.
He should be in prison
The more I learn about this guy, the less I care for him. He’s like a bad historical figure… I don’t know if I’d call him the Joseph Stalin of video games, but Brezhnev or Andropov might be apt comparisons.
I’d suggest a proper historically-based punishment for this guy, but I could then see several justifications for the moderators to ban me, on account of the graphic spin I’d write into the description. (Hint, it wasn’t so much a legal punishment as it is a crime)
I don't know if this is true or not, at least for COD. I've followed that community for years and it's the head developers being arrogant on Twitter making unwanted changes and refusing to listen to the community that's been ruining their games. If it was Kotick putting pressure on them to do that, those devs would at least stay quiet on Twitter instead of acting like an ass to legitimate criticism about their games.
We’ll see if the next CoD is ‘better’ I guess.
Bobby Kotick was a problem and needed to be gone, but capitalist business culture is like Animal Farm. The next CEO is probably going to be Kotick with less bad PR. This situation is hardly unique to Activision Blizzard, and it's going to take a monumental effort to continue trying to improving business and workplace culture even an inch.
There won't be a replacement CEO to Bobby. The ABK parent company is being dissolved. So Activision, Blizzard, and King are now separate entities with their own individual leaders. Rob Kostich - President of Activision, Mike Ybarra - President of Blizzard, and Tjodolf Sommestad - President of King, with all 3 reporting to Matt Booty.
MS is cleaning house since even more ABK leadership will be kicked out by March but.....you are right that it will takes years to undo the damage Bobby did.
Great, now all the games will be masterpieces because there is no kotick to ruin them.
I guess for most thumbing you down this flew way over their heads.
