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Blizzard Co-Founder Left Because He Was Tired Of Fighting Bobby Kotick
(www.gamespot.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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Yeah, but Kotick was not really the real issue. He's a straw man of sorts, a target dummy, designed to draw fire for unpopular decisions.
It is the board and shareholders who massively incentivized him into that behaviour. CEOs are brought in to act in the interests of shareholders, while also abstracting them away from blame and direct culpability.
The goal of blizzard (and any other publically listed company) is wealth creation for shareholders via share price growth, not making games per se.
What are the names of the people on the board, and the main shareholders?
Are you sure about that ? I don't know that much about these kind of dynamics because I am not a soulless capitalist ghoul, but I remember reading that Kotick actually did that kind of stuff mostly by himself and was quite good at it (which did translate into more money being made, which probably kept investors happy and cemented his position)
I dunno if you could say that shareholders incentivized the sexual misconduct.
Let me try.
By creating a culture that singularly valued money and production over all other concerns, including the well-being of staff, Kotick created and cultivated the conditions needed for abuse to set in.
And Kotick is the kind of sociopath that leads to this when other things are swept under the rug.
Maybe it wasn't a line item on his payslip though.
So basically the bit in Succession when Mattsson tells Tom he wants to fuck his wife and is looking for "a pain sponge"