Investors Angry as Activision/Blizzard CEO Is Given $200M

Earlier this week Activision/Blizzard announced that due to change in the future plans of the company, around 50 employees had been made redundant. Primarily thought to be revolving around their eSports arm of the company, the overwhelming opinion is that they are either looking to significantly scale back that particular aspect of their organization and/or they’re shifting away from hosting live events. It is also understood, however, that a number of layoffs have also included staff at King.com (notably famous for games such as Candy Crush).

In something that will undoubtedly rub salt into those wounds, however, following a report via GameSpot, it has been confirmed that due to a loophole in the companies financial policies, CEO Bobby Kotick will be receiving a $200M (yes, million) bonus!

Activision/Blizzard CEO Gets Huge Bonus!

So, with staff being sacked, why is Bobby Kotick getting such a huge payout? Well, it’s understood that a loophole within his employment contract (“Shareholder Value Creation Incentive”) has basically resulted in him qualifying for a $200M bonus regardless of whether company targets were met or not. The bottom line is that with the share value in the company having increased during his tenure, he is now due a bonus based on figures from 2017 until now.

As you might expect, however, despite the value of the company increasing, investors are still not entirely happy at the progress Activision/Blizzard is making in the business of, you know, actually making and selling games. The CtW Investment Group has even gone as far as to say that Bobby Kotick should not receive the bonus due to there being very little (in their view) correlation between the share price increase and his leadership. Put simply, they’re seemingly saying that they don’t think he’s done much to warrant either!

What Do We Think?

It should, of course, be noted that the staff redundancies and this news are entirely unrelated. Yes, $200M is a lot of money, but it is amazingly doubtful that one decision was directly based upon the other. Whenever there are staff redundancies though, this sort of ‘bonus’ talk is always treated with anger from the general public. And if you are one of those people, well, you can perhaps take some solace in the fact that the main investment group in Activision/Blizzard isn’t happy about it either!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments1