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Bobby Kotick Breaks His Silence: Embattled Activision CEO Addresses Toxic Workforce Claims as Microsoft Deal Hangs in Balance
Bobby Kotick has a secret: He was ready to buy Time Warner a few years ago.The CEO of Activision Blizzard drops this nugget early on while sitting at the company’s Santa Monica headquarters for his first extensive interview since 2012. It’s a Friday afternoon in mid-April, which means the office is mostly deserted. Huge replicas of characters and actual backdrops from the video game giant’s roster of franchises — including Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch and Candy Crush — dot the landscape of the open-architecture space. The quiet in the building and the low midafternoon light give the place a slightly spooky, fun house vibe. “We’d take their IP and turn it into games. They’d take our IP and turn it into film and television, and we’d have an extraordinary company,” Kotick says, sketching out his vision for a deal in an alternate universe in which AT&T never bought Time Warner and Activision took it on instead. In reality, the Justice Department lost its lawsuit to block the sale of Time Warner to AT&T. But during the first half of 2018, when the fate of the $85.4 billion Time Warner purchase hung in the balance, Activision Blizzard took a cue from its “Call of Duty” commandos: It stockpiled financial ammunition and waited patiently for an opening to pounce.