Activision Blizzard employees are speaking out on social media now that Bobby Kotick has officially retired as Activision Blizzard’s CEO. Recent allegations claim that Kotick ignored warnings that Overwatch 2 would be review-bombed when the game launched on Steam.
Former Blizzard developer Andy Belford recently shared on X that Kotick “flatly denied” pleas by several Overwatch 2 developers regarding a possible review bombing on Valve’s storefront. The devs allegedly begged for resources to help prepare for the influx of negative reviews but were ignored by the former CEO. Kotick was previously blamed for the delay in the release of Overwatch 2.
“Breaking my silence to share a fun fact: when we planned OW2’s steam launch, my team warned (months in advance) that we’re going to be review bombed,” Belford wrote. “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
— Andy Belford 💙 (@andybelford) December 29, 2023
The former Overwatch dev also revealed that it was Kotick who decided to launch Overwatch 2 on Steam without added help. Moderation was also placed on the community team despite Belford’s refusal to expose members to toxic posts.
Belford further alleges that Kotick bred a culture at Activision Blizzard where “shit flowed downstream, usually landing on the lowest paid and most overworked individuals.” He adds management was “too busy reacting to wildly vacillating direction and decisions that made zero sense.” The former Overwatch dev concludes that player experience meant next to nothing to the Activision Blizzard leadership. He suggests that the company executives were only focused on the quarterly earnings calls.
Overwatch 2 had a disastrous launch on Steam, becoming the second worst-rated game on Valve’s digital storefront. Many call the sequel a glorified patch that made the game a free-to-play title. The game was also subjected to a review bombing campaign by players from China as a result of the botched licensing renewal of Activision Blizzard’s license to operate in the region.
Overwatch 2 has survived the initial review bombing on Valve’s storefront thanks to the efforts of the developers. Its future looks brighter than ever, thanks to Activision Blizzard’s constant stream of updates and an imminent return to the Chinese gaming market. Blizzard recently renewed its licensing agreement with NetEase and should drastically increase player counts for Overwatch 2 in the next six months.
Aside from the cascading series of tweets from Belford, other current and former developers at Activision Blizzard have shared their experience working under Kotick. One former Call of Duty developer shared that the retired CEO went as far to threaten to have an employee killed. Others have blamed the former CEO for the Blizzard’s departure from China, saying that groups of people celebrated his departure by lighting fireworks.
It seems that Activision Blizzard employees can now breathe a sigh of relief that Kotick is no longer in charge. Microsoft has recently initiated a shakeup of the leadership structure at Activision Blizzard with Matt Booty overseeing work at the company as president of Microsoft game content and studios.
