35 Burst results for "Activision"
Blockchain Consultants
MicrosoftActivision political good will offers no shelter from antitrust scrutiny
"6 p.m. Friday, December 9th, 2022. Microsoft Activision political good will offers no shelter from antitrust scrutiny. Microsoft has spent years building a good guy reputation with policymakers and regulators. The software giant has thus dodged the backlash tech rivals such as Amazon, Google, and meta have endured. But the sheer size of its 68.7 billion enterprise value acquisition of video game developer Activision Blizzard one of the biggest ever in the tech. The post Microsoft Activision political good will offer no shelter from antitrust scrutiny first appeared on blockchain consultants.
Kinda Funny Games Daily
"activision" Discussed on Kinda Funny Games Daily
"Give a shout out to Activision for the amount of crash love that they have. I swear every holiday I get something. It's like, here's a Crash Bandicoot like Christmas sweater. Here's the Crash Bandicoot like Easter koozie and you're like, what the fuck's happening? But like shout out to you. I didn't get anything this week. I'm interested. Like, what does that mean? But I'm hoping that crash 5 would be absolutely insane. But that would be where the kart racer would be the things that I want the most here. Okay, can you really quick? I don't want to rush our stories. I don't want to hold this up. I should say, can you give me a breakdown of the development team of crash, though? Because I believe when the Activision Blizzard stuff happened, didn't we lose that team? Did we still have that team? Are they working on that game? I thought they were working on war zone. What was happening? So it gets really complicated. We touched on this a little bit unfortunately in story. Yes. That name. So there was all the Activision there was the whole bunch of the smaller scale quote unquote studios where there's Raven software. There was never soft that vicarious visions, toys for bob, be Knox, high moon, all of those, right? Over the years, one by one, they kind of got pulled out. There was the platformer group of them. So the ones working on crash or spyro. I guess even Tony Hawk, you'd add to that where those teams pretty much like ship shifted like game to game, which one they were working on, whether it was a remake, the new game, or the kart racer, all that stuff. So toys for bob, vicarious visions completely shut down. They're just working on Overwatch Call of Duty stuff. Poised for bob still exists. As far as I know, asteroids for bob, I think they are still, they are assisting on the shooters, but I do think they have the capacity to be working on a new game. I would have bet it being a spiral game though. We were more about the dragon returning. We were teed up for the dragon man because we got the reignited trilogy, but we never got a spiral for. So looking at everything that they've done, I would have imagined that would have been next. But here we are with this, I don't know, I could see it being a toys for bob thing. Depending on where they're at these days and then there's one other studio that I was I guess it's B Nox, B Nox who worked on crash team racing remake. I don't know their status right now, but I don't think that they still exist. I think. I don't think they got destroyed. So unfortunately, they're all support studios. Yes. But some of them still have their names as opposed to vicarious visions and never soft. They just do not exist. 5, let's hope for ten minutes. That's fine, baby. Put it out in the world. Hype moment, yep. All right. Final story. Let's have a story more of a little fun conversation. Our final moments, Mike, as we lead into The Game Awards happening later today.
AP News Radio
Microsoft strikes 10-year deal with Nintendo on Call of Duty
"Microsoft says it has struck a deal to make the video game bestseller Call of Duty available on Nintendo. Don't let anyone tell you video games are just for kids. Activision Blizzard says their latest iteration of Call of Duty Modern Warfare two, which retails for about $70, has earned more than $1 billion in sales since it was launched in late October. Now Xbox maker Microsoft, which is working on acquiring Activision, has promised to make the hit series available for Nintendo and a ten year deal. The merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard is facing close scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission and global regulators. The Nintendo offers an apparent attempt to fend off objections from Sony, which makes the competing PlayStation console Sony has raised concerns about losing access to what it describes as a must have game title. Microsoft president Brad Smith said the agreement would bring Call of Duty to more gamers and tweeted we'll be happy to hammer out a deal for PlayStation as well. I'm Jennifer King.
Opening Arguments
"activision" Discussed on Opening Arguments
"And that is Activision Blizzard. Remove from the personnel files of each eligible claimant any references to the eligible claimants allegations of sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination or related retaliation or determined by the EEOC to be related to such allegations. Defendants must maintain a record of any information removed from an eligible claimant's personnel file pursuant to the subsection separately from the eligible claimants personnel files consistent with the record keeping provisions contained in section ten J, or otherwise required by law. But there is no ten J the problem is is that that's just a typo. And there's a 12 J and 12 J record keeping, says, so let's deal with that first part. Ten a says, we agree to the settlement and then Activision gets to go back and redact its personnel files. And it gets to remove references to claims of sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, right? Exactly. Because part of the settlement is not admitting the wrongdoing. Is to say, yep, we are going to settle, we are going to provide a certain amount of money. We are giving up our right to litigate those claims. And we want to maintain the position that we have, which is we are not conceding that any particular conduct towards any particular person was tortious or in violation of section 7. The reason to do that is, again, for subsequent litigation. If you concede liability, then it's trivially easy for every subsequent claim to come by and go, yeah, well, you've conceded an open court that this violated title 7. You did the same thing to me, therefore I want the same amount of damages. So do we, is it a proactive position? It is. If the settlement amounts were accurate, it's the kind of thing that you would want to have in place in order to get, you would say, all right, well, we will trade that public acknowledgment of guilt for getting some form of adequate compensation to all of the victims. Coupled with an inadequate settlement number or a number that certainly appears to be inadequate. It feels pretty hollow. So yeah, Activision gets to go back and redact its personnel files and say, and remove those references. But in connection with other litigation section 12 J says, documents generated in connection with any complaint of sexual harassment pregnancy discrimination or related retaliation, including documents related to all investigations or resolutions of any complaints and the identities of witnesses identified by the complaint or through defendant's investigation, shall be kept defendants will review with the EEO consultant. Remember, they bring in an outside third party lawyer. Their record keeping procedure that provides for the centralized tracking of complaints, including those of sexual harassment pregnancy discrimination and related retaliation complaints and the ongoing evaluation of such complaints to prevent retaliation. The EEO consultant will confirm that the records to be maintained include that category that I just described. And it's longer than that. So I think the problem with the default argument is it is not clear to me that the order requires or permits Activision to destroy evidence because they are redacting their files, but they're keeping that information in a separate segregated system, subject to outside third party review. And again, I think this settlement is inadequate. I want to be very, very clear about that. But I think that overreach on the argument wound up hurting deepest credibility, which we're going to get to in a second. I need to say, I would have made my argument, I would have made two arguments. If I were DeFi would have said, one, settlement amount is not nearly enough, we know there are way more claimants than initially thought. And lots of other settlements in similar ways include much higher reserved funds to pay claims. That would have been an argument a, an argument B would have been in order to participate. And this is exhibit C to the proposed amended consent decree, right, to the settlement. You have to sign an omnibus waiver of all claims against all parties. I'm going to read to you from that attachment C because it is a complete release. It says, I am releasing any claims for sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, which by the way, pregnancy discrimination was the part that was carved out for the defa state litigation. The eeoc is not raising those claims. Or related retaliation, that is covered by EEOC. Whether currently known or unknown to me, that were asserted or could have been asserted against Activision Blizzard in the EEOC action in the fair employment and housing act or under any applicable federal state or local law that exists at the time I signed the release. This includes sexual harassment pregnancy discrimination or related monetary claims for relief or damages that have been or may be asserted by me or any other person or entity, including any government agency on my behalf in any action, including but not limited to a representative class or collective action. If that is not clear enough on the very next page in bold print, it says, well, first it says, I further understand that the California department of fair employment and housing has filed suit against Activision Blizzard. I understand that in the default lawsuit the default brought claims on behalf of female workers of Activision Blizzard Activision publishing and blizzard in California, and then this is the part that's in bold. By signing this release, I wave any right I may have to recover any monetary damages or other relief. The difa may recover in the default lawsuit for sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination or related retaliation. So I had to dig that up and put that together. Difa should have made that their one or two argument. They should have said, look, this will effectively prevent us from litigating our case, because you're going to announce a settlement. Women are going to sign on to the settlement, and they are not going to realize until they file their claim form and go and are about to get paid that they have to sign attachment C, which contains the language that I just read to you. And that language explicitly says we're compromising all of your claims, you're settling known unknown, right? In perpetuity throughout the universe against Activision Blizzard. That stated succinctly, I think would have been a powerful argument. That didn't happen. What did happen was on March 4th, an Activision employee named Jessica Gonzalez moved to intervene and asserted piggybacked onto the default arguments, right? Said settlement value isn't enough. And you're going to require us to destroy documents. The court summarily denied that motion to intervene on March 22nd. You know, one line that just said for the reasons stated in the oppositions filed by the EEOC and Activision, we do not think she should join the complaint. And then the same day issued an order regarding the hearing on the consent decree. So this was.
Opening Arguments
"activision" Discussed on Opening Arguments
"And then section two says it's illegal to monopolize or attempt to monopolize any part of the trader commerce by and among the several states with the same penalties. So the question is, is Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard? A monopoly or attempt to monopolize a particular market? Or a contract in restraint of trade? And the answer is, yeah, it almost seems like any action that makes you bigger is an attempt to monopolize. I mean, attempted murder. What is that? Well, that Nobel Prize for attempted monopoly. Excellent sideshow bob reference there. Well, that's right. So let's look at cases on attempted monopolization that Microsoft lost in the 1990s. And the first one and I have to tell you, I needed my recollection refreshed on this one was Microsoft's efforts to buy the company Intuit. Oh, I didn't know that. Back in the 1990s. So here's what happened. Microsoft grew up in an era in which you were actually developing business killer apps. Microsoft was the killer app for operating systems beginning with Microsoft dos, MS dos. And they were the killer app for basic that came on all of the 65 O two based personal computers of the 1980s. Those were almost all licensed versions of Microsoft basic that were tweaked for each of your computers. When you say they're the killer app, it's that like you want to make something that becomes so familiar that people don't use any other software for that type of thing. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's exactly right. And by extension, that it becomes the reason you buy that computer in the first place. And in particular, the reason I'm prepared to defend this, that people bought the IBM PC despite its outrageous cost at the time and minimal performance advantages and in many cases disadvantages versus way cheaper competition. And what specifically was that? Was it Windows? Or was it? It was a program called lotus one two three. Right, so excel precursor. Yeah, lotus one two three was the first spreadsheet. The first spreadsheet killer app, okay? So when we say all of these, they're not necessarily the first, but they were the first one to become synonymous. And so lotus one two three was the excel of its day. It was the first mainstream spreadsheet. That was the idea. Word perfect became the first cross platform mainstream word processing program that would let you change your italicized words. It started to display them in italics on the screen. It displayed little codes right on the screen because, you know, we didn't really have the graphical environments, particularly the Macintosh. That had what was called wysiwyg, right? What you see is what you get. You take for granted now, but back then you had to memorize these codes in word perfect. And slash I anyway. The first killer app for personal household accounting balancing your checkbook was quicken, right? Yeah. Just still still a product today. Yeah. Multi-billion dollar market leader product today. I just love that you say killer app given the app did not exist. Like the word app didn't exist. Yeah. That's right. Well, I'm borrowing that from retro to make the gen zs understand what's happening. I'm hip with well done. Yeah. Thank you. And so Microsoft looked at quicken and they had two ideas. The first was, it would be really great to own the killer app for personal accounting. And the second was, and also, this is the early 1990s and also we're kind of thinking about online transactions and stuff. And by the way, if we get access to and own the killer app for personal accounting, we will own an awful lot of people's financial information as well. And we're not entirely sure how that's going to play out, but we think that could be super useful to us. And it turned out would have been had they known exactly how useful it would have been. Maybe the outcome would have been a little different. So Microsoft built a competitor to quicken to QuickBooks in 1991. That competitor was called Microsoft money. As you may infer from the fact that Microsoft money is not a part of your enterprise suite of applications, Microsoft money was not a success. I have a confession to make. I still use Microsoft money. Wow. Personal fun. Great. It has a feature that none of the other ones do that I can not live without. I still use what is there and what is that? It gives you a statement of cash flows in a way that I could not get any of the other ones to do. And I've been pivotal to my being able to manage my money effectively. I'm telling you, maybe there's a way to get the other ones to do it, but I couldn't find it. I tried a few other ones that went out. I think it lasted until 2011 I want to say. And then they just stop, they're like, we're done with Microsoft money, and I'm like, oh no, we're not. We're not done here. That's a great kind of addition to the story. So look, that was 91 when it was introduced. In 94, Microsoft announced that it was going to buy into it. And into its major product was Andy's QuickBooks, which yeah, quickening QuickBooks. Yeah, I use QuickBooks back when I was worked as an accountant. I love it. Wow, maybe I'm like it's the montagues and capulets here. I can reconcile both software packages. So now, at the time, in the market for personal accounting software, Microsoft money had 22% of the market share..
The Business of Esports
"activision" Discussed on The Business of Esports
"And he saw his mortgage in the future of the business, but then he sells before that future arrives. I mean, if I'm going to give him any credit, it's pretty brilliant. Talk about good timing. And if we save timing is important in business, this could go down as maybe some of the best timing ever. Jeff, you're looking at me like, I know you want the Bobby apologist here. No, I think you make a good point. And one thing cover actually makes me a point here. And this is something I was going to mention so much of the value in Activision Blizzard right now is in kind of the longer term pipeline, particularly on the blizzard side. I'm really interested to see given this view is not going to close for at least almost a year. How does the talent exodus we've seen from wizard and Activision? Does that accelerate or do a lot of the developers there say, hey, okay, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. We're excited about Microsoft. How do those games come out of the oven? You know what I mean? Because there was a lot of issues on the blizzard side already. I could easily paint a picture where things actually get worse because you're in limbo like Microsoft's going to have a lot of wood to chop. And I don't even know how you do this in an acquisition that clearly it's not closing for years. So I don't know how much Microsoft can do in terms of incentivizing people to stay and stuff like that. It's going to be very interesting to watch when you have a transition like this dealing with an acquisition, just from a people perspective. Are those developers incentivized to stay, or we know there's a ton of money sloshing around the system. There's a lot of other publishers, developers looking to hire there's blockchain gaming, which is massive right now. You could see it even more of an exodus, which to Clifford's point or what he was alluding to, that makes this acquisition even more troubling if a lot of the values in that longer term pipeline that may not actually come in won't come very well. Let me just get caught up here. Searches are a number of the games on the way down in popularity and therefore Microsoft going to have to invest to rejuvenate a lot of the content which carries risk of failure to improve subscription numbers and game pass. I mean, it's a great question. I think obviously if they put wow on game pass, that's going to drive a huge number of subscribers. There's no question you get a few, obviously you get a few million subscribers immediately, which are all the existing wow players. But I also think you would get people who see a lot of value more value in game pass if you put something like that there. The question is, let me just rephrase your question so I can ask it to everyone here is will Microsoft help Activision Blizzard get back to making games..
What's Good Games
"activision" Discussed on What's Good Games
"We're going to continue our conversation about this Microsoft upcoming acquisition of Activision Blizzard. We had to react to questions equation. Back to questions. Yes. Of course. I was the one who said that that doesn't make any sense. No, it does, oh my gosh, you guys, I'm sorry. I just had a brain Bart. Okay. And I was so okay, we're done. I'm sorry, continue. Go home, Jack, don't seriously. I'm drinking water folks. I got no. Well, maybe you should get drunk. Maybe I'll maybe it'll level you out. That was one of those moments where I'm like, I should have just stopped talking to let you guys keep going. I don't know why I was saying everything I was thinking out loud. So I apologize for that. Anyway, we live for these small time. What's good games? But continuing the conversation that Microsoft also announced this week or I should say Xbox announced that Xbox game pass now has over 25 million subscribers. And that number has grown substantially since the last time they announced it. So that is no small feat to get that many active subs every month. And I think it's a testament to the offering that Xbox is really put together with game pass. And they did confirm in the announcement. I didn't read it when we were talking about it earlier. But they said that the acquisition bolsters Microsoft's game passport portfolio with plans to launch Activision Blizzard games into game pass, which has reached its new milestone with Activision blizzards nearly 400 million monthly active players and a 190 trees and $3 billion franchises. This acquisition will make game pass, one of the most compelling and diverse lineups in gaming content in the industry. So that's clearly talking about putting the dick on the table is them further putting in their dick on the table being like, oh, did you think that Xbox game pass was good before? Well, let me show you something else. You wonk. Yeah. And I had tweeted that it was a little mind-blowing to think that Diablo four could launch day one in Xbox game pass. Wow. Yeah. Wow, yeah. Now we have some fun Patreon questions here if we're ready to hop into them. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. All right, I like this one from John leeing. Where were we all when you first saw heard the news in what was your immediate reaction? I was fucking sleeping. Oh. I was sleeping and my husband like literally shook me awake. And was like, oh my God, you have to see this. And I was like, what? I was like, the baby still sleeping. Why are you waking me up? Oh, no. It has to be a big fucking deal if the basics. Yeah, that is like you're really, I mean, it was a big news, but still. I need my precious sleep. Exactly. At a baby for 8 months. Like a rare moment where the baby is sleeping past 6 a.m. and he woke me up, but it was worth it because this is probably the biggest news of the last ten years. So that's huge, huge news. What about you, Jackie? You know what's funny? I actually think I was on Twitter and I saw Greg Miller's tweet. Like this is like E three, and then I was like, what the fuck is going on? And then I was like, oh, oh. Did I just like, I liked it? I'm like, oh, okay, y'all know how Twitter is, right? It's like whatever's the news of the day is like so big and everyone's so dramatic about it. So I was like, okay, what's going down, right? And then I was like, oh, you know what I mean? I was just like, this is kind of big. And I was just floored. I was basically just watching Twitter and social media go off the rest of the day. So what about Uber? I kind of pulled a John. So our baby is in our bedroom with us. And I woke up just kind of like half asleep. And everyone in my house was so sleep in the dog, the husband, the child, and I'm like grog looking through my email, and I get this headline in this Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard to bring the joy in community of gaming to everyone. And my half asleep super, I was like, huh? And then he opened it and I go, what? And I sat up, the baby started crying. Poor reps scared the shit out of them. Jason sleeps through everything. So he just stayed asleep. I woke Jason up. I was like, oh my God. He was like, that's cool, babe, and then he fell back asleep. Oh my gosh, so you guys were reversed. That's too bad. He indulged me briefly, but that was. I played volleyball that morning, so I was just like, chilling, you know what I mean? And then I got on Twitter and just opened the shit storm that was Twitter that day. So early were you playing volleyball? I mean, not that early, probably had like 8, but I wake up and go right to volleyball. Okay, check my feet on. You have to wake up and do the phone in bed thing. No, I'm not. I was like, what do you think? Yeah. Good for you. Well, and then you get home after volleyball and then the world explodes. You know what I mean? And you're like, you know, but anyway, but yeah, so I was just like, wow, of all the days. And to be honest, I was surprised I missed it, like you said, because it was such big news that the headlines were popping on phone headlines, you know what I mean? And I just think I like swipe by, 'cause I was just like trying to get to volleyball quickly or something. And then when I got on Twitter, that was when I was like, oh my God, this is all going down. And our next question comes from Galen writer, which Activision Blizzard legacy IP would you like to see make a comeback?.
What's Good Games
"activision" Discussed on What's Good Games
"Page. All right. Let's talk about money. Microsoft will be acquiring Activision Blizzard for $95 a share. And that number is important because it's the number is the number that Activision Blizzard was valued at pre acquisition, or the news about this. And maybe it was pre lawsuit. I would have to double check exactly what their share price was. In an all cash because don't forget we've talked before about how much money Microsoft has, and they're really flexing their wallet right now. In all cash transaction valued at 68.7 billion, the now new biggest gaming acquisition of all time, Brittany, if it was just weeks ago, we were talking about take twos acquisition of Zynga at 12.7 billion being the biggest gaming acquisition of all time. And I tweeted Microsoft saying, hold my beer. Oh my gosh. I make a bigger, a bigger one. I think you know, it's just hard to fathom that much money. Like my brain can not compute it. If you start seeing smoke coming out of my ears because it's just like worrying and gigging in there. It's like, what the fuck does that even look like? It's just absolutely mine. Mind boggling to quote when drinking both of you. I don't even know if you're like the CFO of Microsoft. How do you calculate what those companies are going to be worth, you know? I can't imagine the teams of nerds with calculators are like, okay, let's figure out how much each of these studios, each of these franchises is gonna be worth because the acquisition will include king, the makers of candy crush, one of the most successful and most revenue generating mobile games of all time. Blizzard, of course, the most successful PC game of all time Diablo and wow. And then, of course, Activision with the most successful video game on console of all time, which is also on mobile and PC. Call of Duty. So it's just bonkers and not to mention throw in major league gaming in there. And a bunch of other studios and companies that are all underneath that umbrella. The thing that I think that got everybody talking this week and not really super happy about, of course, is the news that Bobby Kodak will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard. And once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard, business will report to fill Spencer who is the new CEO of Microsoft gaming formerly the head of Xbox. He was an EVP before, so he's now a CEO, so congrats Phil. Got a promotion. And they are now clearly saying gaming is going to be a huge part of Microsoft's focus going forward. You don't make this kind of an investment without it being there. And it's kind of a change of pace because not that long ago, Microsoft wasn't really that jazzed about. Gaming Xbox was kind of just existing. You know, I think it's a testament to the leadership that Phil has really brought to that team. And they really wanted to emphasize his leadership because they put out an org chart photo on Phil blog posted either of you see this. This photo? So I want to see it. Let me bring it up. I think they're 12 people underneath Phil. And I want to say 6 of them are women. Which is great. That is great. It's probably not as diverse as it could be, but I think compared to what these orchards typically look like and when they have looked like in the past, you know, it's a right step forward. Yes. Obviously, always more work to be done. But at least it's not all the usual suspects. I'm going to stop. Go back a little bit to Andrea's stand up Bobby kotick. My understanding is after the deal closes, he will be stepping away as CEO. The Wall Street Journal, and I think another other news place. I saw him and I had him pretty sure. Yeah, so this is the this is the org chart. And as you can see, it is a much more diverse or chart of leadership than we've seen in video games recently. I'm really happy that a company as big as Microsoft is really putting an emphasis on getting more voices at the top of their work chart. I think it's super important. And I'm happy about it. And so I think it's going to be interesting to see how they proceed. The thing that I rolled at was all of these people bringing their pitchforks to Twitter being like, I can't believe you're keeping Bobby in. And it's like, listen here, dumb dumbs. They have to keep him in, that's the way the deal works. They're two separate companies until the deal closes, which isn't going to happen for quite some time. An acquisition of this scale has to go through a lot of checks and balances and things to say. Maybe the United States government might not even let it go through. A 100%. There's a lot of talk about antitrust and is this too big of a deal is this too many studios underneath one banner? Is this kind of consolidation of power and voices good for the industry? Is it good for the development teams? And there's a lot of salient points being thrown around, but obviously they're going to have to deal with the baggage that Kodak is bringing along with this deal, but if I had my theories about this, I would guess that this deal was underway before that lawsuit was made public, and then I'm sure everyone at Microsoft was like, God, fucking damn it. Yeah. We were working on this thing. And now I have to deal with this bullshit. This shit storm is dropping exactly. Yes. This happened in July, the first lawsuit. It was around June July..
Marketplace Tech with Molly Wood
"activision" Discussed on Marketplace Tech with Molly Wood
"Microsoft announced plans this week to buy game developer and publisher Activision Blizzard, known for games like World of Warcraft and Overwatch for an all cash deal worth almost $69 billion. Both companies are big players in the gaming market, Microsoft makes the Xbox, meaning the massive deal is likely to attract scrutiny from antitrust regulators, even as Activision Blizzard continues to face allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination. I spoke with Dina bass, Seattle bureau chief and technology reporter for Bloomberg news to get a sense of Microsoft strategy. The transaction, if it can get regulatory approval, would catapult Microsoft to the position of world's number three global gaming company behind Tencent and Sony, which is Microsoft's key video game console rival. So that's one very important reason. Another one is mobile gaming. Activision Blizzard owns king, which makes candy crush. You know, one of the most popular mobile games of all time. Microsoft, on the other hand, despite being in gaming for about three decades, has next to no presence in mobile gaming. And I spoke to Phil Spencer who ends up Microsoft's Xbox division and was promoted to be CEO of Microsoft gaming, and he said to me, quote, we all know that the number one gaming device on the planet today is mobile phones. Microsoft owns Xbox. So does this acquisition change whether Sony PlayStation users might be able to start playing blizzard games? Yet, to be determined, I heard today from a source that Microsoft is going to want to continue having content in games for Sony PlayStation. But that they will, of course, look at some exclusives for Xbox in order to have this sort of deal advantage their platform. However, if we can take a past as potential precedent, Microsoft has already acquired the storied video game company Bethesda and its parent companies at a max media. They're publisher of games like The Elder Scrolls doom and fallout. That was done because Bethesda had those deals with Sony beforehand. And Microsoft has said they will continue supporting some Bethesda games on Sony, but they are also now starting to release Bethesda games, which will be Xbox exclusives. The challenge for Microsoft is they're paying a lot of money for this deal. If they don't continue to put very popular games like Call of Duty, for example, out for Sony PlayStation, automatically, you slash a significant amount of the value of the deal, because a decent chunk of Activision's revenue comes from Sony PlayStation game. So that's a balance that they will have to strike. How do they privilege Xbox, bring people to Xbox who maybe hadn't been Xbox gamers before? By having these exclusive games. But at the same time, continue to make a lot of money selling Sony PlayStation games. How closely do you think antitrust regulators are going to be scrutinizing this potential deal specifically given that Microsoft and Activision Blizzard sort of sit in these unique spaces in the gaming industry? Look, any deal of this size is going to get a significant look. What is this going to mean for competition? Is it going to disadvantage any one is going to disadvantage players? Another interesting regulatory battle that comes to play is the issue of the iOS App Store. Microsoft has been very vocally unhappy with Apple and to some extent also with Google. Because of the tax that they take on games that are sold through the App Store. And Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella mentioned that one of his motivations for this deal is to get his gaming empire to be big enough that gamers will come to it directly, bypassing Apple. Activision Blizzard has had so many stories coming out about sexual harassment and hostile work environment. What does this deal mean for any potential reforms happening there? You have to bear in mind the deal is not going to close until 2023. So Microsoft can not exert significant influence. They can not run Activision they can not do anything until that point. Nadella told investors, quote, we recognize that after the close, we will have significant work to do in order to continue to build a culture where everyone can do their best work. So they know that this is a challenge, even though they're encouraged by what Activision is doing already. They know that that's an issue. Now, one issue since some of these allegations deal directly with Activision CEO Bobby Kodak is what happens to Kodak. Microsoft said today in their press release that he will continue to serve as CEO. However, it was made clear to me by a source that what Microsoft means by that is he will continue to serve as Activision CEO only until the deal closes. And he's expected to step down after that. And these issues to be clear are very likely what made Activision a target. This is everything that's gone on has potentially been the thing that put them in play because it was going to be harder given all of that for codec to continue for the company to continue to grow in the way that it wanted. Dina bass.
WSJ Tech News Briefing
"activision" Discussed on WSJ Tech News Briefing
"CEO. What does this deal mean for him? Well, according to Wall Street Journal sources, mister Kodak is expected to leave after the deal closes. We don't know when that will be. And what that means essentially is that a lot of these investigations into Activision's culture are centered around mister Kodak's leadership. Since he's been at the top of this company for us entire lifetime, and also because as the journal reported, mister Kodak did not inform Activision Blizzard's board of many instances and he has also himself been at the center of investigations for misconduct in the workplace. Activision said, in response to the general's reporting that the journal give them misleading view of the company and mister clinic, now with mister Kodak expected to leave the company when the deal closes, that will relieve Microsoft of at least one major headache. This would mean Activision Blizzard would need a new CEO to run things over there. All right, that's our reporter, Sarah needleman, Sarah. Thanks so much for joining us. It's been my pleasure. And that's it for today's tech news briefing. If you want more tech stories, check out our website, WSJ dot com. And if you like our show, please rate and review it. You can do that wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening. We've all felt left out. And for people who move to this country, that feeling lasts more than a moment. We can change that. Learn how it belonging begins with us dot org. Brought to you by the ad council..
Techmeme Ride Home
"activision" Discussed on Techmeme Ride Home
"Right home for Tuesday, January 18th, 2022, I'm Brian McCulloch today, Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard and the biggest gaming acquisition of all time. Partially, this is a metaverse play, but meanwhile, meta is quietly locking down all of the metaverse patents. Crypto dot com helps withdrawals on its platform, but insist it hasn't been hacked, and why are countries encouraging their athletes to use burner phones when they attend the upcoming Olympics? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Just an absolute blockbuster today, Microsoft this morning announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard. For $68.7 billion in cash or $95 a share with the deal slated to close in the fiscal year 2023, apparently Activision Blizzard will be run independently until then. Bobby Kate will remain as the CEO, but will report directly to Xbox head Phil Spencer. Now, when I say this is a blockbuster, listen to these superlatives. It is Microsoft's biggest acquisition ever and by quite a margin the previous record for Microsoft was the $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn, it's also the largest acquisition in the gaming industry, full stop of all time. It's nearly ten times the size of the Bethesda acquisition. It makes Microsoft the third largest gaming company in the world by revenue. After Tencent and Sony, what does Microsoft get for all of this? Oh, you know, they've just acquired candy crush. Overwatch, StarCraft, skylanders and the two crown jewels World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. Quoting CNBC. Activision, which is known for popular games such as Call of Duty and Tony Hawk's pro skater has been mired in controversy for the last several months following reports of sexual misconduct and harassment among the company's executives. On Monday, Activision said it fired dozens of executives after an investigation under the deal Activision CEO Bobby cot who has faced calls to resign over the cultural problems within his company will remain CEO and report to Microsoft's Xbox boss Phil Spencer. Microsoft has gotten more aggressive with gaming over the past several years. It bought Minecraft maker mojang for two and a half $1 billion in 2014 and last year Microsoft completed a 7 and a half $1 billion acquisition of game maker Bethesda. The deal also plays into a long-term vision for Microsoft as it competes with meta, formerly Facebook, to build technologies to create a virtual world called the metaverse. In fact, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, who was the first big tech CEO to publicly acknowledge the value of the metaverse, months before meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Today, virtual worlds are dominated by gaming, but the hope is they expand to cater to other demographics and replace a lot of traditional social networking activity online. So let's unpack all of that. A metaverse play. Clearly, World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, especially would be strong foundations for a metaverse. But most immediately, apparently, Activision games will be coming to Xbox game pass to suite. Quoting pure Xbox. This, of course, is massive news for Xbox game pass, going forward. We're hopeful many Activision Blizzard games will launch on the service, given Microsoft's commitment to first party titles arriving day one. Oh, and we should see some of the back catalog arrive to, quote, upon close of the acquisition we will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within the Xbox game pass and PC game pass, both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard's incredible catalog. We also announced today that game pass now has more than 25 million subscribers. As always, we look forward to continuing to add more value and more great games to game pass. That was quoting from a Microsoft press release, but I'm continuing again. This is particularly big news, especially as Activision games don't usually end up in game pass. The publisher has worked closely with Sony in recent years, preventing much of anything from them coming to the service. So this is clearly an aggressive move against competitors. Now, on behalf of Microsoft, PS, that 25 million number from game pass is up from 18 million game past subscribers just a year ago. And it's also clearly an aggressive move to the metaverse now is sure later, both things tie into this analysis from Nicholas de Leon on Twitter quote. Microsoft has been 100% all in on services since nadella took over. They don't care what you use, device wise, as long as you use Microsoft services on it, IE game pass. Look at the lengths they were reportedly willing to go to to get on the iOS App Store. Put another way, why bother building xboxes, which is hard and expensive? When you can just have a game pass app on your TV. Microsoft has been building toward this. I don't really see this clarity of direction from Sony, Nintendo is a different matter, probably. End quote. Yes, and the metaverse will largely not be about hardware. Either, in theory, right? So, but also yes, as we've discussed, Activision has been the site of turmoil involving tons of labor, harassment, discrimination, and other issues. So that's probably why the deal is happening. The turmoil depressed Activision stock, which made it attractive to Microsoft, but as Laura Kate Dale tweeted, quote, if Microsoft is making this purchase knowing the state of the company RE ongoing lawsuits and incredibly low consumer and worker trust, I hope that means they have a plan to institute actual change, but I'm not holding my breath for that. Microsoft basically just purchased a company mired in stories of abuse. If their first move is not to make serious change, a lot of that bad sentiment might start sticking to Microsoft two. Katic remaining as CEO post purchase is a bad sign for meaningful change. Additionally, this is also a huge move further toward Microsoft's monopolization of the video game industry. This makes huge games like Call of Duty Microsoft exclusives now, one would assume. That's not healthy for the overall industry and quote. So yes, one more thing. Do you think this deal might raise some antitrust eyebrows? Microsoft owns the platform and increasingly they own the biggest game developers as the great Peter Kafka tweeted, quote, Microsoft buying Activision makes a lot of sense. Microsoft has been buying game devs and this is the biggest prize with a leadership team, submerged in self inflicted scandal. Also, it earns Microsoft to seat at the big tech antitrust table which they have avoided until.
The 3:59
"activision" Discussed on The 3:59
"Microsoft is already a giant in the gaming world, but it just got bigger with a massive deal to take over controversial video game maker Activision. Blizzard. I brought a Chang in the daily charge. Joining me to talk about this big shake up in the gaming industry is seen editor E insurer. Welcoming, how are you doing? So can you be some quick details on the deal? How much is Activision Blizzard going for? A lot. So they are Microsoft is spending upwards of more than 68 billion with a B dollars on Activision, which is a premium on its current value. And also it's worth noting the largest acquisition for Microsoft to date. Well ahead of LinkedIn the professional social network, which it only spent $26 billion on. I can't believe that I would ever say only $26 billion, but here we are. And nuance before that for 19 billion. So this is definitely a huge, huge move for Microsoft as well as a big move for the video game industry. Absolutely, the shake things up quite a bit. And we'll kind of get into that. But I know Microsoft had previously purchased Bethesda and I'm curious why Microsoft, which is largely been focused on business software and services, which traditionally been a lot more profitable. Why is Microsoft spending so much on video game publishers right now? Yeah, I think if you look back to 2014, when Satya Nadella was named CEO of Microsoft, think back a little bit to that time, his first major acquisition was of mojang, the company that makes that makes Minecraft. And ever since then, what's ended up happening is that Microsoft seems to increasingly be aware that video games are an incredibly popular, large and profitable business if they do it right. There we don't have much data on Minecraft since the acquisition. But one of the things that came up from YouTube recently, they celebrated Minecraft's 1 trillionth view across all of YouTube, which is another number if that's hard to kind of wrap your head around. But one of the things they had was this data point that showed how much larger Minecraft viewing had gotten on YouTube, since it was bought by Microsoft. And when it was bought by Microsoft, it was already an enormous game. So I think what's important to keep in mind is that this is actually for Microsoft a real opportunity to put some of its money to work in a way that seems to be making a lot of money for it. And so no surprise we're seeing this happen over and over and over again. Yeah, and the Minecraft conversation kind of brings in mind the buzzword of the day for the tech world and that's metaverse. I'm curious how this deal or does this deal play into the metaverse?.
WSJ Tech News Briefing
"activision" Discussed on WSJ Tech News Briefing
"Activision Blizzard, the company behind Call of Duty and candy crush is facing a crisis. Multiple regulators are investigating the company over alleged sexual assaults and mistreatment of female employees dating back years. At the center of this turmoil is the company's chief executive Bobby Kodak. He was one of the highest paid CEOs in 2020 and is a well-known figure in the gaming world. But how much did he know about what was going on at his company? And what did he do with that information? Well, our reporter Kirsten grind was part of the team that looked into this and she joins me now. Hey Kirsten, thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. So regulators are looking into accusations of sexual misconduct and Activision. You've learned more about those. What are some of the accusations that are being made? So we spent a lot of time looking into what was going on at the company. So we uncovered from talking to people and looking at internal documents, some of these allegations of harassment and other issues of the company. In one case, we learned about a couple alleged rapes at a studio owned by Activision called sledgehammer and other severe sexual harassment problems at that studio. Bobby kotick was informed about those back in 2018, but he didn't tell his board of directors. So that's one thing we looked at extensively is how much he had been telling keeping the board and also, you know, investors informed along the way, which we learned was not that much. In addition to sledgehammer, we heard about another instance where a co studio head of treyarch, which is another successful Activision studio had allegedly sexually harassed a woman in 2017 and internal investigation found that he should be fired, Bobby kotick, intervened to keep him on. So he was allowed to remain at the company with counseling and then after we went to Activision, he actually left the company this month. Okay, so we know what happened in that one instance. But with some of the other allegations that you saw, how did the company react internally when some of these allegations were brought up? Well, for employees, it was really challenging because they felt like there was this culture where none of this was talked about. And often when someone was accused of misconduct a male, it would sometimes be like a superstar executive or employee, and they were allowed to leave and were praised by their managers on the way out even after allegations of misconduct. So it created this kind of unfortunate sort of culture of silence that many former employees told us about at the company. In which misconduct allegations weren't really reported or taken seriously. And we learned through the course of this investigation that since the California lawsuit in July Activision has seen now more than 500 reports of additional harassment, assaults and other issues, being reported by employees. How much was Bobby Kodak involved in these decisions? And how aware was he of what was going on at the company? So he's in general as many people have told us very involved in the company. He knows about important hirings and firings and problems that are going on. So, you know, he would have been involved at a high level in many of those decisions. At the same time, the company is very large and has a large number of game development studios. And he believed in letting those studios generally operate autonomously. So what that meant is a lot of the people we spoke to in the document showed this culture of drinking alcohol, like harassment towards women, just like this low level of, you know, just misconduct towards women all the time because these units were kind of left alone. And so he was both involved in a high level and a lot of these decisions, but also kind of looking the other way in these studios. You know, when regulators in California first brought their lawsuit in July, the company tried to downplay it and employees have staged walkouts twice now. Once earlier in the summer and the second time on Tuesday following the WSJ's investigation, since the lawsuit was filed, has the company made any changes? So the company has said they were instituting a zero tolerance harassment policy. Bobby kotex said he would reduce his salary. His pay package in 2020 was valued at about a 154 million. He reduced his pay package to 62,000 roughly a year. And they've tried to make it easier for employees to report harassment and abuse. So one example from the story that really stood out to me was a Jennifer O'Neil, can you tell us who she was? How she kind of fits into all of this? After the state lawsuit hit in July, the company made a number of executive changes. And as part of that, they moved up, Jennifer O'Neill, who is a long time Activision employee to co head one of Activision's most successful units blizzard. And basically what happened is she was there about a month, and she sent this internal email that we've seen in which she said, I just do not believe the culture is going to change under this leadership team. She said she herself was underpaid compared to her male co head. She said she had also been sexually harassed at one point in her career and she recounted this party. She had been out with Bobby kotick back in around 2007 in which there were scantily clad women dancing on stripper poles, basically pointing out that this was a long held culture at the company, that she didn't think would change. So it was, you know, it was a pretty shocking internal email only a month after she had gotten that position. And she said she wanted to resign, and she's leaving the company at the end of the year. How are the company or coding himself reacting to the story? Well, on Tuesday, when the story went online, the company released an internal video to employees, a transcript of which they made available, which basically said that, you know, the company is committed to these issues and Bobby is committed to working out these issues. And then the board of directors and Activision also just released a statement on Tuesday, professing their support of Bobby and saying that he has handled the workplace allegations he knew about appropriately. So then what's next for Activision? I mean, do we expect any major changes? Well, this effect investors, what happens from here? We're going to have to see what happens in the coming days. I mean, they're also facing as we reported in September an SEC investigation, which is looking directly at what Bobby knew what he told the board over a period of years, how the company handled these misconduct allegations. So we have to see how that plays out as well as the California lawsuit. They tried to settle yet another pro by the equal employment opportunity commission for 18 million recently, looking into some of the same issues and not has so far not been finalized either as the regulators kind of have a side battle going on. So.
DLC
The New Call of Duty Trailer Omits Activision
"Of duty vanguard Trailer came out Normally i'm not going to be talking much about activision games as they're coming out here the near future because i don't need to talk about them but i found this interesting for call of duty. Vanguard the world premiere of the big came out and as it's running up through the intro. It says call of duty presents. There is no activision anywhere on this trailer on the end card. It's like sledge hammer. Triarc all stuff no activision i kinda get it but call of duty presents call of duty a call of duty production directed by call of duty by call of duty starring call of duty presents battlefield. Like what are we doing what it just it to me. And they put out a statement. I should say they said it was a creative decision because call of duty is more than one thing. Now and it's you know the expanding on the brand of what call of duty is but to me. this stinks. It kind of reeks of desperation of like we don't want to be attached to our parent company. That has done these horrible things that were so far. Still fundamentally failing to address in my opinion and so many ways but also we have a release date in this thing is is the golden goose for us so we need to put it out. How do we Have our cake and eat it too. And i i think there's something insincere about presenting something this way and get business gonna business. But when i saw this i thought it was worth bringing up again because It chat my hide it really it really chapman hide and maybe i don't get it and letting my own anger blind the air quote actual creative decision before but i didn't want this week's episode goodbye with out at least pointing out that call of duty presents my anger on this week. Stay healthy
Kinda Funny Games Daily
Activision Blizzard Shareholders Are Angry
"Investment group s. o. c. says that activision blizzard's recent promises to improve. His culture. Do not go nearly far enough to address the deep and widespread issues with equity inclusion and human capital management. End quote that the company is facing of. If you never read a axios meghan. Stephen are doing great work over there. And i love the way they break stuff down so this is just reading straight from their site. Y'all go check it out. But what i like. Is they go why it matters in to being an activision blizzard shareholder soc advocates for ethical business practices and is outspoken on topics like pay gaps between executives and workers a letter from associate executive director. I ways. Egger shared exclusively with axios reads. No changes have been announced or proposed that would in any way alter the current process for filing for feeling vaccine vacancies either To the board of directors or senior management. No changes have been announced with respect to executive pay either with respect to climb back compensation from executives who are found to have engaged in or enable abusive practices or to align executives with equity goals kotik articulated of course talking about Ceo bobby coda Still going on from the the letter here. From dealer the announced review by a wilmer hale was that thing. They're bringing in to do this. And they're also the law firm that's squashing unions on all issues Wilmer hale is deficient in a number of ways. This firm has a sterling reputation as a defender of the wealthy and connected but it has no track record of uncovering wrongdoing. The lead investigator does not have in-depth experience investigating workplace harassment and abuse in the scope of the investigation fails to address the full range of equity. Issues mr cody. Acknowledges quote
Zero Credit(s)
"activision" Discussed on Zero Credit(s)
"Activision blizzard employees stage a walkout unless demands on july twenty eighth. Their demands are as follows. They want number one and into mandatory arbitration clauses. In all employees contracts current and future arbitration clauses protect abusers limit the ability of victims to seek. Restitution i mean totally accurate. Arbitration clauses are one of the Most evil things almost every american corporation does okay number two. The adoption of recruiting interviewing hiring and promotion. Policies designed to improve representation among employees of all levels agreed upon by employees and a company wide diversity equity and inclusion organization. Current practices have led to women in particular women of color and transgender women non by mary people and other marginalized groups that are vulnerable to gender discrimination. Not being hired fairly fairly for new roles when compared to met. Okay wait just a backup real quick you know why arbitrations bad right. I don't please at edify me. Uh so do you know what arbitrary what legal arbitration is so. That is the stage of legal. I don't know what the word is it. It's under going to court. It is like yes it is. It is rather than taking on the court before a judge Arbitration is is basically a negotiation typically a sealed negotiation between two parties in private That can be Settled by judge or an arbitrator like arbitration judge. Whatever not do they're called in an.
Reset
The Activision Blizzard Lawsuit Could Be a Watershed Moment for the Business World
"So so he. Can you tell us a little bit more about the lawsuit that led to all these employees speaking out. Yes so. The lawsuit is the culmination of a two year investigation from authorities in the california department of fair employment in housing who said that activision blizzard's compliance with the state's workplace protections is long overdue. Now if you look at the lawsuit one interesting thing is that it really starts out with these kind of standard allegations of discrimination in how the company pays permits women and retaliation women spoke up. But that's not really what caught the public's attention california also said the activision blizzard fostered a frat boy culture where women were subjected to constant sexual harassment groping at rape jokes and that one female employees took her own life on a business trip after allegedly having nude photos of our past around with a company holiday party and these are the allegations that we really saw lighting up twitter because they were so shocking and terrifying. And it's worth pointing out that. The lawsuit specifically said that the discrimination was worse for women of color particularly black women who are micromanage and discriminated against in the office do lawsuit also mentions that supervisors were unaware of this culture and at times encouraged it and even engaged in it themselves. Can you tell us more about the role that higher ups played in creating this toxic work environment. Yeah so the lawsuit says that blizzard president j. allen brock was aware of the allegations did not do enough to stop the behavior. Alex afrasiab a former senior creative director of world of warcraft. Also engaged in blatant sexual harassment. He jokingly called his bliss con hotel room the cosby sweet after alleged rapist bill cosby. I talked to employees last week and really ask them. Was this behavior. Modeled at the top. Was it relegated to certain teams and employees are a little hesitant to say that it was one specific area of the organization. They felt like it kind of permeated the entire culture but they won't go as far as to say everything manager knew about it or every executive wasn't
Opening Arguments
"activision" Discussed on Opening Arguments
"That's why you see you know when you have these kinds of consumer complaints. You will them see private lawsuits sort of piggyback on the back of right and and it's for precisely that reason because the common defenses that are otherwise available to you you'll be able to know they cannot. They cannot let you. Don't get two bites at the apple. A court already determined That you failed to take immediate corrective action to inappropriate sexual harassment in the workplace. So yes that's it's a big thing and a big deal. And as i think i mentioned this at the beginning but but it's worth emphasizing again. California has demanded a jury trial in this case Not a surprise. Yeah an and i made in the complaint. Which is what i should have known had it. I almost had it almost so well. My final question on this andrew. And i guess i'm glad we haven't talked about it yet. Depending is the big headline that you didn't mention so i don't know if this is part of the suit or not but there seems to be a big headline about you know inside. Blizzard developers infamous. Bill cosby sweet. Is that anything. That's in the complaint. Is this just a a headline. Is this a taco headline. So it's people are talking about it. Where does that come from so it is. It is rather unfortunately spelled the bill. Crosby sweet in this in the night. Oh in the complaint is gonna say the headline i'm looking at. It's not but okay and the no the And so this is. This is paragraph forty-seven so the reason that i didn't mention it. I i mean. I alluded to it. I said there are complaints about particular individuals because to me. This is a much less persuasive piece of evidence than the systematic discussion of the cube. Crawls the game playing the joking about rape. That i mean to me. That's sort of your classic hostile work environment. Paragraph forty-seven talks about the former senior creative director of world of warcraft at blizzard that the company put on a convention called blitz khan and that this person got drunk and hit on all the female employees crossed. The line attempted to kiss them putting his arms around them. In plain view of other male employees including supervisors who had to intervene and pull him off and then His his sweet was nicknamed and again. It's a typo so it says the crosby sweet but it says the crosby's we at at its twice in there so apparently the the lawyer who wrote this must have been like twenty four or something like you know after after alleged rapist. Bill crosby okay. So it's under that broad heading sounds gross to say the least it sure does. Yeah well it makes me happy. I was always a final fantasy. Eleven fan but i'm sure that square whatever studio that is probably as problems do okay. So what are keeping an eye on in terms of going forward. I assume they answer it or or we go into settlement mode like right away idiots possible that that activision will file a motion to dismiss. I mean again. That is typically. What you do as a big inc jessica and it is going to be really really hard on these facts specific complaints to garner dismissal. They will have to answer them. There are a couple of things out here that have not yet sort of penetrated into the you know kotoka who kind of gaming news and one of them that i find really interesting from the legal geeky standpoint is count ten which is a separate provisions of the labor code labor code four three two point six Which says a person shall not as a condition of employment continued employment or the receipt of any employment related benefit require any applicant or employee to waive any right forum or procedure under the california fair employment and housing act or this code so that suggests that there were people who were bullied into signing document that says they would not sue activision as a condition of continuing to work there now. That allegation is made right and again as we know. It's valid to do this in a complaint that allegation is made you know quote on information and belief so they're entitled to take discovery and they are entitled to prove it but it says that defendants required female employees to waive rights forums and procedures as a condition of continued employment. So i very very interested if that happened. Those documents will start to surface and and we will start to see the news of that and again. That's you know we've seen that happen in other litigation like as As things develop with with non compete clauses in the like and and So so i'm keeping my eye on that. And i'm also trying to figure out what the activision blizzard quota system was right. Yeah so those are. Those are the developments that i would look for kind of on the near horizon than at some point. Activision is going to have to file an answer and there will be discovery but activision 's lawyers will do everything in their power to make sure that this is not fought in the public. I suppose i should also say i've seen some things going around. Regarding the fact that activision has hired wilmer hale to defend it in this litigation and wilmer hale is just their their mega firm right. They're huge covington. Burlington coat factory there couple of you know inflammatory. Pieces that say you know. They're they're known for union busting or whatever and we'll warmer hale has done a lot of activision work over over the years and they have of their lawyers right. They have an employment employment law group. And so i certainly wouldn't read anything into mega firm defends fortune. Five hundred company like yeah. Of course they do that. Nephew went argue. That's one of the major reasons or perhaps the major reason our legal system is broken. As in i'm with you doing anything like specially sinister in hiring this firm it. There is no right. Like willow typical wealth rich company defending itself which obviously might be sinister. But but not like that any more so than you would expect for this company. Yeah all right. Well we will keep an eye on that and i'm sure our listeners will as well and Absolutely feel free to to always email us those questions and updates but we'll keep an eye on that Soup if you worked at activision blizzard let us know thank you. And now it's time to thank our hall of famers. Are all time greats. Patriot dot com slash law..
Opening Arguments
"activision" Discussed on Opening Arguments
"He kind of stuff but what kind of relief are we looking at. And for whom here because this is california versus activision. So who do these victims get anything. What's what assuming that these allegations prove true. What would happen. Great question. And as i looked to earlier in the prayer for relief it says The department of employment and housing seeks judgment ordering the defendants one to pay compensatory and punitive damages to to pay unpaid wages liquidated damages and other remedies and penalties available under the equal. Pay act. And that is that goes directly to the employees three that the issue injunctive relief prohibiting the particular policies and practices that are outlined in this complaint for that the issue declaratory relief. Fife and this. I think is is the most that issue equitable relief including but not limited to reinstatement and door. Front pay pay adjustments back pay lost wages benefits including base pay incentive pay pension benefits and awards in an amount to be proven at trial And then the other stuff so autumn asking. Is there an opportunity for other women to be like. Hey also i didn't get such and such thing or people you know because it abc callan okay. So do they do. Put a call out for this kind of thing. I mean it's not a class action right and also that's why i was. Confused is not a class action in. It's california the activation so it's not even like there's named plaintiffs exactly who are like i lost out on this raise and i lost out on this. So is there some within the trial or before the trial or after the what. What's that process of people being like. Well i work at a different company right now. But when i was there like i got screwed out of such and such. Yeah that is absolutely right like what they will have to prove at trial what they will gather. During the discovery phase is they will gather affidavits from women who worked at activision and to the extent that they are able to prove that act divisions policies resulted in a hostile work environment and for example lead to constructive termination The remedy you get from that is reinstatement. Plus backpay right you. You heard me read that whole long list. So you know if they forced you out in twenty seventeen or against the three year statute of limitations two thousand eighteen but right if they made working conditions such that it constructively forced you outright. Made you feel so unwelcomed that you quit and court says yeah. The dfa has Has proven that. Then they can order that you reinstate and they can list down Every single person on the proof again is proof is a civil burden of proof right well if another worrying a bunch of our questions but as we've seen you know who knows but we tend to have a listener. Who is. I'll actually worked there from such as you. What if you just hypothetically if you are a woman who worked at activision in this time period and you're listening to this you're like holy crap you know like you weren't involved in the lawsuit. What do you do. Do you try to call somebody you try to like. I want to tell my story. You know filing affidavit what do you do. Don't take legal advice from podcast. Yeah well no but but but you can evaluate this for yourself. Go to d. F. e. h. Dot ca dot gov. That is the department of fair employment and housing. And that is how you file a complaint on the basis of discrimination on the basis of of sex race national origin and It's it's really easy and straightforward process. They investigate your claim before raising it and the california equal packed specifically says that the labor commissioner's office will keep your name confidential. Until it establishes the validity of the claim only if there is a valid claim. Is there a possibility that your name gets revealed so yeah. My question was going to be win. The court is evaluating all these things. Does it help that. There's a broader case about like. Because i imagine what if there's a case that's a little bit ambiguous say load if somebody didn't get a raise didn't get a promotion. He can't really prove it. You know or something like that. But maybe the fact that there's this whole case that shows this pattern and practice or whatever shows us atmosphere is that take into account. Does that help or is it going to be like each claim on its own has to be crystal clear on the merits so again remember that at the end of the day the burden here is preponderance of the evidence. Fifty point one to forty nine point nine so it is ever so slightly more likely that you know the company engaged in x. behavior than you know than not than yes they can be adjudicated liable for that and what you will have. The crucial thing here is that you will either get if the facts are. What are anywhere near what this complaint seems to elect. Activation would be insane to let this go to trial right. Okay you know. And so i would think there will be a comprehensive settlement Yeah with with the with the legislation on the reason. I ask though is often in these things each individual and this is why it's so pernicious tough to deal with whether we're talking about gender equality racism or whatever for a given case you can always have some story that makes sense well. I just didn't like her experience or just didn't like her. She had experienced. But i didn't like her education level and for any given decision. There can always be some story of like wow yet. Resume didn't like this part of the resume. And then lo and behold when you look at the total no women are at the top note. Women are being hired. And that's why. I'm wondering if they're able to evaluate all of that together and say well. Okay sure this one decision. Maybe it could have been just that you didn't like the school. The girl went to and it was kind of orleans. Whatever might have been a normal hiring decision but given the weight of all this other evidence. You've lost the benefit of the doubt. A that is an excellent point and be because the california department of fair employment and housing has placed at issue. The question of whether there was systematic discrimination. The court will have to weigh in on that so there will be a determination as a factual determination as a matter of law. Right as to weather there was systematic discrimination against women in employment at activists and that absolutely one hundred percent will be. The rule is then rescued. Okada that is it has been settled and once court has determined that there was systematic discrimination against women activision taking place. You can't relitigate that fact right in that fact has been determined and so long as it meets the requirement. Right it's a. It's a a court of competent. With the question squarely placed before it and activision had an opportunity to rebut it that become yes settled law..
Opening Arguments
"activision" Discussed on Opening Arguments
"Factual sections just for count one as we as we go through paragraph three notes that activision employees are only twenty percent women and the leadership role is overwhelmingly white and male The directors have all been white men. You know it just seems. I guess what i'm saying is the seems like a pretty plausible allegation But i i mean it's kinda my understanding that this is the unequal background of basically everything. What brings it over into being tortous or something or to the point. Where california's suing them. What crosses that line is a question of what they call disparate impact and you can demonstrate that disparate impact without demonstrating an intent to discriminating. Now we're gonna get to the counts that demonstrate. An you know an intent to discriminate but yeah the fact that this happens to women in a lot of places is not really an affirmative defense available to active here right and and i mean it was more like if this is happening everywhere. Wise and everything being sued. I guess like what's the difference. Yeah and and the difference. The difference is the threshold that courts when they are adjudicating. Disparate impact claim require reasonably good statistical. Evidence That matches up the effect on a particular protected class with certain policies or practices a undertaken by the employer. And so. here's how how that can break down and this is really sort of the paradigmatic case. Imagine that you had a company that did a lot of fulfillment and logistics and they did a lot of packing and shipping in the warehouse and over time. What you saw was that women would be assigned the desk and the dispatcher jobs and men would be assigned the stacking the boxes in the warehouse jobs and even and sometimes you know you would see a disparity in salary between those two positions right. But even when you don't see a disparity in salary between those two positions if you look deeper and they say well obviously you know when it comes time to hire the warehouse manager. We want somebody who's really bent on the floor rain and they never take warehouse managers from the dispatcher. Shot job and women are disproportionately steered into the dispatcher. Job out of a view of well we we want the stronger men Lifting boxes on the floor right. You can see how the and this is. I'm paraphrasing not. Just a real case cases. That have happened. You know sort of throughout history and and and Beginning in the nineteen seventies where you go into court and go. Yeah well you're out. Of course you know. We don't let the women folk stack the boxes and you could see how there there might not have been any malicious intent at any point in time but it wound up with a system. Where you know. Women were sort of pushed into women's work at that company And then a subsequent set of decisions compounded on that You're really locked them out of opportunities to advance into management so that's long winded way of saying that what you have to do not just show the disparate impact but you have to connect that impact back to certain policies or practices that were that were put into place by the company and they've alleged that and you know we'll have to. We'll have to see what happens in discovery. The the allegations here are not. I wanna say are typical of what you see in a complaint. Right like i flagged for you when a complaint is particularly detect right like the against exactly when you have a super detailed complaint and it's like oh okay. well then. They clearly have a document that says x. You will see that. This is right in the middle right. It is not bare-bones there are sufficient detailed allegations and we're going to talk about in there. Others say on information and belief we think that activision systematically paid less money to its women employees and offer them less opportunities for advancement. That is the kind of allegation that courts are very very well equipped to handle and you know and again obviously will survive emotion to dismiss right. You get doesn't cover and you get to prove that. Okay that's count one count to. I'm gonna go quickly through two three and four because they all follow the same pattern cow to is discrimination in promotion right so this is that allegation begins on page eighteen. The key windsor paragraph sixty seven and sixty eight and it said. I was alluding to this that women were assigned to lower paid and lower opportunity levels. Enrolls there is a reference to the quota system at activision and nobody is talking about that I can't figure out what that is yet. So i guess that's a podcast wide. Put a pin in that. I'm going to try and figure out. What the activision quota system is. Nobody is talking about it and it is you know sort of front and center in the allegations of the complaint. Let me read. It's paragraph sixty eight. The first sentences says defendants policies practices and procedures have resulted non-lawful disparate. Impact discrimination against women with respect to promotion opportunities among other practices defendants quota system lack of application process for promotional opportunities as well as it's informal and opaque decision-making process resulted in female employees being promoted at slower rates than their male counterparts. So the the rest of that all makes sense. I don't know what their quota system was. So we're going to try and figure that out. There is in the preceding paragraph in allegation that refuse to promote women that might get pregnant even when women performed higher level work for extended periods of time again very very common stuff so that was count to count three is termination. It's exactly what you would think. This is page. Nineteen seventy seven to seventy eight. They say these are the most barebones of the allegations. They say that activision intentionally discriminated against women in terminations their procedures have resulted in unlawful disparate. Impact discrimination against women termination that means women get fired more often again. Can you prove that woolsey and then count four is constructive termination and that is in there to garner the relief of rehiring bed essentially it says because of the policies we talked about in counts. One two and three women were induced to come work for activision only to realize and this language in the complaint that those promises were empty which effectively forced them to leave the company right so whenever you see a constructive right like a constructive. Eviction is if the landlord shuts off the electricity and heat. T her to your property right. They haven't kicked you out but they've effectively kicked you out and that's that the allegation here. The one that's garnering. The attention is count five and that is an allegation of sexual harassment. This is subsection. J. of section one two nine four zero and here california law is more robust than its federal counterpart. And i'm going to read you. The relevant provisions right one foreign employer because of sex gender gender identity gender expression sexual orientation to harass an employee that becomes a prohibited conduct and it says harassment shall be unlawful if the entity knows or should have known of this conduct and fails to take immediate and appropriate corrective action on employer may also be responsible for the acts of non employees with respect to harassment of employees applicants unpaid interns volunteers or persons providing services pursuant to a contract in.
Opening Arguments
"activision" Discussed on Opening Arguments
"A ton of money on our back. Why don't you pass three thousand dollars. Let us share. Why does she led a share in the royalties of games and also treat us more like the music industry right treat us as the authors as content creators. that wasn't a phrase back then Rather than you know anonymous little goblins down here. Rake kassar called them towel. This is against how loading crane towel designers right. Said i've dealt with your kind before you're a dime a dozen. You're not unique. anybody can do cartridge. You're no more important to these projects than the person on the assembly line. Who puts them together without them. Your games sold anything so So that didn't go well and Those four people left atari and they started the first third party developer in the history of humanity. Wow activision and literally the best games for the two thousand. Six hundred came from activists right so everybody. Would you say to atari twenty six hundred what game. You're thinking pitfall but was and activision game. Wherever rate mega mania. Boom the activision games were better than the atari games because the best designers left atari went and founded activists. So i could go on and on about the history of activision right. It's incredible day. Were the first third party developer. For game they invented that market and they survived the ups and downs right like the video. Game market crashed in nineteen eighty. Three right like that was atari. Et and by the way you could you could pull that out. Thanks to the dicko. She ations of the developers who left for activision. Eventually atari did cut its programmers in and gave them royalties. Howard scott warshaw got a dollar for every. Et cartridge check everyone buried in a landfill or for everyone actually sold and played. Well that's the thing as far as we can tell. They earned their royalties on cartridges. Sold the big issue with. Et was that were returned. And there did not appear to have been a clawback provisions. So you know if so that leads. Mr worship got nice cool. Eight mill was a awful lot of money back in nineteen ninety-three but yeah so look the video game market crashed in eighty-three. The home computer market crashed in the late eighties and activision now only survived all of that but went on to create. You know some of the groundbreaking games of the nineties. And since then they've been very active buying up studios. they are today. Major major powerhouse. They bought blizzard entertainment. Right which was how we lead off this entire discussion end. Witch appears to be the subject of this complaint so now that we are all the good positive fun stuff. Yeah let's talk about what this complaint is okay. So again we read it backwards right. This is a complaint brought by california department of fair employment and housing. If you thinking what seems a little weird for company to be sued by the state so you know not a crank. Filing obviously they are entitled to bring those claims under section one two nine four zero of the government code. Which is you and. I have talked about this before. This is your standard equal protection statue in tracks almost exactly the language of title seven of the civil rights act of nineteen sixty four so twelve nine forty seven california twelve nine forty says it is an unlawful employment practice for an employer because of and then i'm omitting a lot of stuff but because of sex gender gender identity gender expression sexual orientation to refuse to hire or to discriminate against the person in compensation or in terms conditions or privileges of employment so slightly broader than title seven in light of The court's decision in bostock versus clayton county probably coterminous now with with title seven but a standard a standard equal protection statute. And the i four counts of. This complaint are utterly straightforward. They are not the ones that are garnering. All the attention as you might imagine but they are very likely to be the bulk of the lawsuit and there's some things that are really interesting about right so count. One is discrimination. In compensation it says at activision women are paid less than men page seventeen paragraph fifty six defendants offered women lower compensation at higher signed women to be lower paid lower opportunity levels enrolls and afforded them less incentive and or equity pay opportunities than their male counterparts. That's an allegation. But it's a very very common one that we see and if true would absolutely entitle the state of california to relief and that relief can include fines and injunctive relief against activision but also an order requiring them. When we get into the constructive discharge requiring them to rehire women programmers who were forced out at activision requiring backpay requiring back equalization of wages right. So there's a lot of different options. Here that are that are available to the state is kind of an ironic twist as i followed some of the media coverage here. There was a kotoka article at again right that this is everywhere on the internet and because activision is such a huge player describes the gravity of the complaint of cat one harassing women are generally brought in a lower rate of pay than their male counterparts with the same experience levels. Often this is because the men that joined blizzard have friends on the inside pulling for them. It also happens because women coming in are usually paid less at their previous job and will accept lower offers without knowing the pay. Pay band that they are being brought in on. That's obviously endemic but again it's a good reminder that sometimes you can have things that seem to be neutral but snowballing effects of privilege lead to to disparate outcomes. But here's the part that really struck me part of the problem. They say is that many details surrounding compensation at the company including perks. Stock options are shrouded in secrecy. Yeah even if you become aware that there's an imbalance there's not a defined pathway to correct it it just struck me how much that was sort of coming full circle from the experience of those young programmers at atari forty years ago. To where where they are today if you read the complaint and now kind of skip back to some of.
Budget Arcade: Free to play gaming
"activision" Discussed on Budget Arcade: Free to play gaming
"Come out and support the people in the in the workers the employees of activision blizzard is. Because it's it's typically it's typically not peer to peer misconduct and if that is happening then typically it's not hard to get rid of and i'm speaking in general senses because You know human resources departments here in america are held to certain standard. And you know if something's brought to light to human resources human resources by law has to investigate it and enduring that investigation if something has proven to be legitimate then they have to take action and that's typically a fireable action. You know who you know. If you're you know cat calling a an employee at work you know being a creep You know just just be in a not good dude dude. I'm using dude as a as a a very generalized term. Dude can be a female as well mean. We had all these other developers and publishers. People on social media Extend their support for for these people working at activision blizzard and then in the past week they also staged a walkout the the employees of activision blizzard states a walkout and You know i guess in a in a show an it was a show of. Hey we're not gonna take these this story lightly While some of them may have never been a part of the story Most from what. I've read most of the employees have have banned together Some have met met each other for the first time at this walkout activision. Blizzard is very big company They have hundreds of of employees that probably never interact at all They're just in different divisions one one sides and marketing the other sides in in game development. And then there's a third faction that have just made up of artists that are just drawing doing storyboards. And and then you have your your Your higher level administrators. And so from what i've read most of this Comes about from you. Know middle management and just treating people unfairly Because they don't happen to be men or you know women in video games has always had a head a very oppressive arc. That's the public. Hasn't quite got on board yet every time it seems like every time you see a female gamer on the internet. They're they're getting you know sexual comments in you. Know in the comment section there or if they got a twitch stream you know they got the twitch stream is because they're getting too much of You know negative and sexual feedback and just just because they happen.
Esports Minute
Ubisoft Employees Say They've 'Had Enough' of 'Empty Promises,' Offer Solidarity to Activision Blizzard
"Employees of Activision Blizzard are in the back of their walk-outs in order to Garner more leverage to their cause another game development studio is seeing a similar situation. Arise almost five hundred employees from Ubisoft, signed a similar offer letter to show support for their fellows. In the industry out of Activision, Blizzard and tries to bridge the two groups of workers in order to stand together and in the future better address the issues of sexual harassment and misconduct Ubisoft has had their own series of sexual harassment, accusations stemming as late as last year in reports from Kotaku Ubisoft themselves. Admits The Talented employees are not as attracted to their company as they once were thanks to these kinds of movements.
Kinda Funny Games Daily
Activision Blizzard Employees Push Back Against Leadership's Lawsuit Response
"At activision blizzard. Inc are calling for a walk out on wednesday to protest companies responses to a recent sexual discrimination lawsuit in demanding more equitable treatment of underrepresented staff last week. California's department of fair employment and housing sued the publisher behind games. Like call of duty world of warcraft detailing disturbing incidents of sexual harassment and assault and a culture in which women faced unequal pay in retaliation. Active call the allegations false and distorted in a statement last week in france Executive vice president of corporate affairs sent a letter to staff echoing. The claim infuriated activists. Employees have spoken out on social media in more than two thousand staff. Signed an open letter calling for the company's response calling the company's responses abhorrent insulting. Now they're planning to strike. The walkout is being organized by a group of employees at the subsidiary blizzard entertainment where the majority of the lawsuits allegations were focused in a statement to bloomberg. The worker said the goal was quote are starting to go was to quote improve conditions for employees at the company especially women and in particular women of color in transgender women non binary people in other marginalized people. The strike will take place outside of blizzards campus. In irvine california on wednesday the employees are demanding that activision ditch mandatory arbitration clauses in all employment contracts current and future new practices for recruiting interviewing hiring and promotion that facilitate better representation agreed upon by employees in a company wide diversity equity and inclusion organization the publication of data on relevant compensation promotion rates and our promotion rates answer just four employees quote of all genders and ethnicities at the company. That diversity taskforce be allowed to hire a third party to audit the company's leadership hierarchy in hr department quote is imperative to identify how current systems have failed to prevent employee harassment and to propose new solutions to address these issues.
Esports Minute
Activision Blizzard Staff Sign Petition Supporting Discrimination Lawsuit
"Continues from the Activision, Blizzard lawsuit brought forth by the state of California. Now, news comes out of nearly 1,000 current and former employees. With the company, have all signed a joint letter saying openly that the words and actions of their leadership do not accurately reflect their values as employees. The letter is directly, addressed the high-level management and Executives and is a strong sign of the growing Rift between the higher-ups. The company hands off employees California's Department of Fair Employment, and housing is seeking compensatory and punitive damages with attorneys fees and whatever General Relief, the courts happen to decide on so far. Activision Blizzard has not. Responded will keep you updated on this story as it develops,
Wall Street Breakfast
E3 2021 Is Around The Corner And Here’s Everything You Need to Know
"Annual electronic entertainment. Expo is taking place in a virtual format this year. Nintendo microsoft's xbox ubisoft entertainment and capcom are all at this year's e three while sony and activision blizzard are skipping it xbox game studios halo infinite bethesda software star field ubisoft rainbow six quarantine as well as new games for the nintendo switch. We'll be some of the more closely watched. Titles a wild card to watch is whether ubisoft will tease out. Information about its open world star wars game
The Business of Esports
Call of Duty League and Overwatch League Loosen Sponsorship Restrictions
"Call of duty league and the overwatch league recently announced. They are loosening restrictions on the types of sponsorship deals. That franchises can make with outside companies. This means that both leagues will allow individual teams to obtain obtain sponsorship deals from previously excluded sectors such as gambling and liquor businesses. We continue to see signs of desperation from activision blizzard's franchised leagues. They had previously towed a very lofty family friendly line now that the leagues are struggling to generate revenue grow or attract an audience. It makes sense that previous ideals would be sacrificed for profit. It's unlikely that either league will lose much in the way of viewership as a consequence of this change and it should open up new revenue opportunities. But it's still stinks of
The Business of Esports
Call of Duty League and Overwatch League Will Allow Liquor Sponsors
"Of duty. League and overwatch. league loosened sponsorship restrictions will allow betting and liquor sponsors now. I don't remember if the article mentions this but activision blizzard especially has been very careful about the sponsors. They bring into both franchise leagues up until now they had rejected anything. That was even remotely like twenty one plus and so This is a big course change for them. And i'm curious what you guys think in terms of the why and what do you think the implications might be here. Okay so i actually I had you guys a different uncle this week. And i'm not sure if you've got a chance to read it. But essentially the article was about how sponsors were pulling back over the sponsorships and looking at streamers instead So let me look up the actual article. But i thought that and i knew you guys working. Read it because it's called gaming influencers future. These aren't there was actual stories in here Houston outlaws player. Who actually quit. Went to tweeden like needlework. Money that of the united talent agency said streaming the way for companies to make money off of e sports athletes There is a looking now How are you tying this back to different. Yeah no i'm saying that like you're seeing streamers and other people's specifically leaving overwatch lee to go seek other making opportunities so adding in sponsorships or things like liquor and betting that might actually be attractive to younger audience or way to engaging gradients seems like owning these sponsors will bring a younger audience to their franchise. Yup yeah
Talking Tech
Ready for a Summer Games Fest?
"So mike you remember when we used to go to the electronic entertainment expo and see a bunch of new video games. Yeah seems like another lifetime ago. It's been nearly two years since last time i was. I was in los angeles for the annual e. Three industry convention obviously last year. It was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic and to fill in the void. Our pal jeff keely created this summer fest which was a series of online streamed events including a preview of playstation five and a bunch of games. And now if you're into games you've probably heard jeff who began covering the industry as a teenager and then in later years began producing the game awards in two thousand fourteen which many of equated to the academy award for video games. Well this summer. He's going to produce the summer games fest again and kicks off june tenth so far participants include Playstation xbox activision to k amazon games electronic arts epic games riot games tencent games and newbie soft. And there's more but that's that's that's gives you an idea it's going to be really well supported and then there's a new. A new independent games will be highlighted in something called days of the davos. Which is a showcase produced by eight bit and double fine productions which is one of our favourite game developers and they've made some super games including full-throttle second thoughts and grim fandango. I'm not sure if you're a fan or not but rock band. Weezer live on this june tenth broadcast. And you can watch on all the major streaming platforms including twitch twitter youtube. We have all the links in my story on tech usa. Today dot com they'll be more musical performances and special guest announced in the coming weeks jeff said and in the announcement came out. But what's really going to be. Interesting is if when and how the summer games i might conflict and come right up against e. three which is back this year but we'll be all online and streamed.
Esports Minute
DIG Releases a Valorant Roster
"Has released its men's game roster the organization announced today. The news was initially reported by georgetti's for daily e Sports and up, and was later confirmed by dignitas cap and Rory deaf Jackson dead set on Twitter that dignitas plans took out of Ballard for the time being dignitas. Then made the official announcement just minutes after death post. The orc said it's working to find new homes for the players, but it's still committed backing into women's volleyball roster, which also competes in Counter-Strike. The men's roster has struggled to produce any meaningful results besides a semi-final finish and pop flash this past August and a grand finals appearance at a Pittsburgh night's event near Christmastime the team had failed to make any kind of a deep run across any other event and disappointingly didn't qualify for any of the challengers events as part of the ballot Champions Tour first stage the now-former dignitas players plan to compete together as a bug Squad at the next stage of the game. The open qualifiers begin
Esports Minute
Activision Blizzard Hires Controversial Former Trump Admin
"Blizzard is hired former Trump Administration officer and controversial former member of the State Department Brian bulatao to oversee the Call of Duty endowment program at the company according to an internal email obtained by Kotaku bullets out is the name under Secretary of State for management at the US Department of State for former President Donald Trump before his role with the Trump Administration. He was a leading official in the CIA controversial Activision Blizzard CEO, Bobby kotick announced via email that pull a towel was leading the state Department's Talent diversity and inclusion efforts Business Insider reported that bullet L. Held a key role in deflection of an independent probe into misuse of government resources, according to an Activision Blizzard. Spokesperson. Brian will have management responsibility for Consumer products group as well as other logistics wage. This area's cocuk described bulatao as an unparalleled combination of business military and government experience and Activision Blizzard supposed person has confirmed the higher and offered, it will tell will not be involved with the leadership of any Esports initiatives at the company
Esports Network Podcast
How Lessons From Esports Past Drives Esports Future with Repeat.gg CEO Aaron Fletcher
"This audience. So Eric go through the companies you found it quite a few there are plenty of starts across this industry. What advice can you give to some one of the first steps of fouling their own Esports or gaming company that you wish you do when you were starting out darn raised before you have Mom don't do anything until you have markets it it's it's that's it. That's purely it. I guess there's two things and don't be a dick but the the biggest one is definitely until you have some formal Market 5th and you can find out if you go to market fit pretty quickly just talk to people ask questions find the right people finding users find those things find out how much they willing to pay find out if they're willing to basically walk or use your product find out all these sort of things and grow that first before you start thinking. Oh, this is amazing. This is going to work cuz I think there's there's and and then I guess the other one actually is learned from birth. Past experiences and a lot of people don't do that, especially with a t Sports because the history have a have a chat to someone like either myself or have a chat like don't talk to someone who's a consultant that's been in the year in in the game two years talked to someone who's being in the industry for twenty years because they will tell you a lot more valuable information than someone who's been in there for two years and only knows about the currency because the current scene it's all about raising this big money about raising this big capital and you don't get the history of like the companies like tournament.com the raised a hundred million dollars and went broke over six months. You don't have seats need a CDL or CTS. I think it is that raised a hundred million dollars as well and we're broke after a year-and-a-half. You don't have all of these kind of things and we're play verse was as an example before they became what they raised what they are now off and that that you kind of could find on the internet even though I know the history there and there's a lot of other companies like that that you'll that you you only get from the perspective of people that have actually been in the industry because people have a game Get it either scrubbing the internet or it's just hard to find anything that isn't relevant now absolutely agree. It's the same advice. I give to student journalists. I talked to quite a few classes about hey, what could you do any sports journalist? What if we want to get involved in this space? And the first thing I tell them is get to know the history of the space get to know everything that happened with Major League Gaming from 2002 to 2010. That's where the start get to the creedy sports Association how this developed in Asia and that will guide your accurate reporting on this space if you understand what happened long before you probably got involved in it that was the case for me cuz we got a school, you know, I was in the 2015 2016 range was like, oh massive Madison Square Garden League of Legends. This is crazy thing off you go back in time and you're like, okay, let's look at the Madden tour bus as like an example of where it's these things that happen is sports over the time that I think are really crucial job. Like understand how we got to the place where at today and then helped give you those guiding lessons to make sure that the same mistakes aren't made. Well MLG an ESL at two really good examples of understanding their Acquisitions why they happened what happened with the issues they ran into especially MLG with God Frank cuz they had a whole pile of litigation issues with God frag when they did their acquisition why they got acquired by Activision and wage. It's it's an interesting story. That's probably better for another time. But in terms of those sort of things and that history that was kind of built there is actually really important because getting a quiet is a skilled gaming platform different platform broadcasting platform any of those by a publisher is a huge problem from both illegal Nightmare and a whole pile of other things because the skilled gamer is 18 plus as well as the tournament system requires 18 plus or Parental Guidance cetera, et cetera. So it becomes a Minefield on those sort of things and then you've got ESL same thing going through their acquisition and the different times they are now with mods. This group and and the difference in the kind of the company structure cuz everyone says he s l and they see these companies and they're like, they must be making it a billion dollars and I'm like, yeah doesn't look like that. It may seem like that from the outside cuz they're doing these large events and they're doing these things. But in terms of the revenue is not driven as much as you kind of think from that. It's really driven through the Publishers. Yeah, if you're done if you're not the publisher gave and you work a t sport chances are the money is not flowing your exactly there's only a few Outlets the kind of work and I've been in basically every single facet of that because I used to run events with the young. I used to run a lot of those sort of things with them for a long time. Actually u c l e s w c w c g a lot of the events around those and running those Live Events is is great. But it's like a break even marketing cost. It's not a it's it's what you'll use to fuel income elsewhere. Not what you're used to make money lost leader marketing basically at this point. Yeah, exactly. That's it's a funny industry to be it especially as we look at where these Sports organizations are going. This is totally off topic. By the way. Just the I had em for this wasn't for a podcast but I talked to Jason Lake in Andy Miller Jason Lake complexity CEO Andy Miller NRG CEO for audience. I do you do that. They were basically talking about hey, we're going to make Revenue eventually with our religious the Publishers of Olives. That's that's what we're counting on to make money in the mean time. We're going to keep building our brand up in whatever way we can we're to keep trying to capture feds. But really we just need to log get to a point where Publishers need us to enter the game because that will bring fans that will bring the marketing there looking for and then the Publishers have to reward us for doing so and that's kind of just walk the biggest eastwards organizations in the world see this space right now and that's it tells a lot. I think it will you actually have a look at most of these Sports organizations or actually converting from competitive Play De comme Recreation almost all right, converting over to that for Revenue basis cuz I've talked to a lot of these guys you have come like you've got Team Liquid as an example of trying to push in the text side of things cuz we've talked to him a few times about what they're doing for Thursday. We also consulted with the guild who raised with David Beckham, or they paid David Beckham to re it was it was a debacle. It was a drastic they they they are doing a good job. I think they really heavily like ninety percent of the money that they raised is purely attack. It's not to do to build out the team and build out anything on that account on the arm competitive site is secured purely build out both the content side as well as a Tech play on them because of the end of the day all this content and everything that they're creating in these fans and these users they need to figure out a way to monetize them and monetizing them generally comes through like merchandise. It comes through tourneys to come home a brand deals. And unfortunately, if you're the best game in the world, it doesn't mean you have a massive following you may not be entertaining to watch. So therefore content creation becomes king for this and which dog And fuels Brands which in turn fuels everything else and like I just talking to so as as Consulting with IDC, I think like probably a couple of weeks ago. I was I was talking to them cuz they're doing metro sports at the moment and it was a pretty interesting conversation cuz they're one of the first companies that isn't Yuzu that isn't that they're doing it. They're doing Esports Revenue a very different way. So Esports Revenue right now is off late. It is how much so it's like one point two billion or something. It's basically nothing compared to the publisher revenues like a hundred and sixty billion. So and that's where most of the revenue from E Sports is actually going. So what they're doing is they're doing a bottom-up kind of approach and looking at all of these other things that are kind of skewing it. So right now Esports revenue is calculated with just brands that are paying for events and advertising and all the way around that around which basically whereas they're looking at it from the other side of things and they're like, look, there's all this gambling Revenue that's also generated on top of Like betting on these matches and all this this looking that's that's showing any sports revenue and you've got companies like skills that their revenue alone for skills is bigger than the revenue of every single e sports team exists in the world in his voice. That's
Esports Minute
Activision Blizzard's New Research Highlights Value of Esports Sponsorships
"Throughout the 400. Episodes of this podcast. I've spotlighted quite a few smart brand sponsorships for Esports. That's because without other revenue streams you off brand Integrations are crucial to e-sports continued growth sponsors deliver insane value in traditional Sports and they can feasibly deliver that same value to e-sports with continued increases in viewership wage. According to research published by Activision Blizzard. Today e Sports sponsorships are actually more valuable than traditional Sports sponsorships in a few key areas first up. Here's how the research was conducted considering a is clearly a bit biased in the Pro e Sports side of things they brought in market research firm alter agents as well as Neuroscience experts from immersion. The research was conducted in late 2020 and features. Surveys of Esports and traditional Sports viewers from 16 to 40 years old. They also held interviews with participants and the neuroscientists utilized immersions platform to study emotional response to the ads so clearly some big third parties involved in this so it's not just Activision Blizzard being like a sports sponsorships are great, which we all expect them to say data indicated three major findings, but they didn't say if these were the only things they were looking for as they're all positive on the Esports side. It wouldn't be that hard to have a negative Esports finding and just not published that one so I think that context is a little bit important. But with that being said, here's what they did find. The first finding e Sports is better keeping viewer attention during sponsorship ads resulting in higher performance on critical brand metronome. The second finding e Sports viewers are more accepting of advertisements than traditional sports fans showing a higher emergent score, which is defined as attention plus emotional response dead. And the third finding brand favorability and brand perception are higher for Esports experiences compared to traditional Sports and those findings have been backed by anecdotal experiences for myself and my name of the guests on the E Sports Network podcast, but having a true survey is cool to see in general Esports has two big things going for it one. There isn't nearly as much crowding for sponsorship spaces. If you look at the the traditional Sports stadium and you'll see 30 brands or more Esports usually has a handful of more ingrained partners and two brand Partnerships are seen as crucial to allowing Esports to exist at all sports could totally still exist without braids in Esports. Probably not they make up a much larger slice of the revenue pie. That means viewers are more receptive to ads because their favorite player or orange Billy to exist might depend on that a door that bred integration given e Sports ability to reach a tough, but sought-after demographic and it's no wonder brands are flocking to e-sports opportunity wage.
Kinda Funny Games Daily
E3 2021 may be digital as ESA says it’s ‘transforming’ the gaming showcase
"Of the essays planning for a digital e-3 and twenty twenty one is from andy robinson at video games chronicle according to three twenty twenty one pitch documents set two games games. Publishers and seen by the essay has now outlined proposals for this year's event which would see three days of livestream coverage held during the previously announced dates of june fifteenth june seventeenth. The essays intention is to hold multiple to our keynote sessions from games partners. An award show a june fourteen preview night and other smaller streams from games publishers influencers and media partners the broadcast event would be supplemented by media previews the week before as well as demos released on consumer platforms. According to the esa's proposal. The essay also says it'll allow partner companies to remotely stream playable game demos to the media across thousands of scheduled meetings with one to one assistance from developers. Many companies have used similar on demand streaming solutions during the pandemic to allow them to allow the media to remotely play their games for preview purposes. However the three hundred twenty one plan still require the approval of essays membership which is made. up of. The industry's industry's biggest games. Company is and who has significant influence over the direction of the show. The essay was already facing significant pressure to reinvent three with several major publishers including ea. Sony activision having abandoned the event in recent years and thous before twenty twenty s cancellation after which many companies such as e. and ubisoft enjoyed success. Running their own digital events
Esports Network Podcast
Where Esports is Going with Nick D'Orazio, Inven Global's Director of Corporate Strategy
"So that's a really what type of content I'm trying to push in the future for Esports. I want it to be more of that and less of the same. I love that. I love that Esports is dead. So unique and and you bring up Sports and how Sports is takes on a level of everything that goes around. It is very interested and that's going to be very obvious this weekend with the Superbowl happens in American football a hundred million. People are going to watch that maybe ten million really care about football twenty and the rest are watching for commercials. They're they're watching to eat snack also day. They're watching for the halftime show. Whatever that looks like. That's where Sports exists and it's also where e Sports is definitely going and with more focus on the dispatch. Tags that come around with culture the see the awesome sneakers that are that are made that come out with like like OverWatch characters or overwatch's eyes or e-sports designs. Even that's the kind of stuff. That is so cool to me and I think we're good to see if we are seeing more and more of it and Esports and places like invent culture have really done a great job of highlighting it. Well. Yeah, and you know, it's off the expression of these fandoms, right? It's it's more than just like individual a posturing right like yes in my home right now as I look around I'm surrounded by video game art and video game fan aren't and all my favorite games, right? There's one aspect of it is that I like to be I'm around the things that I enjoy in the art that I like, but the other act and y m e Sports and gaming is certainly headed towards being expressed through the culture of fashion the culture of Art and music and I do think eventually Decor. We're already seeing that with God B&R slash Battle Stations and the aesthetic gaming a movements right? You you see that there is how do you put this? There's an underlying set of core. Hm. This is how I can experience this esport, right? This is how I can experience this game. And if I meet someone who has that shared. Oh, I also like to experience this game in this way. I also like to experience this fandom in this way that builds friendship that builds me like a meaningful. I'm communities and then these communities are the people that go towards your conventions that go to your tournaments, right? It's the same way in which every good football a culture shock and your your city usually has a bar like associated with it or like an after-game bars or like big, you know, a downtown hubs. It's because it's more than just the game and Esports is constantly, you know, keep talking a little bit before we hit on record e Sports is always worried about its Revenue stream, right? Where are we going to get this revenue from and you know, the answer is simple get more people interested in this page. Parts and find more ways to maximize the Esports a user experience. We've already learned from Starbucks that people will be fine with paying $4 more for coffee because it feels like an experience and it feels worth it. And it's nice thing people will be fine paying more for Esports. If we find out how to make it a premium experience how to make it something that lets them experience more things than just, you know, like to throw shade the same talking head style analyst people hurriedly a commenting over, you know, like any sports match and that being it that's the height of how long an experience your love for this game and and the players and this goes for you know, any major use for it. I think at all Rings true. I definitely agree and it was actually something that I don't know if he would have seen this played out in the way. I was hoping to with the Activision Blizzard franchise leagues and the way they went from City to City and now that really never took off because of covid-19. Both leagues have their own. Set core issues. But what I was really excited for was to see how all these different teams and all these different cities started running events and and the different things that popped up around those events. Like you mentioned the the bar that people Gather in. What is the lasting impact of being able to go City to city and start really putting roots of fandom down that was something I was really excited to see we never really got to see it. Well, I'll tell you this now the OverWatch League was a fairly it was an eye-opening experience for me. I thought it was like a crystal ball being a journalist and covering that it allowed me to see into the future of Esports cuz I covered every day of season one. I was there in person at the house at the arena didn't miss imagine. I interviewed so many of the players the fans. I was just there most importantly I was there and what I learned, is that the atmosphere Is very fun when you're waiting in line. It's very fun. When you're shuffling in and you're in the gift store and it's fun when you sit down and the and the team's walk in but after that it becomes like a strictly worse twitch viewing experience for then if you were just your house and you know, it's like I've seen this by faith. Like I I know this this isn't an opinion. This is a fact and it was exhausting showing up there. Even for the super fans and I saw them dwindle slowly and slowly but to your point about the Resurgence were made it all worth it is when the local gamer bar or a college, you know or student union or whatever realized. Hey, let's do an afterlife event thing or let's do a pre-event thing or let's start having these team homesteads, right? Like the problem is because they were ran by small teams. And you know who didn't really there was a lot of concerns about Thursday. Safety and things like that cuz you know, it's a blizzard. They are a big Corporation and they need to have it really spic and span cuz it's like a game for teens and all that. They were way to a closed-off right if more people knew that these Regional fan meet ups and things were happening more people would come but they didn't quite know how to Market it. So, you know, I will say that I am agree covid-19 put a stop on a lot of that right? It's hard to even continue with that but I'll also say that, you know, it's too little too late when it comes to something like the over in the mass of investment. That was you know, it's sad when you think about how many millions of dollars they put into that Arena and the teams and each of those orgs and all those invest, you know, paying what twenty million dollars per lead spot but like players salaries all of that. It's sad to think that at the end of the day the thing that had the most in in my opinion potential and scale and was dead. Most Community good was what resembled grassroot Esports what resembled if they had never done the league at all. And if they just made OverWatch a very friendly, you know public API game in which people would love to build a custom a tailor-made esport that the community accepts but we didn't get that. We instead we got a league and it you know, it didn't