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(Image credit: Bloomberg (GEtty Images))
Kotick has been a controversialfigure in gaming, quickly building up a reputation as a ruthless capitalist—like whenActivision-Blizzard sued Double Fineover Brutal Legend, prompting the studio’s founder Tim Schafer to call him a “total prick”. There was also adisastrous interview with Varietywhere he denied the allegations of sexual harassment problems at Blizzard as an “aggressive labour movement”—as well as a harrowing instance where he reportedly threatened anemployee via voicemail in 2006.
A spokesperson later told the WSJ that the voicemail was “obviously hyperbolic and inappropriate” and that he “deeply regrets the exaggeration and tone in his voice”. Still—he’s gone now. After 32 years, some former developers are singing ‘ding and dong’ with a side of ‘the witch is (metaphorically) dead’.
Andy Belford (a former senior manager in community development at Blizzard) took to Twitter a few days ago to break his silence on the man himself, particularly regardingOverwatch 2’s disastrous Steam launch. The game’s Valve debut came at a time of seething community sentiment, sinking its overall review rating to “Overwhelmingly Negative”. A black mark that still hasn’t been washed away.
“When we planned OW2’s steam launch, my team warned (months in advance) that we were going to be review bombed,“Belford writes. “We begged for more information, more details, and more resources to help us with the anticipated influx, all flatly denied.”
That review bombing came from a flood of players with some (understandably) bottled frustration—a disappointed community’s first opportunity to tear into thesteady declineof a game they’d once loved. It seems like Belford and his team saw that meteor coming from lightyears away.
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Belford points outthat this wasn’t just some one-time incident, either. It was, according to him, emblematic of the way Kotick ran things. “This is only one example … shit flowed downstream, usually landing on the lowest paid and most overworked individuals. Management was too busy reacting to wildly vacillating direction and decisions that made zero sense.”
Belford certainly isn’t alone. Aformer Call of Duty developerChristina Pollock also chimed in, stating in no uncertain terms that he “made our games worse”.
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