Because he’s led some of the highest growth of any company of the last two decades and there’s extremely limited evidence that he knew what was going on at just one of his subsidiary companies (and the least profitable one at that).
Blizzard games don’t hold a candle to the money CoD, Madden, or Skylanders bring in. If Blizzard lets him go, someone else will snatch up his genius immediately.
What makes you say that? Every piece of info I encountered on the case suggests the opposite [1][2]
In addition to that Kotick himself has been involved in such cases before and is no stranger to getting rid of victims [3]
>In addition to that Kotick himself has been accused of sexual harassment in the past and lost a legal case over it [3]
I am not trying to defend Kotick, and am not saying his behavior then or now was alright. But the article you linked did not say he was accused of sexual harassment. And he did not lose a sexual harassment case either.
Instead the article says that a guy named Berg, with whom Kotick co-owned a private jet, was accused of sexual harassment by a former stewardess. Kotick was named in the suit because he co-owned the company that owned the jet and he was the one who eventually fired the stewardess, and that was alleged to have been wrongful termination out of retribution for reporting Berg's alleged misconduct. Kotick himself, unlike Berg, was not accused of sexual harassment in this case. (It seems the entire thing was settled out of court eventually).
The suit that was actually lost as per the article was a case brought by a former attorney for him and Berg, who sued them for non-payment of legal fees relating to the original sexual harassment case.
The craziest thing about this case is that a simple civil lawsuit apparently created legal fees of $1.4M dollars he then had to pay. It seems to me that the US legal itself is a giant extortion scheme.
> Blizzard games don’t hold a candle to the money CoD, Madden, or Skylanders bring in
You might be right that Blizzard game don't make as much pure profit. However, COD and Madden are prime examples of the bastardization of the video games industry, where companies are putting profits far ahead of making actual enjoyable games. Kotick is a pioneer in this respect, being the best in the biz at making games unfun reskinned garbage and making a mint while doing it.
IMO keeping someone like Kotick around for his money making prowess is extremely short sighted. One of these days people are going to pick up on the ruse. You can already see it with Blizzard's waning fanbase for games like Overwatch and WoW.
> IMO keeping someone like Kotick around for his money making prowess is extremely short sighted.
For a gaming company? Even the best-run gaming companies struggle to last a decade financially. If you’re a shareholder, you’re looking at these returns and realizing that this man is a unicorn.
Looks like returns are slightly below electronic arts (since 2009 anyway, around when Kotick started and after the crash), which seems like the best comp. EA has had two CEOs over that time frame. Maybe they were both geniuses too.
Blizzard games don’t hold a candle to the money CoD, Madden, or Skylanders bring in. If Blizzard lets him go, someone else will snatch up his genius immediately.