Activision - Why They're Hated

[Music] i made this video called electronic arts why they're hated and one of the comments under that video stood out to me it said frankly activision blizzard is just as bad if not worse they fly under the radar more than ea manages to and there were many others expressing similar feelings i think you would agree that ea and activision are comparable companies they've had similar evolutions and today are viewed in a very similar way by the gaming community it's hard to know which is truly hated more than the other but ea is the go-to one to complain and make jokes about to me anyway it seems like they function as sort of a lightning rod attracting some of that negative attention away from the others and look i'm not trying to defend or put down either one of them but i have witnessed some pretty strong hatred toward activision and i think it makes sense to take a look and try to explain some of the reasons behind it if you're not familiar activision is one of the biggest makers of video games they've been behind some of the most successful franchises that the industry has ever seen i am talking about guitar hero destiny tony hawk's pro skater and well of course a call of duty in 2008 they made a deal that made them the owners of another popular video game publisher called blizzard which gave them control of all these other major titles including world of warcraft that deal helped activision leap ahead of electronic arts in terms of sales and still today by almost any measure activision remains the bigger of the two many people have disapproved of the merger and argue that they've been changing blizzard for the worst which i guess right there could be a potential reason to dislike them however to keep things simple i'm going to mostly ignore the blizzard end of things from this point and keep things focused on the activision brand i have identified five main reasons behind the hatred and i should say that the first one is easily the biggest to a point where the following four reasons could be considered extensions of it and that is their ceo bobby kotik it is a complicated issue because on one hand he is responsible for most of the things that people don't like about activision but on the other hand he is easily the biggest reason behind the company's success in fact i think it's a safe assumption to say that activision would not exist today without him i say that because in the early 1990s when the company was deep in debt losing money and in desperate need of direction he was the one who came in and he saved it he led a team that paid 440 000 to gain 30 ownership enough control to place himself in the position of ceo once he was in charge he made a bunch of changes that over the past three decades have raised the value of the company to tens of billions of dollars so before we get too deep into all of the hatred i think it's important to understand what was happening with activision in the days before bobby kodak and how he was able to save them the company goes back to 1979 a time when the video game industry was dominated by atari david crane worked for atari as a video game developer and i guess overall was feeling disrespected by the company see at that time each game was generally created by a single person and i think he was reasonable in requesting that the designers be credited on their games and even receive some kind of royalty payment based on how well their game sells but the management at atari wouldn't honor those requests so david crane and many of the other designers were upset about it it all escalated when atari sent out this memo that listed the sales figures for each game that they sold over the past year the intention of it was to let everyone see what the market responded better to so they'd be able to adjust their designs accordingly but it completely backfired in the words of david crane when i saw a memo that the games for which i was 100 responsible had generated over 20 million dollars in revenues i was one of the people wondering why i was working in complete anonymity for a 20 000 salary not long after that he and three other key designers named alan miller larry kaplan and bob whitehead left atari to start their own video game development company and i like this they called it activision so they would appear before atari alphabetically in 1980 they released some of their first games like boxing and checkers and by 1982 they had released some of their best sellers like river raid and pitfall actually pitfall was created by david crane himself and i know that because the designers were always giving credit for their games designed by david crane for activision and all of these games by the way were made for the atari 2600 they were the first company other than atari to make games for that system which made them the first ever third-party developer today most video games are not made by the company that makes the console and activision all the way back in 1980 it was the first company to break that tradition it was a strong start for them but things took a major turn in 1983 when the entire video game market came crashing down you could even make the argument that activision was somewhat responsible for it their success as a third party developer made a bunch of other companies want to enter that market by doing the same thing but instead of competing with activision based on quality most of them chose to take the easier route by competing with them on price before you knew it the market was flooded with all of these low quality brushed out titles that made the public shy away from video games in general from there activision was never the same they were forced to downsize all four of the founders left and they transitioned into making computer games because that was the stronger market at the time the computer games seemed like a logical step but from what i can tell they never had much success with it it led them to buy this company called infocom that was known for their very early text based computer games the following year they changed their name from activision to mediagenic when they started making software for business purposes when bobby codec took over i'm guessing he was more interested in that activision name than anything else because it still carried a reputation of quality right away he changed the name of the company back to activision he refocused on games and moved their headquarters away from their competitors in silicon valley down to los angeles he embraced that reputation by releasing some high quality well-received games by the later part of the 1990s they used that reputation to make deals with disney and other studios to make games using their characters they started acquiring competing developers and by the 2000s they were once again among the top of their industry so back to my list bobby kodig since he first took over he adapted this overall profit focused approach to running things this right here is the core of the issue right many of these video game companies give off the impression that their primary goal is to make money to squeeze as much from it from their players in any way that they can it's a tricky situation because in so many of these cases it seems like what's good for the company is bad for the players and i don't know if anyone represents that concept better than bobby cody he is like a hero to investors but a villain to the customers for example when he made this joke about how the company's goal was to take all the fun out of making video games obviously that's a statement that doesn't go over well with the players and the public in general but he made that statement to the investors where it did go over well so for the rest of my list i'm going to be talking about things that stem from bobby kodek and his profit-focused approach that have not been received well by the gaming community the next reason i have is lack of originality because activision sticks so closely to this model of investing all of their resources into proven profitable franchises as opposed to taking some chances by producing some new original stuff i mean you can see it how many call of duties or tony hawk's pro skater or guitar hero games have they released that are typically not all that different from the ones that came before it going back again a big part of bobby cody's initial comeback was releasing titles based on previous successes like zork or pitfall in that deal in 2008 when they took control of blizzard they received the rights to all of these video games and when referring to the ones that activision didn't want to continue bobby codex said with respect to the franchises that don't have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of over time becoming 100 million dollar plus franchises that's a strategy that has worked well for us see it's things like this that make me think he is embracing his role as a villain i understand that is their proven strategy but i'm sure there was a much gentler way to say it that doesn't include the word exploit either way there are many gamers out there probably many of the people watching this that would rather see something new and original come from activision rather than the 17th call of duty game my next reason is an extension of that ignoring franchises their strategy of exploiting franchises doesn't just prevent originality it also prevents them from pursuing beloved franchises that maybe don't have 100 million dollar potential spyro is a good example of this they acquired the rights to the franchise in that 2008 deal and have done very little with it the reignited trilogy in 2018 would be the biggest thing it remasters the first three games there was skylanders as well but the fans want more it is the same thing with crash bandicoot those original games made by naughty dog were the reason that i wanted a playstation in the 1990s obviously there have been some less well-received games that followed but activision took over the rights in 2008 and it took them about a decade to really do anything with it they canceled development of this game called crash landed that the fans were really looking forward to and it wasn't until 2017 when they released again this remastered compilation and then crash bandicoot fort it's about time in 2020 i'm just saying if you're a fan of these iconic playstation characters or something else that they own the rights to and refuse to utilize i imagine that you're pretty upset with activision for not doing much with them my next reason is a wrongful termination lawsuit that happened in 2010 now this is a crazy story see infinity ward is part of activision they are the video game developer that makes the call of duty games 2002 two of the founding members of it were vince impella and jason west well in 2009 activision was pushing to have their next call of duty game called modern warfare 2 to be released in time for the holiday season allegedly bobby kodek in activision promised a percentage of the video game sales to vince and jason and the entire infinity war team if they had the game done in time and they did finish it in time it came out in november and was actually one of the most successful releases of all time with sales of hundreds of millions of dollars almost right away that meant that vince and jason and the rest of the team were set to receive 54 million dollars from those sales a couple months later everything went south before any money was paid to jason and vince they were fired from activision which according to their deal meant that they were no longer entitled to the money those two claim that they were fired out of nowhere which led to a wrongful termination lawsuit activision claimed that the firing was justified because they were acting inappropriate and the word that was used was misconduct then activision filed a countersuit claiming that they wanted to get fired because they were working with their competitor ea to establish a new company separate from activision i don't know if that claim was accurate or not but they did in fact work with ea to start a new company called respawn within a few months of the firing that went on to create the popular game called titanfall i feel i should point out that this situation has some major parallels to what happened between atari and activision 30 years earlier you know just activision on the other side of it now and then the infinity ward employees came in with their own lawsuit against activision as well so the entire thing was a mess in the end activision settled these lawsuits for undisclosed payments each thought to be in the tens of millions of dollars no one outside of it truly knows what happened there it comes down to who you want to believe but the entire situation did not do much to help the public's perception of activision my last reason you know it had to be coming microtransactions i'm sure anyone who has spent much time playing something made by activision has encountered these they are certainly not the only company that does it but they are one of the bigger offenders again it fits into this category of things that make money are good for the investors but not appreciated by the players so there you have it 5 reasons united by a common theme as to why activision is so hated let me know in the comments how do you feel about activision are they just kind of following the trend of the industry or are they taking things a little bit too far it's hard to deny that they do put out some amazing games and maybe that's why a company that receives so much hatred is able to be so successful everyone's willing to put up with all the negatives to get to the positives let me know if you agree with that and any other thoughts you have about activision or anything else in this video leave them in the comments i'd like to hear what you have to say thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Company Man

Views: 1,136,844

Keywords:

Id: kc8q2PH_YXI

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 07 2021