Bobby Kotick, the former CEO of Activision Blizzard whose employees famously started publicly shit-talking as soon as he was out the door, is reportedly looking for a new company to rule. Word on the street is that the company is TikTok.
According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Kotick approached several investors about forming a consortium of partners to buy TikTok if ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, agrees to (or is forced to) sell. The former Activision Blizzard chief is said to have pitched the idea to a table of potential investors in recent days, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Kotick has suggested that OpenAI could use TikTok to train its AI models if a potential sale goes through, the Journal reported. Neither OpenAI nor Kotick immediately responded to Gizmodo’s requests for comment.
The former Activision Blizzard chief has reportedly already reached out to ByteDance executive chair Zhang Yiming about selling TikTok. The wildly popular app’s future has recently been thrown into limbo after lawmakers advanced a bill last week that would ban TikTok or force its Chinese owners to sell its U.S. division.
President Joe Biden, whose campaign officially joined TikTok last month, has said he would sign the bill if it passed both chambers of Congress. Lawmakers have long expressed concerns that TikTok is a national security threat, stating that the Chinese government could force the app to spy on Americans or try to use its powerful platform to spy on Americans or influence U.S. public opinion.
TikTok has fervently pushed back against these concerns, stating it has not and would not ever share data on U.S. users with the Chinese government. TikTok did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
Kotick would be an unusual choice to take over TikTok’s reins. While he oversaw Activision Blizzard’s $68 billion sale to Microsoft, the former Activision Blizzard CEO was embroiled in controversy during his last years at the company.
The California Civil Rights Department (CRD) sued Activision Blizzard in 2021 for violating its Equal Pay Act and Fair Employment and Housing Act. Activision Blizzard denied the allegations in the state’s lawsuit and settled with the state for $54 million in 2023. In the settlement agreement, Activision Blizzard did not admit to any wrongdoing. The CRD also filed an amended complaint that withdrew the claims of sex-based harassment at the company.
According to a report by the LA Times:
A copy of the settlement — signed by both parties and reviewed by The Times — states that “no court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations that: there has been systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard,” or that “Activision Blizzard senior executives ignored, condoned, or tolerated a culture of systemic, harassment, retaliation, or discrimination.”
Kotick left Activision Blizzard in 2023 after 32 years at the company with a golden parachute of at least $15 million, according to Polygon. The day Kotick left, former employees decided to spill what it was like working under him. One employee said Kotick was to blame for Overwatch 2 being review-bombed on Steam by unhappy players despite begging for extra support from the company. Others were more blunt. “I worked on [Call of Duty] for two years as a programmer at Demonware,” former programmer Christina Pollock said. “Bobby’s decisions made our games worse.”
Update 3/21/2024: This article has been updated to note that the California Civil Rights Department amended its complaint against Activision Blizzard and that Activision Blizzard denied any wrongdoing in its settlement with the CRD.
Update 3/29/2024: This article has been updated to include language from the CRD settlement as originally reported by the LA Times. The word “Disgraced” was also removed from the headline.
