Activision Blizzard News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

A former Activision executive has sued the publisher in California state court accusing the company of age discrimination and violating the state's whistleblower protection law, as reported by Law360.

Bobby Kotick was a controversial figure during his long tenure as the CEO of Activision Blizzard, and controversy, it seems, is continuing to follow him in the aftermath of his recent departure. More specifically, developers who formerly worked at Activision Blizzard studios have been speaking out on Kotick’s leadership adversely impacted the games they worked on.

Bobby Kotick’s last day at renowned gaming megacorporation Activision Blizzard was Friday, December 29th, 2023. He leaves with a $15 million… departure salary? In casual terms, it’s a “golden parachute.” He’s 60 years old. He’ll be fine. 

«Bobby [Kotick]'s decisions made our games worse,» a former Call of Duty programmer said on social media the same day Kotick completed his final day as CEO at Activision Blizzard.

Long-time Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick is leaving the company following its acquisition by Microsoft in October. Kotick will depart on 29th December, with Microsoft largely keeping the company’s core leadership intact outside of this.

Long-time Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick is leaving the company following its acquisition by Microsoft in October. Kotick will depart on 29th December, with Microsoft largely keeping the company’s leadership intact outside of this.

Microsoft announced that Activision Blizzard CEO is finally stepping down, effective December 29. He is not the only high-profile departure, though Microsoft intends to leave most of the company’s management in place.  

Microsoft has announced that Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, will be stepping down on December 29th. Instead of a replacement, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra and Activision publishing president Rob Kostich will report to Microsoft Gaming game content and studios president Matt Booty, per The Verge. Activision Blizzard vice chair Thomas Tippl is also leaving in March 2024 but reports to Booty till then.

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Controversial Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick will depart the company on 29th December, it's been announced.

‘Tis the season to be an Overwatch 2 player, as the latest Winter Wonderland event will soon be underway! This latest event brings not only fun new arcade games but also loot boxes filled to the brim with items sure to bring the holiday spirit to the players. 

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 publisher Activision Blizzard plan to end hybrid remote/in-office work for QA staff based in Minneapolis, Austin, and El Segundo next year, with employees who are unwilling to fully return to the office offered severance, in what the ABK Workers Alliance are calling the basis for a round of "soft layoffs".

Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard had to go through a nearly two-year long approval period before it was officially finalized in October, and throughout the process, Sony made it abundantly clear that it did not want the deal to go through. It’s no surprise, then, that newly leaked internal Sony documents have revealed (via Reddit) the extent of the company’s concern over the acquisition.

Activision Blizzard has agreed to pay more than $54 million (and an additional $47 million for affected employees) to settle a lawsuit filed by California’s Civil Rights Department in 2021. The lawsuit was filed over accusations of sexual and gender harassment, along with discrimination, including pay disparities.

Activision Blizzard is ending hybrid working for its QA testers in January, meaning employees are expected to work full-time in offices.

Activision Blizzard will pay over $50 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit filed by the state of California alleging that the video games giant discriminated against women by offering them lower pay and fewer promotion opportunities.

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As reported by VentureBeat, Activision Blizzard has agree to pay a total of roughly $54 million to settle a lawsuit in the state of California. The company was sued by California’s Civil Rights Department (CRD) in 2021 after reports emerged with allegations of widespread and systemic sexual harassment and racial discrimination against employees, and unequal pay for women.

Videogame giant Activision Blizzard is set to pay around $50 million to settle a lawsuit by a California regulator, a US news report said Friday. In 2021, California's Civil Rights Department sued the company, claiming leaders ignored staff complaints involving sexual harassment and discrimination. The lawsuit had a part in spurring Microsoft's acquisition of the company, noted the Wall Street Journal report.

Activision Blizzard will pay nearly $55 million to resolve its legal fight with the state of California over allegations the gaming company permitted a widespread and systemic workplace harassment. The state's lawsuit had alleged the maker of video games including World of Warcraft and Diablo had a ‘frat boy culture” and subjected women to unequal pay, constant sexual harassment, and retaliation. The video games maker will pay approximately $54,875,000 to cover direct relief to workers and litigation costs, the state's Civil Rights Department said in a statement Friday. About $45,750,000 of that money will go to a settlement fund dedicated to compensating workers.

Activision Blizzard has agreed to pay over £44 million to settle a 2021 sex discrimination lawsuit.

Activision Blizzard will pay a $54 million settlement to end a 2021 sex discrimination lawsuit.

A couple of months after Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the United States Federal Trade Commission has approached a federal appeals court this week to unwind the deal. According to CNN, the FTC has argued that district judge Jacqueline Scott Corley went too far with her ruling allowing the acquisition.

Destiny 2 developer Bungie are staring down the barrel of a full Sony takeover if forthcoming expansion The Final Shape doesn’t meet sales expectations, according to several anonymous current and former employees. The same sources also claim that the studio are prepared to cut staff again to meet their financial obligations as a Sony subsidiary, having laid off a significant proportion of their workforce in November.

Employees at Destiny 2 developer Bungie have said they feel anxious about their current status at the company, following layoffs earlier this year.

Blizzard fixed a severe bug introduced in ’s recent 1.2.3 update. The glitch caused all high-level players’ Glyphs to lose one level the same day Blizzard introduced a punishing new dungeon.

Activision Blizzard planned to open its own mobile game store before being acquired by Microsoft, court documents from the Epic Games and Google antitrust jury trial show.

Destiny 2’s endcap to its first 10 years of story will now land next June, as The Final Shape slips back by over three months. In its place will be an extension of the multiplayer shooter’s next season, plus some new features and content inbound to help tide players over.

Bungie will now launch its climactic Destiny 2 expansion The Final Shape on 4th June 2024.

If rumour speak true, the next Call of Duty game will be another entry in the Black Ops series. It'll also, allegedly, take place during the first Gulf War across 1990 and 1991, in which a US-led coalition of countries including the UK, Saudi Arabia and Egypt invaded Iraq in response to the Saddam Hussein government's conquest of Kuwait.

Activision has said its new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has broken multiple player engagement records, without providing any specific player numbers.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 developers Sledgehammer Games (umpteenth reminder: that's Modern Warfare 3 as in the 2023 game, not the 2011 FPS of the same name) have hosted a Reddit AMA in which they answered a bunch of questions about the evolution of the game's competitive meta. That's meta as in the overall balance of power between Modern Warfare 3 loadouts, playstyles and so forth based on a variety of factors such as map design, rather than the Alan Wake 2 kind of "meta", where characters talk about how they're just characters in a game and so on. I would dearly like to see some crossover between these types of "meta". I guess the Call of Duty that comes closest to fulfilling that idea is Black Ops 3, with its fourth-wall-breaking cyborg theatrics.

Overwatch 2 players have discovered a strange bug that essentially traps players against an invisible wall, stopping them from moving and leaving them exposed to competitors.

Things really start to get tough in MWZ when you reach Tier 5. Every mission has multiple steps with plenty to trip you up if you don’t know what to do. If you’re struggling, here’s our Modern Warfare Zombies (MWZ) Bring ‘Em On guide: How to eliminate a Special or Elite enemy.

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When Blizzard announced the Overwatch League in 2016, there were plenty of questions about how the esports league would actually work – but at the very least, you couldn’t fault the ambition.

The latest entry in Activision Blizzard's popular Call of Duty video-game series was made in half the time of previous iterations, a fact that may be contributing to a spate of bad reviews, according to people familiar with the development process. Critics have panned the game, the first big release since Microsoft Corp. closed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision last month, saying the storyline feels rushed. Most Call of Duty games are developed in around three years, but the bulk of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, which comes out Friday, was made in less than a year and a half, said the people, who asked to not be identified because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. The abridged production schedule proved stressful for the development team, they said.

Every so often in the course of our irregular series of Gamers Hate Thing posts, I like to chuck in a Gamers Love Thing post just to shake things up - though in this case, Gamers Love the Thing in question partly for not being another Thing they Hate, and the Thing they Love is something they Hated back in 2016. Erm.

Earlier this year, Activision Blizzardlaid off around 50 people and announced that after the current Overwatch League season ended, teams would have to agree to updated, amended agreement terms in order to continue operating or take a $6 million cancellation fee. Now, the Overwatch League days are over.

Activision Blizzard has announced the end of the Overwatch League.

After months of uncertainty, Blizzard is officially ending the Overwatch League as it transitions into "evolving competitive Overwatch in a new direction."

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer recently told a reporter that he considers PlayStation 5 and Switch users as part of the Xbox community. He made this remark in reference to Activision Blizzard games on non-Microsoft platforms.

Four of the biggest companies in the industry have been targeted by a lawsuit accusing them of enabling video game addiction.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3's short campaign may be getting mixed feedback, but it does at least feature a cameo appearance from the series' best canine boy.

People who play videogames want "new content literally almost every single day", according to Blizzard president Mike Ybarra - indeed, "they want new stuff every day, every hour". I do not want new stuff every day, every hour, Mike. Frankly, the idea makes me want to burn my possessions and go spend the rest of my life under a pine tree.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has revealed in an interview with Japanese publication Famitsu that he believes PS5 and Nintendo Switch players to also be part of the Xbox family, alongside Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC players.

On Friday, Blizzard Entertainment Inc. launched its latest mobile game called Warcraft Rumble. It is an action-packed game which takes players to the adventure of Warcraft universe. With the launch, the company also released a teaser of the game that has created a lot of buzz among mobile gamers. Excited to know about the new game? Check what Warcraft Rumble is bringing to the gaming enthusiasts.

Overwatch 2's next hero is Mauga, a chaingun-loving tank that seems reminiscent of Team Fortress 2's Heavy. He's due to join the free-to-player shooter in Season 8 on December 5th, but you can also give him a go right now until November 5th in a limited-time trial.

BlizzCon is back — as an in-person event for the first time in four years — and Blizzard kicked off its opening ceremony with a bit of an Overwatch 2 blowout, including a reveal for the series' 39th hero, chaingun-wielding tank Mauga.

There's a new Blizzard game available today, very slightly earlier than planned.

After a week that's seen significant layoffs at Bungie, as well as reports of a delay for Destiny 2's The Final Shape expansion, the studio has told players «we know we have lost a lot of your trust» and promised to reveal plans to «take us all out of this Darkness and into the Light.»

With Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard finally complete, the company controls a larger than ever share of the game industry. According to CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft now plans to double down on game publishing and development.

Blizzard‘s Diablo IV hit Steam on October 17 and already has a “Mixed” user rating, with only 50% positive reviews. However, while many of these negative reviews seem legitimate, it also appears that Diablo IV is also suffering from review bombing.

The arrival of Halloween has brought a spine-chilling addition to the exhilarating world of Warzone. The Players are diving into the adrenaline-fueled adventure while chasing victory in the recently introduced Halloween-themed game mode, known as the Haunting Halloween. The event features exciting content, along with some spooky surprises that you’re not expecting.

The Haunting event in Call of Duty gives every mode in the game a Halloween makeover. On top of the Spooky aesthetic, we have plenty of new toys to play with, and one of those is the Bloodseeker Grenades. These new throwables are unique and will likely be a death sentence to your opponent. Here’s how to find and use Bloodseeker Grenades in COD Warzone and MW2.

Call of Duty and other Activision Blizzard games won't appear on Xbox Game Pass until next year. On the Official Xbox Podcast, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer claimed that players wouldn't be seeing a big drop of those titles immediately, due to the lengthy regulatory challenges the company faced in its buyout attempt. Since it was uncertain whether the acquisition would be approved by Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) until recently, Xbox wasn't able to do the groundwork for adding the catalogue to their gaming subscription service. Ahead of the deal's closure, Activision Blizzard confirmed on Twitter that the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and newly-launched Diablo IV won't be coming to Game Pass soon, but Spencer's statement covers older titles as well.

With Activision Blizzard officially part of Xbox, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has discussed some plans for the future in a recent Xbox podcast. He confirmed that no titles from the publisher would come to Game Pass this year, though 2024 is more reasonable, and the era of exclusive betas and skins for Call of Duty on other platforms is over.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has reiterated that future Call of Duty games—a franchise that now falls under the Microsoft umbrella thanks to its recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard—will have 100 percent parity when it comes to content on all platforms.

Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard surely hit its fair share of roadblocks in the approval process, but at long last, the deal was formally closed last week, with Microsoft officially welcoming Activision Blizzard King to Xbox. A deal of this magnitude is obviously going to have a significant impact on the industry for years to come, but where the immediate future is concerned, many will be hoping to see games in the Activision Blizzard back catalog being added to the Game Pass catalog.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said players shouldn’t expect the company to start adding Activision Blizzard titles to Game Pass soon.

Microsoft has revealed the next wave of titles coming to Xbox Game Pass for console, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Microsoft Corp.'s victory over US trustbusters seeking to end its $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard Inc. was a big moment on Tuesday — but London was where the software giant landed the bigger win.

Microsoft has completed their vast $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, less than half a day after the UK Competition Markets Authority (CMA) gave their approval to a revised package of concessions.

Xbox maker Microsoft closed its $69 billion (nearly Rs. 5,75,620 crore) deal for Activision Blizzard on Friday, swelling its heft in the video-gaming market with best-selling titles including Call of Duty to better compete with industry leader Sony.

Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s successful completion of its Activision acquisition, has released a Q&A covering how the company plans to use its streaming rights for Activision Blizzard games moving forward. Ubisoft gained the game streaming rights to the Activision Blizzard catalog as part of agreements made by Microsoft to gain the European Commission’s approval for the high-profile acquisition.

The UK’s Competition Markets Authority (CMA) has given the go-ahead for Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, accepting the tech giant’s modified deal and how it addresses concerns over cloud gaming competition. Microsoft could complete the deal within the next few days.

Ubisoft recently joined arms with Activision for streaming rights to Activision Blizzard properties like Call of Duty for the foreseeable future, and the French gaming giant has now offered some interesting insight when it comes to video game sales – thanks to a new blog post on the official Ubisoft website.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is finally complete, with the $68.7 billion deal gaining approval from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). In a new email to employees, CEO Bobby Kotick has confirmed that he will stay on until the end of 2023 to help with the transition.

In case you did not know, Microsoft now owns Activision Blizzard after announcing the plans over a year ago. With the merger now complete, Xbox owns some of the biggest gaming franchises, including Call of Duty, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft.

The last hurdle in ‘s acquisition of has been cleared as the UK regulator approves the deal after a period of consultation on the deal.

Microsoft has announced that it has — finally — completed its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the developer and publisher of Call of Duty, Warcraft, and Candy Crush.

Microsoft has officially welcomed Activision Blizzard to Xbox following the Competition and Markets Authority’s approval of the acquisition in the UK. The deadline was originally for October 18th and is for $68.7 billion. With its completion, studios like Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Blizzard Entertainment, King and many more are now part of Xbox.

After one year, eight months, and 26 days, Xbox has finally completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, meaning it now owns premium video game franchises including Call of Duty, Overwatch, and Diablo.

By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.

After initially blocking the deal, the Competition and Markets Authority in the United Kingdom has approved Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Following provisional approval last month, the authority has given the green light after the company announced the selling of cloud streaming rights for Activision Blizzard’s titles to Ubisoft.

The UK’s Competition Markets Authority (CMA) has given the go-ahead for Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, accepting the tech giant’s modified deal and how it addresses concerns over cloud gaming competition. Microsoft could complete the deal within the next few days.

launches on PC and current and last-gen consoles next month., including 4K support.

The road seems clear for Microsoft to close its acquisition of Activision Blizzard by October 18th, though the company still requires approval from the Consumer Markets Authority (CMA). It was provisionally approved by the authority following some alterations last month. While the jury is still out, people “familiar with the matter” say the changes won’t require another probe from the European Commission, says Bloomberg.

Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard is reportedly set to avoid another approvals process by the European Commission.

Activision Blizzard boss Robert Kotick indicated in during a recent townhall discussion that the company might be looking to bring back the Guitar Hero franchise, according to Windows Central. According to Kotick, this is largely thanks to the amount of resources that would be afforded to the company thanks to its acquisition by Microsoft.