Photo: Kevork Djansezian (Getty Images)

Vince Zampella, General Manager of Respawn Entertainment and responsible for some of Electronic Arts largest franchisesspoke out on Twitter in support of transgender rights ahead of the start of Pride Month on June 1. for its relative silence on these issues.

“Trans rights are human rights,” Zampella tweeted on Tuesday. “It’s as simple as that. Respawn has grown on the principles of diversity, equality and inclusion and strives to uphold these values. Let’s be better humans.

Zampella was previously the co-founder of Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward and is currently the head of EA studios at the crossroads of Apex Legends, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Battlefield. The publisher has bet big on his vision and leadership, which now includes speaking out on pressing social issues where his employer has remained silent. Many developers, including some at EA, thanked Zampella in the comments to the tweet for expressing their support. Zampella did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The gaming industry veteran’s statement came after a meeting earlier today on LGTBQ+ issues led by EA’s DEI General Manager, Asha George, and EA Studios COO, Kate Kellogg, according to two sources familiar with the event. There, they again faced questions from employees about why EA wouldn’t take a public stance on topics like transgender rights and abortion rights.

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Sources said some staff were once again dismayed with the lack of clear answers from management, whose response again appeared to lean on the idea of abortion and trans rights lacking company-wide support. Kellogg and George effectively echoed chief people officer Mala Singh’s remarks from an internal company town hall a week ago.

“These are incredibly complex personal issues and an inclusive business means including all of these perspectives,” she said at the time, without specifying what other “perspectives” might be on issues such as transgender rights. Sources said Kellogg and George followed his lead in trying to focus the conversation on what EA can do to meet the individual health needs of its employees amid right-wing culture wars and attacks on human rights. ‘man.

The Battlefield publisher had once sponsored a Dallas Morning News ad alongside dozens of other companies condemning a grossly transphobic government order in Texas. “We are proud to join the Human Rights Campaign, along with other members of the business community, to oppose discriminatory laws and policies introduced in Texas, Florida and other states across the country,” he said. said in a statement. time.

However, neither that sentiment nor Zampella’s has ever been shared on EA’s website or social media. It’s in stark contrast to studios like Bungie and certain affinity, who haven’t been shy about taking a stand on polarizing issues that other game companies have apparently deemed too controversial to take a stand on. It’s not yet clear how EA in particular will reconcile its current silence with its Pride Month 2022 activities.

“Pride is not about ignoring this harsh reality to celebrate, pride is and always has been about celebrating in the face of hate,” the publisher said. written in a blog post at the start of Pride month last year. “We know we can do more for our LGBTQIA+ employees and players.”

Update 05/31/2022 7:41 PM ET: An EA spokesperson commented, “EA’s support of the LGBTQIA+ and trans communities is longstanding and enduring, and has been shared widely and publicly,” and provided a link to the link mentioned above. Pride 2021 EA blog post.

Photo: Christian Petersen (Getty Images)

The video game market is consolidating like never before, and Electronic Arts is hustling like everyone else. the Battlefield and Fifa The manufacturer recently pursued a merger with NBCUniversal and also held potential acquisition talks with Disney, Apple and other companies, according to a new report from Puck. While no deal is currently in the works, it doesn’t look like EA is planning to give up anytime soon.

“In recent years, as media companies have taken more interest in the growing gaming industry, Wilson and Electronic Arts have held interviews with a number of potential suitors, including Disney, Apple and Amazon, telling me sources familiar with these discussions said,” wrote veteran Puck reporter Dylan Beyers. emboldened following the Microsoft-Activision deal. Others say EA is primarily interested in a merger deal that would allow Wilson to remain chief executive of the merged company.

But it was apparently a deal with NBCUniversal that went the furthest. According to Beyers, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts was seeking to spin the entertainment conglomerate into a separate entity with EA, a version of the deal that remains current. EA CEO Andrew Wilson in charge of the new mega-company. Negotiations ultimately broke down over the price, however.

*dun-dun*

“We do not comment on rumors and speculation relating to mergers and acquisitions,” EA spokesperson John Reseburg told Kotaku in a statement. “We are proud to operate from a position of strength and growth, with a portfolio of incredible games, built around powerful IP, made by incredibly talented teams, and a network of more than half -billion players We see a very bright future ahead of us.

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Read More: Private equity eyes Ubisoft as next big gaming acquisition

Over the past year, there has been a frenzy of video game studio acquisitions, one that accelerated in January after Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two announced that it bought Zynga. for $12.7 billion and Microsoft announced plans to buy Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard for 69 billion dollars. Sony followed up weeks later with a deal to buy the studio behind Destiny 2, Bungie, for $3.6 billiona price that some analysts saw as massively inflated and possibly a sign of another mad rush for consolidation among the biggest players in the gaming industry.

During an earnings call in February, Andrew Wilson hinted that the company was focused on making acquisitions rather than acquiring. For proof, EA spent $5 billion last year it bought studios to increase its size. But now it looks like the publisher has aggressively pursued other ways to grow. Beyers reports that Wilson approached Disney as recently as March “looking for what sources described as ‘a more meaningful relationship’ than licensing deals.”

This news comes as EA has lost or dropped some of its biggest existing licensing deals. As the publisher recently revealed three new Star Wars games currently in productionincluding a new Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which is early 2023 release rumor, its exclusivity agreement with Disney for the Star Wars license will not be renewed when it expires in 2023. This has allowed competitors like Quantic Dream and Ubisoft to announce their own big Star Wars projects. EA also revealed last week that it was ending its similar 10-year exclusivity agreement with FIFA and that from 2023, to rebrand its successful football franchise EA Sports FC.

Whatever the future of EA, one of the main concerns about consolidation is its ultimate impact on the employees of these companies. Even though EA reported another profitable year, Kotaku recently learned that an estimate 200 customer service employees are laid off. According to four of the affected employees, their work is outsourced to cheaper third-party vendors in Romania and India.

Comcast, Disney and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Image: Activision Blizzard

Today, Activision Blizzard fulfilled its daily oopsie quota by blogging about how the publisher’s affiliates apparently used a special tool to help develop more “diverse” characters. He apparently thinks he can accomplish this without, I don’t know, talking or hiring marginalized developers. Why rely on pesky, fallible humans when we have powerful data to tell us we’ve reached enough diversity points to start a new video game culture war? The numbers don’t lie. I mean, look at this. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The well-designed graphic says it all, clearly and calmly.

Damn, I’m glad that technology allows us to solve racism, sexism, ableism and all the other problems facing video games. Who knew it was so easy? When former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan said he “would hate for diversity to ever feel flattering, like we just had this spreadsheet with a bunch of checkboxes,” Activision Blizzard really took that to heart. Alright, not really.

I’m being sarcastic, but in many ways it’s hard to contain how maddening it is. It’s not just that anyone thought such a complex problem could be solved with a glorified Dungeons & Dragons character sheet that makes no sense. And it’s not just that Blizzard is in the midst of a slew of ostensible “diversity” disasters right now, including allegations of sexual harassmentinability to recruit or retain marginalized talentand persistent union tensions.

But a number of people probably not only built this thing, but also wrote the blog, got interviewed for it, and then signed it off to share it with everyone. The reaction on the internet to the post and the tool it describes has been utter disbelief, and rightly so. Consider the fact that no one there saw this coming, amidst all the other complete PR disasters. What does this say about Activision’s real ability to address the endemic issues that have come under public scrutiny over the past year and that the publisher has repeatedly pledged to to resolve ? Right now, it looks like no one in charge is really capable of that, if that’s what they’re offering.

And make no mistake, this is a public relations disaster. I’m not just saying this because I disagree with the basic premise that you can, as the blog post states, use a handy, practical tool to magically “dissect their own assumptions” and quickly, avoiding “token characters” and achieving “true representation” by identifying “more diverse character narratives” that go beyond “mere appearance”. Humans struggle with these things not because we We’re mere mortals who can’t understand the primitive logic of 1s and 0s, but because getting to a better world is a painful process. You can’t speed it up. The moment you try to take a shortcut is the when you are no longer engaging with the real problem.

While addressing these issues may involve tools, Activision Blizzard has proven time and time again that it’s at the stage where it needs more education, guidance, and mentorship from real people with skills. non-technical to help establish a basic understanding of what diversity means before you can even think. on creating a tool like this. When a company like this it takes years to introduce a black woman in a video gameI cannot believe in good faith that he has the ability to “measure” what diversity is or means, let alone implement it well.

But even if we take the thing in itself, it makes no sense. Can you look at any of the visualizations shared in the blog post and tell me what they might mean?

Screenshot: Activision Blizzard

I guess there’s some logic to this, maybe logic that’s only explained and known to people who regularly use the tool, but even suggesting that you can list something like “capacity” is completely silly. What is ability 0? What does it mean when the image in the blog post says someone has “sexual orientation: 0.357”?

How can you put that in front of someone and not feel weird about what you did or what you say?

While hardly significant, the use case examples cited in the blog post will not be compelling to the average person. There’s Call of Duty Vanguard, a game that Activision not only tried to distance himself from, but the one that friends actively hate because it has diversity. Then his other example is Overwatch 2, a game that almost everyone asks, “Why does this exist?“Are these just reasons to set something aside? No, certainly not. But they add to the top of an already crappy pile. Nobody’s gonna say “Ooo, they used that to the Call of Duty that disappointed everyoneAgain, the levels of marketing failure here are unfathomable.

So yeah, it’s not the most compelling way to package what’s already a tough sell for people who want change but don’t think it can be achieved through representation alone. Nor for those other people who think just putting a woman in a video game is inherently too political.

But maybe it was inevitable. Technology is in many ways the most extreme manifestation of whiteness and capitalism, structures that actively invest in defining, codifying and ranking markers of identity in order to maintain power and profit. The marginalized are seen only when useful, and then only in the most degrading terms, for shitty ends. Identity is key to achieving these goals. After all, if you can develop a system for, say, defining things like gender or race, you can use that information to “inform” broader choices, like making sure your character designs are diverse from more complex way.

In reality, more often than not, such data is used to monitor, imprison and monitor identities that are put under the microscope, often by people outside their own communities. In this case, whether the entities collecting the data realize it or not, its most direct effect will be to better equip them to deflect criticism from the very parties they claim to want to hold accountable. It’s funny how it works.

Why hire more people of color when you have software that already tells you what to consider, or worse, that might make you think you already know what is what? Do you really have to think about your biases if the character you created spits out a 3, 4, and 5 on the computer’s diversity scale? Those are some pretty good numbers, man! Now that we’ve sorted that out, it’s time to spend some quality time develop realistic horse balls. Polish is king.

“The traits and metrics are applicable to broader entertainment verticals, including TV, film and literature,” the blog post read. “The only change required if used in these verticals would be the base traits, which would need to be calibrated to be relevant to the genre and universe in which each character exists.”

Activision Blizzard’s blog post ends by saying that ultimately it’s just a tool, and ultimately it’s always up to the people behind the wheel to make the choices. But not before betraying a more grandiose vision of a world that lives under the influence of its tool, and therefore of its master logic.

Image: Volition/Deep Silver

The video game industry is currently undergoing a tidal wave of consolidation, and Swedish holding company Embracer Group is using it to become one of the newest players in a rapidly shrinking space. A few years ago, most people had never heard of it. Now it’s bigger than rivals like Ubisoft and Capcom, and should get even bigger as it goes. picked up Square Enix’s Tomb Raider Studios and Marvel’s Avengers.

I wish there was a succinct way to explain what Embracer is and where it came from, but there isn’t. It started as a nesting doll of investment companies that started out in retail. It’s now a vast network of independent publishing branches and individual studios that make and sell every type of game you can imagine. The brainchild of Swedish businessman Lars Wingefors, Embracer was created in 2011 and bought out other game companies since.

It was originally called Nordic Games Holding and grew out of Wingefors’ previous experience in selling excess video game inventory to the international market. Instead of selling EA’s remaining games, Nordic eventually decided to start selling their own. First, he seized the assets of the Austrian publisher JoWooD (Gothic, SpellForce) during a bankruptcy in 2011, then in particular many leftovers from THQ (Darksiders, Homefront) in 2013, after which it was rebranded as THQ Nordic.

At the time, it looked like grave robbery, but perhaps even less lucrative. By now, it’s clear that Nordic Games’ ambition went far beyond just being a THQ zombie and giving the world Darksiders III. The holding company went public in 2016, renamed Embracer in 2019, and now has over 100 studios and publishers housing more than 10,000 employees, making it bigger than Activision Blizzard in terms of body count.

Pretty much the only thing the band did besides buy stuff was hold a sharply reprimanded the 2019 AMA with 8Chan. “I condemn any unethical content that this website represents,” Wingefors later wrote in its apology. “While no one within the THQ Nordic Group would ever endorse such content, I realize that simply appearing there implicitly felt like we did.”

Monday’s $300 million deal to acquire Crystal Dynamics (Deus Ex), Eidos Montreal (Guardians of the Galaxy), and Square Enix Montreal (Hitman Sniper) is one of Embracer’s most high-profile deals to date. . Along with securing the rights to things like Thief, Legacy of Kain, and over 50 other “back-catalog games” (i.e. Gex), the sale would also see Embracer’s ranks swell by 1,100 other game developers. But in purely monetary terms, it would be one of the smallest checks that Embracer investors have cut in recent years.

Here’s who else he recently bought:

April 2020: Port house Saber Interactive for $525 million February 2021: Borderlands maker Gearbox Entertainment for $1.3 billion April 2021: Ad-supported mobile game publisher Easybrain for $640 million April 2021: Star Wars Remaster Aspyr Media machine for 450 million dollarsAugust 2021: 3D Realms and seven other studios for 313 million dollarsDecember 2021: Asmodee, French publisher of board games and RPGs for 3 billion dollars

While mega publishers like EA and Activision rely on selling tens of millions of copies of a few annualized franchises, Embracer has been busy buying dozens of baskets and stuffing a few eggs into each. Its subsidiaries publish everything from Biomutant to World War Z. It owns 4A Games, which makes the post-apocalyptic Metro series, as well as Dambuster Studios, which made Homefront: The Revolution, and is the latest studio to be cursed with development. of Dead Island. 2, a sequel that’s been MIA for eight years. As well as reclaiming old THQ properties (it bought Kingdoms of Amalur in 2018), it added new independent studios behind cult hits like Ghost Simulator and Little Nightmares.

If you want to get a sense of the scale of Embracer’s acquisition rabbit hole maze, consider the mind-blowing case of the upcoming Saints Row reboot. The parody series of GTA was created by Volition, the famous studio behind Descent, Summoner and Red Faction. THQ acquired Volition in 2000. When THQ went bankrupt in 2013, Volition was sold to Koch Media and became part of Deep Silver. Summoner and Red Faction were sold to Nordic Games. In 2018, Nordic Games finally bought Koch Media as well.

In addition to reuniting old gaming IPs, Embracer attempted to reform long-defunct studios. Free Radical Design was formed by developers who worked on GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. In 2000 it released TimeSplitters. In 2008 it went bankrupt and was sold to Crytek. It went terribly, and eventually all that was left was sold to Koch Media. Last year, Embracer reformed Free Radical Design with the original founders Steve Ellis and David Doak to bring the “much-loved” TimeSplitters IP back to life.

When THQ went bankrupt, it seemed like a sign that there was no more room for midsize publishers in an industry dominated by first-party staples and $100 million blockbusters. Embracer’s strategy seems to confirm this. Instead of trying to be king of the hill, he’s going to be king of the rest. It rarely releases major games, but one of its bets occasionally hits big like 2021’s Viking survival sim Valheim.

Who knows how it will work. Hopefully this means the developers at Eidos Montreal can keep their four-day work week and we will eventually have another Deus Ex who does not have the fortune of an entire company on his shoulders.

Picture: Ubisoft

Private equity firms could start circling Ubisoft, Bloomberg reported Friday. The talks are early, but include interest from companies like Blackstone Inc. and KKR & Co. While not private equity, current and former Ubisoft developers Kotaku has engaged with interviewed over the past few months believe the company will eventually sell to someone in the midst of a falling stock. price and ongoing production struggles.

Bloomberg reports that Blackstone and KKR & Co., the world’s two largest private equity firms, have “investigated the French business” and have “a preliminary buyout interest” in Ubisoft, but the company has not. yet concluded “any serious negotiations with potential buyers.

According to Kotaku’s sources, Ubisoft has worked closely with several external consulting firms in recent years to audit various parts of its business. While companies will do this to become more profitable and prepare for the future, sources Kotaku spoke to suggest this is a sign that Ubisoft is trying to put its books away for a potential sale.

On a flurry of recent major game acquisitions, including Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two buy zyngasony buy Bungieand Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to absorb Activision Blizzard, it looks like a game of eat or be eaten for those left behind. EA CEO Andrew Wilson said as much during an earnings call earlier this year, in which he placed the FIFA publisher firmly in the camp of “big fish looking to eat game”. other fish”.

Ubisoft has been more timid about its survival strategy. When asked on his last earnings call why the French publisher had apparently received no interest in the offer, chief financial officer Frédérick Duguet said he would not speculate on why any offer had been made, before being corrected by CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemot. The company, says Guillemot, neither confirms nor denies “if” potential buyers had approached him.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 has been bleeding money and MIA for years. Picture: Ubisoft

If someone wanted to buy Ubisoft, they would potentially get it at a huge discount. The stock was above $110 per share in July 2018. It is now at $41. But they would still need to go through the Guillemot family, which is currently estimated at 15% of the market capitalization company of just under $5 billion.

CEO Yves Guillemot celebrates repelled a hostile takeover attempt by French media conglomerate Vivendi after securing funding from Tencent and others in 2018. But some current and former sources within the company now believe the 35-year video game industry veteran may be seeking an exit strategy.

They point the departure of his son Charlie Guillemot last year which means that there are no more parents to take over the family business. Ubisoft was also hit by a continuous wave of attrition among his senior talents. He continues to struggle with the aftermath of a consideration in the workplace for sexual misconduct which began in the summer of 2020. And some of its biggest projects continue to face upheaval, delays, or being trapped in development hell.

Like Bloomberg communicated in February, Ubisoft has decided to turn one of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s planned DLCs into a standalone interim game instead to help fill holes in its release schedule over the next 18 months. In the meantime, the next Far Cry, Ghost Recognitionand full-fledged Assassin’s Creed games remain further away than Ubisoft previously anticipated, according to three sources familiar with their development.

When asked for comment, a Ubisoft spokesperson sent Kotaku the following statement:

We do not comment on rumors or speculation. Ubisoft has unrivaled creative and production capabilities, with more than 20,000 talented people collaborating in our global studios on game development. Thanks to them, our long-term approach and our appetite for creative risk-taking, we have built some of the strongest proprietary brands in the industry and have many exciting new brands and projects on the horizon. We also have one of the industry’s most comprehensive and diverse portfolios of cutting-edge services and technologies, and a large and growing community of engaged players. As a result, we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on the rapid industry growth and platform opportunities that are emerging right now.

Correction: 4/23/22, 1:51 PM: A previous version of this article referenced the wrong Ubisoft stock symbol.

Image: Blizzard

Blizzard’s 2021 has been a year marked by low spots, with the company plagued by toxic workplace allegations and shaken by the departures (and layoffs) of several key personnel. Now, with a new year and likely a new owner as well, President Mike Ybarra outlined Blizzard’s plan to “rebuild your confidence.”

In a message posted on company website, says Ybarra, “2021 has been a challenge for all of us.” He continued: “As individuals, we care about treating everyone around us with respect and dignity. As professionals, we care deeply about our jobs and want to work in the most supportive and safe environment possible. Our top priority, now and in the future, is the work we do to rebuild your trust in Blizzard.

“I was also encouraged to read forums, social media posts, and emails from people inside and outside of Blizzard, to stand up for what is right, and to give us your advice.” , he adds. “I want you all to know that we are listening and committed to change.”

To that effect, he says Blizzard is implementing a number of new policies and personnel changes, including bringing executive compensation closer to “improving the culture” and instituting an “upward feedback program.” so workers can “have confidence in management’s assessment.”

We measure our leadership and management teams directly against culture improvement. This means that their success and compensation (and mine) will directly depend on our overall success in creating a safe, inclusive, and creative work environment at Blizzard. We are devoting more full-time roles and resources to improving our culture. Too often, this important effort falls to employee resource groups, made up of people who are already in full-time jobs. Here are some of the leadership positions we’ve created for this new team: a culture manager who will help us retain the best aspects of what we have today, and change and evolve as needed to ensure that everyone brings their best to Blizzard, a new organizational human resources leader who will build trust, empower our teams and help foster a safe and positive work environment for all, a diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) uniquely focused on our progress across multiple efforts in this area. We are committed to staffing these teams as a priority. We tripled the size of our compliance and investigation teams and defined clear accountability for unacceptable behavior. This applies to all Blizzard employees, including management and management. We shared representation data internally with our teams and set targets for improving these metrics. We have implemented an upward feedback program so that employees have confidence in management’s assessment. , and we will use it to measure the quality and effectiveness of our managers.

Beyond Blizzard’s workplace issues, Ybarra also says, “We know we need to deliver content to our players on a more regular basis and innovate both within and beyond our existing games. We have exciting things to announce, and I’ll tell you more next week.

These are certainly steps forward, but they will also be meaningless unless they translate into tangible improvements in the workplace itself, which we (and employees) will have to judge in due course. . It is also important to note that for all the changes described above, none of them include requests made by ABK Workers’ Alliance for things like pay transparency or, more importantly, independent audits (all of Ybarra’s points above relate to internal solutions).

And who knows what Microsoft’s purchase will do to those plans and positions, once the new ownership takes effect..

Photo: FREDERIC J. BROWN (Getty Images)

Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard was new capital today, both in terms of the magnitude of the case and its shock value. But we shouldn’t be too surprised. It was inevitable. A handful of companies have always wanted to own it all, and nothing will stop them.

The proposed sale – the technicalities dictate that I must remind you that it has yet to be approved – involves some shocking numbers. $70 billion is counterfeit money, a fictitious sum normally reserved for national budgets and defense agreements. The union of these two companies, with all these properties and all these games, alongside a home console and a massively popular subscription service, instantly changed the entire shape of the video game industry.

But a deal like this was always going to happen sooner or later, and if it wasn’t Microsoft and Activision, it would have been Sony and EA, or Tencent and Ubisoft, or someone else buying something else. Because that’s how it works. Video games are trapped in the same hellish systems as everything else on this planet, and are subject to the same cruelly unfair, almost dystopian rules.

It’s all about money. All. It’s all about steady growth, rising stock prices and dividends, while everything for us as people who love to play games gets worse, from exploitative microtransactions to shoddy launches in going through the looming threat of NFTs.

It’s like Microsoft just can’t help it, despite the fact that they’re already literally the second richest company on the planet, a company that already makes video game consoles, was already a publisher of games, already owned game studios and had already made some of the biggest games on the planet. They couldn’t help it because there is no rest for the rich. Corporate inertia means that there is no satisfaction in being big enough, or powerful enough, or rich enough, when there is always the possibility – and shareholder demand – of having more.

It’s almost comical that Microsoft spent $70 billion on a company called Activision Blizzard King, the result of mergers between three previously independent (and hugely successful in their own right!) companies coming together just to make money for some investors. , only for this company. eventually redeemed. There is always a bigger fish!

Remember that this is not a normal purchase. There is simply no precedent for a sale of this magnitude in the video game industry. Biggest previous acquisition before this one was the $12 billion paid by Take-Two for Zynga… earlier this month. The biggest before that was the $8 billion Tencent paid for Supercell. Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard is in a whole different stratosphere.

To put it into perspective, both financially and culturally, it’s a “Disney buys Pixar and Star Wars and Marvel” storyline. Disney’s monolithic domination of popular culture over the past decade has been absolute, and it sucks. He was there for all to see for all these years, screwed up everything from the rest of the film industry to the theaters and that’s the kind of large-scale deal that’s now happening for games as well video, like this grim reaper meme going door to door.

Look at the ongoing consolidation in other industries. Amazon is devouring every store in America and crushing entire cities under its feet. Google and Apple know everything about you, sell all the ads on the planet, and kill the media along the way. Almost anything you buy at a grocery store owned by only ten companies.

It’s boring and it’s dangerous (monopolies are ironically terrible for a free and open market), but even gloomier than the economic realities is the fact that in a system where only the pursuit of profit matters, there is no there is no room for justice. Bobby Kotick deserved to be kicked out of Activision with nothing. Instead, he’s going to leave at sunset with more money than we could ever hope to spend – for on top of the obscene sums he’s already made– and will not suffer any repercussions for his role in promoting and protecting a company-wide culture of harassment that lasted for decades.

What really pissed me off today, however, wasn’t this deal itself – as I said, it was happening, regardless of who was involved – but what it means. It’s not a shock one-time purchase, where every other company involved in video games just sits back and thinks, wow, that’s bad news for us, but we’re just going to carry on as if nothing happened and hope for the best. No, because this system is sick and deranged and the only impetus left for competition is to do the same, consider this:

It’s the future. There’s no way boardrooms everywhere from EA to Ubisoft to Sony won’t be full this week with panicked executives talking about their options for something similar, because their only instinct will be to match that. To keep up, make the stock price go up, until there are only 2 or 3 companies left at the top of the food chain, and things get a little worse for the rest of them. ‘between us. Because they don’t know anything else.

Photo: Kevork Djansezian (Getty Images)

In November, Xbox director Phil Spencer told staff he was “evaluating all aspects” of Microsoft’s gaming division’s relationship with Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard following a The Wall Street Journal’s explosive report workplace misconduct and cover-ups at the big publisher. Pressed to explain exactly what that meant in a new interview today with The New York Times, Spencer said he was not interested in another company’s “shame virtue”.

Spencer wrote in November email to Xbox teams that he was “disturbed and deeply disturbed by the horrific events and actions” recently highlighted in the Wall Street Journal report, a sentiment he reiterated today in an interview with tech reporter Kara Swisher on his Sway podcast.

“I always feel the people who work in any team, my own teams, other teams,” Spencer said when asked about Activision Blizzard’s ongoing calculation. with reports of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination. “I think people should feel safe and included in whatever workplace they are in. I’ve been in this industry long enough to perhaps feel more responsible for what’s going on in the video game space. And I am saddened and sickened when I hear of work environments that cause so much distress and destruction to individuals and teams.

When Swisher asked in a follow-up how reports on Activision Blizzard had changed Microsoft’s long-standing partnership with the giant video game publisher, Spencer said he couldn’t speak publicly about it.

“We’ve changed the way we do certain things with them, and they realize that,” he said. “But me too, for us as Xbox it’s not about shaming other companies. Xbox’s history is not without blemish.

As an example of Xbox’s problematic past, Spencer referred to a now infamous GDC 2016 party Microsoft has hosted women in schoolgirl outfits dancing on platforms. Spencer apologized for it at the time, and did it again in an interview with Axios. last november. Of them former senior Xbox employees were mentioned in last year’s reports of malpractice at Activision Blizzard, but Microsoft has so far declined to comment.

Spencer has been asked several times by Swisher about ways Xbox would “punish” Activision Blizzard for past incidents at the company, but he remained vague:

Swisher: I don’t mean to be rude, but what’s wrong with punishing them for that? Like, we don’t want to do business with you unless you’ve cleaned up. Now, again, these issues were also back several years ago, but under the same leadership, Bobby Kotick, who is the longtime CEO of Activision.

Spencer: I think in terms of interactions with other companies, the things we choose to do with our brand and our platform, in coordination or not with other companies, is the avenue we need to have. an impact. I would say that when it comes to people in leadership positions in other companies, obviously it’s not up to us to judge who the CEOs are. Like, CEOs are chosen by shareholders and boards of directors. At Xbox, I know who I’m responsible for here in terms of business and operations. These are my teams here, my management chain. And that’s the thing we keep focusing on is trying to grow taller. And whether it’s about sharing, once again, the experiences we have with other partners, if we can help them on their own journey or on things that are happening in our own teams.

Following the Wall Street Journal investigation last November, thousands of Activision Blizzard employees called for the resignation of CEO Bobby Kotick. A group of workers called the ABK Workers Alliance announced soon after that it was distribute union cards members, while a small group of developers officially went on strike following the announcement of layoffs at Call of Duty: Warzone studio Raven Software.

Image: Mediatonic / Housemarque / Turtle Rock / Silver photograph by Ozan Kose (Getty Images)

The video game industry shopped in 2021. Throughout the year, a handful of large companies systematically bought a shipment of smaller ones, at a rate where it seemed like a new acquisition was announced every. a few weeks.

Of course, everything took place in the shadow of the big one: in March, accredited regulatory bodies The purchase of Zenimax (parent company of Bethesda) for 7.5 billion dollars by Microsoft, formalizing a consolidation of the game development superpowers under the The organizational chart of Xbox studios is constantly swelling. But 2021 was also peppered with a bunch of ten-digit acquisitions, some of which made headlines. Here are the most significant.

Netflix buys Night School Studio

Well, it didn’t take long. In May, disseminated reports that Netflix was looking to recruit an executive specifically tasked with advancing the streaming giant’s foray into video games, which began with experiences like Black mirror: Bandersnatch. Two months later, Netflix hired Mike Verdu (formerly from EA and Oculus). And then, in September, he bought Night School Studio, an independent outfit best known for Without beef. The duo makes sense: Night School makes atmospheric choice-driven games, and Netflix has played in the past with pick-your-own stuff, billed as a premium TV show. Over the past few years, Netflix has produced successful adaptations of Dota, Castlevania, and League of Legends. And then there’s the Oxenfree TV show (initially conceptualized as a movie), revealed in january. A network has yet to be announced for the series, but come on.

Read more: Netflix’s video game service says it all

The developer said production on Oxenfree II, which would be its first game released under the new arrangement, is unaffected by the acquisition and is still on track for release next year. It wouldn’t be Netflix’s first game, however. In November, Netflix has added five video games to its streaming offerings, including two previously released (and lukewarmly received) adaptations of Stranger Things.

Screenshot: Media

Epic acquires Mediatonic

In March, Epic Games bought Mediatonic, the studio behind the glowing royal platformer of 2020, Fall Guys. At the time, Mediatonic was planning to release Fall Guys on Xbox and Switch. It has since been pushed back to 2022, with the game still only available on PlayStation and PC. Additionally, to this day, Fall Guys still hasn’t landed in the metaverse of its new overlord, Fortnite, however. data miners claim such a crossover is imminent.

The Mediatonic acquisition is just the latest example of Epic’s intention to dominate the board game metaverse. In 2019, he bought Psyonix, the developer of Rocket League, the motorsport-football game about listening to extremely eye-catching EDM earworms. A year and a billion crossover events later, Epic removed Rocket League from availability on Steam. For now, Fall Guys is still available on the front of Valve.

Epic acquires Harmonix

Mediatonic wasn’t Epic’s only major acquisition in 2021. Last month, Epic took over Harmonix, the creators of Rock Band, to design “musical journeys and gameplay” for Fortnite. During the pandemic, various popular musicians have hosted digital-only concerts in Fortnite for big stars like Ariana Grande; It’s not immediately clear whether Harmonix would work on experiments like these or design more stuff like the rhythm games the studio has made a name for itself. Either way, Harmonix says it will keep its catalog on Steam, although Epic operates its own competing PC storefront.

Nintendo buys Next Level

It’s not that often that Nintendo buys direct from game development studios, but the company started the year in officially acquires Next Level Games, the creators of Luigi’s Mansion 3 based in Vancouver. The studio previously developed 3DS games Metroid Prime: Federation Force and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, both of which have received high praise from Kotaku’s critics.

Screenshot: Housemarque / Kotaku

Sony acquires Housemarque

Honestly, if you had asked me anytime earlier this year, I would have guessed that Housemarque was a Sony studio owner. Since 2012, only one game from the Finnish studio (Nex Machina) has been released on a platform other than PlayStation (PC). But it wasn’t until June, after the acclaimed April release of Return on PlayStation 5, that Sony officially called on Housemarque as a studio owner.

Sony acquires Bluepoint Games

Everyone saw this one coming, since the news was accidentally revealed in a tweet three months ago, but in September, Sony bought Bluepoint Games. Best known for producing luxurious remakes of popular games like Demon souls and Shadow of the colossus, Bluepoint is currently working on original games, studio director Marco Thrush tell IGN.

Damn, Sony buy everybody

In July, Sony has bought Nixxes, a studio known for working on popular gaming PC ports. (In recent years, Sony has started releasing its biggest games on PC.) This was followed, in September, by the purchase of Run Sackboy! To run! Fireesprite developer. Just this month, Sony has acquired Valkyrie Entertainment, a Seattle-based team that has primarily functioned as a support studio for AAA games, including the upcoming God of War Ragnarok. And on top of all that, all the way back in March, Sony bought Evo, the fighting games tournament, in partnership with Endeavor. No, not technically a development studio, but still an acquisition linked to the “shit” game.

Tencent acquires Turtle Rock

Tencent continued its push into the game with the Turtle Rock Studios December Purchase, fresh out of the Back 4 Blood, the developer’s animated multiplayer zombie shooter. Turtle Rock marked the sixth major purchase for the multinational conglomerate, following majority investments in Klei Entertainment (known for Don’t Starve), Yager (Spec Ops: The Line), and Stunlock (Battlerite). In 2021, Tencent also purchased Sumo group and big shark, an independent Swedish studio.

Screenshot: Gearbox

Embracer buys a gearbox

In February, Embracer Group, the mega-company that owns THQ Nordic and Koch Media,bought a gearbox, the developer of Borderlands and the publisher of games like Godfall and Tribes of Midgard. Longtime Borderlands publisher 2K says the merger won’t impact future games in the eternally crass series of co-op shooters. A fantastically inspired spin-off, Little Tina’s Wonderland, is slated for release in March next year.

Embracer acquires Aspyr

The same day Embracer bought Gearbox, he also picked up Aspyr, a company known for porting games to various devices. Aspyr is currently working on a suitable remake of the 2004 RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, intended for release on PC and PS5.

Take-Two buys Roll7

Take-Two Interactive is best known for posting megawatt hits in the Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and NBA 2K franchises, in addition to the relatively smaller but still successful Borderlands and BioShock series games. But the New York-based company is branching out into lighter fare with its Private Division label. In November, Take-Two bought Roll7 (the developers of the skate games OlliOlli) and placed it under the responsibility of Private Division. OlliOlli World is slated for release in February.

Brian Bulatao attending a House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing on September 16, 2020 Photo: Pool (Getty Images)

With Activision Blizzard employees more organized than ever in the wake of society several prosecutions for sexual harassment and layoffs in quality assurance, a senior executive apparently felt the time had come to send an alarmist email warning workers of the vague “consequences” of unionization.

The author of the email, Brian Bulatao, is a buddy of Donald Trump Activision Blizzard has been appointed COO. earlier this year. During his time in politics, Bulatao is said to have acted at one point as the “attack dog” of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “Intimidation” of former Inspector General Steve Linick as Linick investigated the Trump administration’s 2019 $ 8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia.

Here’s what Bulatao had to tell Activision Blizzard employees in a company-wide email this morning (emphasis added), Courtesy of Organizer and Senior Test Analyst Jessica Gonzalez:

Everyone,

At Activision Blizzard, we work hard to create a more inclusive, supportive and rewarding environment, and thanks to your contribution, we are making progress.

Over the past few months, we have announced that we are converting nearly 500 temporary workers to full-time employees at Activision Publishing studios, and we have increased wages for a large portion of temporary workers and added benefits for paid time off. . We have introduced a zero tolerance policy on harassment and have waived the arbitration required for complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination. We have made significant commitments to increase gender diversity and are dedicating $ 250 million to accelerate opportunities for diverse talent in the industry. We have more to do and we believe that direct dialogue between management and employees is essential to the success of Activision Blizzard.

As you may have seen yesterday, there was a communication supported by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) that required employees to sign and submit union authorization cards. Let me be clear on this: the management of Activision Blizzard supports your right, under the [sic] National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), to make your own decision about whether or not to join a union.

As you make this decision for your future, we only ask that you take the time to consider the consequences of your signing on the binding legal document presented to you by CWA. Once you have signed this document, you will have ceded to CWA the exclusive right to “represent [you] for the purposes of collective bargaining regarding all conditions of employment. This means that your ability to negotiate all of your own working conditions will be entrusted to CWA, as the document says.

Achieving our cultural aspirations in the workplace will best require an active and transparent dialogue between managers and employees on which we can act quickly. This is the best solution than simply signing an electronic form offered to you by CWA or waiting for the outcome of a legally mandated and regulated negotiation process in the future.

If we fail to meet the goals we set for ourselves in the workplace, if we fail to do the things we are committed to doing, then of course you will still have the right to commit and to vote for CWA. But we are confident that we will make the progress we previously pledged to make and work with you to create a workplace we can all be proud of.

As always, we welcome communication with concerns or ideas to help make improvements, and there are multiple channels of internal dialogue, both direct and anonymous.

Brian

Bulatao’s email smacks of desperation, yet another attempt by Activision Blizzard management, who had previously hired an anti-union law firm, to subdue the company’s besieged workforce before employees realize the power they hold. The memo’s message is explicitly inspired by decades of rhetoric launched by predatory bosses terrified of collective action. The only thing missing is a reference to Activision Blizzard as a family, although it is clear that management would prefer the organization’s many issues to be addressed internally, away from public scrutiny when their decisions inevitably harm workers and benefit managers.

Since yesterday, the defense group ABK Workers Alliance raised over $ 235,000 in the strike funds of employees of Raven Software, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, who entered this morning in the fifth day of their walkout in response to recent layoffs in the quality assurance department. While organizing has been underway at Activision Blizzard for months, a worker told Kotaku that the situation at Raven Software provided a “spark” to move forward openly with organizational efforts.

“There is still a long way to go,” said Valentine Powell, World of Warcraft organizer and senior user interface engineer. recently explained via Twitter, “But we want to support our colleagues through [Activision Blizzard King] to finally have a real voice in the management of our companies, because in recent months and years, we have seen our leadership continue to ignore the needs of its employees. Thousands of ABK employees have put their careers and safety on the line for years trying to make our businesses better and safer places to work. We exhausted as many avenues as we could before we turned to organizing. “

Read more: Inside the revolt that led to the historic push to organize workers at Activision Blizzard

In the United States, with workers openly expressing their displeasure at the country’s largely obnoxious labor practices – in part thanks to the covid-19 pandemic exacerbating existing problems – it was only a matter of time before the labor organization does not take root in the video game industry. And now that that momentum is building up, it’s hard to see it ending any time soon, whether bosses like it or not.