Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick speaks on the CNBC Evolve convention November nineteenth in Los Angeles.
Jesse Grant | CNBC
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick will step down from his function as head of the online game firm on Dec. 29, based on an inside memo from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer Wednesday.
The management change was anticipated after Microsoft closed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in October. The deal went by intensive regulatory scrutiny within the U.S., the U.Ok. and Europe.
“I might prefer to thank Bobby—for his invaluable contributions to this trade, his partnership in closing the Activision Blizzard acquisition and his collaboration following the shut—and I want him and his household the easiest in his subsequent chapter,” Spencer wrote within the memo, which was seen by CNBC.
The deal, the most important in Microsoft’s historical past, was first introduced in January 2022. The acquisition provides Microsoft a hefty portfolio of online game franchises, together with Name of Obligation, Crash Bandicoot, Diablo, Overwatch, StarCraft, Tony Hawk Professional Skater and Warcraft.
In a launch Wednesday, Kotick expressed “gratitude and appreciation” for his time at Activision Blizzard. He first joined the corporate as Director and CEO of Activision, Inc., in February 1991 earlier than serving as CEO of Activision Blizard starting in July of 2008.
“I can’t adequately categorical the pleasure I’ve within the individuals who proceed to contribute to our success and all those that have helped all through my 32 years main this firm,” Kotick wrote in a launch Wednesday. “We are actually a part of the world’s most admired firm. That is not an accident.”
–CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report
