Former Activision boss Bobby Kotick has returned to a position of high influence as a board member of Skydance, the new entertainment juggernaut formed by the merging of Warner Bros. into Paramount.
Kotick, who stepped down as Activision CEO following Xbox’s $68.7bn acquisition of the company back in 2023, is joining the 13-person board alongside a selection of other newcomers. These include former UK prime minister Tony Blair, who is joining in an advisor role, and philanthropist Laurene Powell.
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Here’s a trailer for the recently released Avatar fighting game, from Paramount.Watch on YouTube
David Ellison, architect of the Warner Bros / Paramount merger, and Skydance’s newly crowned CEO, issued the following statement: “I am delighted to welcome Laurene and Bobby to our Board and honored to have Tony join us as an Advisor. Bobby led a global entertainment company through three decades of sustained growth, and he brings real perspective on building enduring franchises and connecting with fans.
“His record of pairing bold strategic moves with disciplined capital allocation is exactly the experience we need as we bring our businesses together. Tony has led at the highest levels of government, respected for his intellect, strategic vision and ability to bring people together around bold, forward-looking ideas. His global perspective and insight will be invaluable as we turn ambition into results.”
This merger has also resulted in the video game arms of both Warner Bros and Paramount being combined. Per Variety, the Skydance gaming division is now led by Tony Driscoll, who previously launched Fortnite’s creator economy and ecosystem initiative between 2021 and 2024. That conjoined games divisions will have a variety of franchises at its fingertips, including Mortal Kombat, Mission Impossible, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Harry Potter through Hogwarts Legacy 2.
In an email sent to staff and seen by Variety, Skydance president Andy Gordon wrote: “We’re investing in our future growth engines alongside our core ambitions in TV, Film and direct-to-consumer: Games, Experiences, Consumer Products, and Publishing. These are core pillars of our strategy to build engagement and fandom in both the physical and digital worlds. We want to meet consumers where they watch, play, and engage. At the same time, we see opportunities to build on DC Comics’ storytelling and expand our e-commerce offerings to connect fans with the brands they love.”
Warner Bros has a lengthy, albeit rocky, history with video game development. While it has overseen some popular releases including Hogwarts Legacy and numerous Mortal Kombat games, recent years have not been as fruitful. Warner Bros Montreal suffered layoffs earlier this year, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League developer Rocksteady was ravaged by staffing cuts in recent years.
Paramount, on the other hand, has a much more fledgling video games division. Its latest game, Avatar Legends: The Fighting game, has proven a niche yet adored release to genre diehards. Aside from that, it is also working with Platinum Games on TMNT: The Last Ronin, though a release date has yet to be announced.
Bobby Kotick led Activision during a period when the state of California sued the company for what it alleged was a “frat boy” company culture which created a “breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women”. Later, a Wall Street Journal report alleged that “Kotick knew for years about sexual-misconduct allegations”. Bobby Kotick continues to deny the claims made in this Wall Street Journal report.
The report itself claims Kotick “received a troubling email in July 2018”, and that “A lawyer for a former employee at Sledgehammer Games, an Activision-owned studio, alleged in the email that her client had been raped in 2016 and 2017 by her male supervisor after she had been pressured to consume too much alcohol in the office and at work events.”
The Wall Street Journal claims this employee “reported the incidents to Sledgehammer’s human-resources department and other supervisors, but nothing happened, according to the email, which threatened a lawsuit against the company.”
It also reports that within months of receiving this email “Activision reached an out-of-court settlement with the woman, who also had reported one of the incidents to the police,” and that “Kotick didn’t inform the company’s board of directors about the alleged rapes or the settlement,” according to people with knowledge of the board.
Last month, People Make Games released its own report focusing on Kotick’s legal team’s response to this report in the years since it was published. The PMG report, authored by journalist Mikhail Klimentov, cites a source who told Klimentov they had “received a letter from a defamation firm representing Bobby Kotick.” This source, themself a journalist, had previously covered the Wall Street Journal’s investigation into Kotick. Kliemtov said “this defamation firm was demanding that my source change their story”, and that the firm representing Kotick had claimed the Wall Street Journal investigation “had been ‘disproven’.”
Klimentov also reported this legal letter “referenced a handful of other websites and publications that had seemingly given into this defamation firm’s demands: Striking language the firm didn’t like, adding editor’s notes that referred to the Journal’s investigation as ‘debunked’, and in at least one case deleting an article entirely.”
Despite these claims, however, the original Wall Street Journal report remains live and unchanged.