Now thatMicrosofthas arrived at a deal to acquire Activision Blizzard, smaller details are starting to leak about the things that went on behind the scenes. One of the juicier tidbits that’s hit the web since the deal went down is thatMicrosoftwas not the company that Activision Blizzard wanted to strike a deal with.
Whether or not the deal that went down on Tuesday that sawMicrosoft begin to take ownershipof Activision Blizzard was the original goal, the impending merger shook the video game industry this week. However, since the news first hit, there have been all kinds of questions around the situation, including just how this all came into being. There’s also some questions about what exactly is going to happen to Activision’s CEO, Bobby Kotick.
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The final disposition of the exec might be one of the reasons thatBobby Kotick was reportedly against Microsofttaking over. Instead, it appears he was hoping that one of two big companies would make the deal. According to a new report from Bloomberg, one of the two firms that Kotick was hoping would make the move Microsoft eventually made was Facebook.
Officially now known as Meta Platforms Inc, Bloomberg’s report claims that it was Activision that reached out to the social media giant in order to try and get a deal done. In fact, the company that was under fire due to several lawsuits alleging a toxic work environment reached out to several suitors. The outreach was apparently in reaction to adrop in stock price for Activision Blizzard.
In the end, neither Facebook nor a second “big” company that Kotick’s company reached out to were interested in acquiring the company. It’s also not entirely clear just who this other big company was, though it should be pointed out that the number of tech or gaming companies that have the kind of capital to do this deal is not a long list.
It’s also not entirely clear how Activision Blizzard eventually arrived at the deal withMicrosoftif Kotick and other execs were working behind the scenes to find another investor. It’s also not clear why Activision Blizzard appears to have originally been against making a deal with the Xbox maker. It’s possible Bobby Kotick was looking elsewhere to try and help raise the company’s stock price is that he knew part of the deal could be thatPhil Spencer would ask him to leaveonce everything was finalized.
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