It's official: Activision Blizzard's $8.2B buyback is complete, liberating it from Vevendi. This technically makes the leviathan an independent developer.
Now owned by a majority of shareholders, the deal was brokered in July but was held up by the filing of a suit against the deal in August. Yesterday, the Delaware Supreme Court overturned the ruling that stopped the deal, allowing it to complete.
Though the actual split between them is unclear, CEO Bobby Kotick and chairman Brian Kelly bought 172 million shares at $2.34B, while Activision itself purchased 429 shares at $5.83B.
Bobby Kotick called the deal, "... A new chapter in the history of Activision Blizzard," before going into mumbojumbo about shareholders and invested parties.
My take from this:
Being rich is awesome, isn't it? Or, at least, making loads of money off of a single game property yearly, and being able to buy your freedom because of it, can be!
Honestly, I'm a little bit surprised this didn't happen a few years ago, when it was already clear that Call of Duty was a powerhouse that wasn't going anywhere. But I'm also not surprised they waited a bit, if because they wanted to allow Vevendi to make some more money before they pulled back and said "okay, that's enough," of the break wouldn't be as hostile.
What I'd really like to see from this is a more "back to basics" approach from the company, although I suspect all we'll actually see from them is an increase in focus on the one property that's made them the most money. Whether that means more then one release a year, or simply more microtransaction-y shenanigans, I don't know.
But I really hope very much that they don't pull the "indie dev" card out now, and act like they've for some sort of ironic chops because of it. They're still a big company, they're just their own big company now. Ugh, the thought of CoD kickstarters just made me vomit in my mouth. May it never come to that.
This is also possibly going to put Kotick back in front of a mic a lot more then he has been in recent years. The industry has been eerily quiet without his voice, and I'm sure EA would just love to have some of the negative focus taken off it for a while.
Having been a long time fan of Blizzard, I'm also curious to hear more about what they have to say about what's going on. I suspect we'll hear more on that "soon (tm)".
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