You're kinda big news, Rorie.

Is WoW actually still the most played MMO? I'm not a betting man, but if I was my money would be with a bunch of free-to-play ones or something that's huge in China (Perfect World, maybe?).

Intriguing.

$8.2 billion deal, so Activision Blizzard gave that money to buy their independence? holy shit, that is so much money.

The caption under the picture is the best part of this article.

Thank you @rorie

Well this is huge news, on the business side of the industry anyway.

That Vivendi-Activision made them the biggest publisher in the world. Now, they are mortal once again.

Not sure if I should buy stock in the newly freed company when it goes public (again) or not. I just read an article about WoW being at an all time low for subscribers. Not to mention call of duty dropping in popularity by the year. And skylanders is about to be slaughtered by disney infinity.

Bummer, for a second there I thought Blizzard split from Activision. One can always hope …

@paulunga: wow still has 7.7 million active subs, so yeah, still the biggest by a looong way :P

Well not sure if Vivendi is doing much these days, would have been much bigger news if Blizzard took all the SC2/Wow money & split from Activision.

I think a lot of people did the moment they saw this. What a shame it's not the case...

Damn it. For a second I thought Kotick was leaving. :(

They're in debt by $17.3 billion.

That's so Bobby!

"Activision Blizzard plans to finance the deal with about $1.2 billion of cash on hand and roughly $4.6 billion of debt, raised through the markets and bank financing"

I wonder for how much Bobby and his friends will buy back those $4.6 billion shares from small investors after the next tech crash.

Does Call of Duty qualify for the IGF now?

Incoming $80 game price point?

Actually, he was part of a separate investment group that bought 172 million of those shares at $2.34 billion. So now he has even more control. :(

Figures, Bobby ain't going nowhere!

@wandrecanada said:

No, if anything, it means Activision can finally let loose a little. I'm no economist, but the way it's been described to me is that Vivendi was bleeding Activision in an attempt to pay off its own massive debt. Vivendi is in a terrible financial spot. Consider that they just sold controlling interest in the most successful video game publisher in the world for a second. Activision hasn't been happy either, from what I've heard, having to essentially plug the dam with their fingers. That's why so many people have been curious to see if Bobby and company would buy back their freedom and risk severe debt or if they'd keep going with Vivendi and risk being sold off at a later date.

While Activision has some shitty practices and soulless "business" decisions, a lot of them really make sense when you consider that Activision is one of the few Vivendi groups that had been propping up that corpse like it was an episode of Weekend at Bernies.

My favorite part about all this is that that's totally an accurate statement. I also happen to totally hate the term "indie" so I guess that may be why.

best comment, i actually giggled. look for the CoD kickstarter this fall

D3 will continue to be crap :(

You know, Robert, you could have used that money to help Detroit out. Just saying. I guess you hate the auto industry. And want American workers to fail. Fascist.

Tencent is part of the buyback, and is passively becoming the most powerful company in gaming.

Tencent also owns League of Legends developer Riot Games, and almost half of Epic Games.

You know, as much as we like to rag on Kotick... I got to give him and Activision props in general for being the only large gaming company that hasn't fallen all over itself to appeal to the casual market. They make hardcore games for hardcore gamers, they haven't EA-ed everything up just because they're dominant, and if rumor (and what E3 stage they were primarily on) is to be believed they were the only large publisher to push against the Microsoft DRM restrictions.

So I'll fucking raise a glass to Bobby K if they keep remembering their main customer base is gamers, and not throw us under the bus to chase casual, tablet or mobile money like a seemingly endless processing of gaming companies are doing.

@shingro: I would feel the same way if they didn't beat IPs into the ground by annualizing franchises that never should have been (Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, Spider-Man)

@shingro: I'd argue that what you call 'casual' gaming is a hell of a lot more interesting than anything Activision's franchises have been making lately.

@rorie Nice article dude! Hope to see more of them :)

Who the fuck cares about this? Seriously? Do youcare? I sure as hell don't.

Within the whole of Activision Blizzard and Vivendi's partnership, we still never know if any of the business decisions made by Activision (annual IPs, few new IPs, movie licenses, etc) were anything decided by Vivendi more than Activision. With this deal, it means that Activision Blizzard is its own entity now. It does mean they have far less investors from an outside source making decisions about what they release, how they handle those releases, etc.

It could mean that Activision Blizzard ends up doing some risky stuff in terms of new IPs. It could mean that nothing changes. In the end, as long as Kotick is at the head of the table, we can guarantee it'll be interesting at least.

Activision stock up 15% woo hoo! looks like Bobby Kotick is picking up the tab on my PS4!

I wonder how they'll make even more money off WC4? SC2 has 2 expanions, D3 is pay-to-win, and WoW has a bunch of expansions and paid cosmetic items, so there's tons of tried-and-true choices.

Maybe they'll be creative and surprise us with some new way to make the game cost a bajillion dollars to play.

@yukoasho: Yup. They are something like $9 billion in debt, so $8 billion will come pretty close to paying that off meaning they can continue to exist. They did probably just sell off their most profitable division but it was probably the only one that could get them that type of money that quickly.

This:

I became mildly interested when I saw the story about Vivendi wanting to take several billion dollars from Activision to pay their debt.

See, that's not a lot. Fantasy Westward Journey recently had almost 3 million different users logged in at the same time (with over 30 mil subscriptions), while WoW never even cracked two millions. I'm not sure how they stack up directly at the moment, but it just seems to me like it's extremely ignorant to consider WoW the biggest just because the huge Chinese market doesn't count for some reason.

I bought 1000 shares of ATVI when it was around $14 now it's at above $17 so this is awesome news for me.

Dont forget that America helped France survive in the world wars which I think makes up for a single statue.

Get out of here stocker.

I also agree with this. Despite not really liking Call of Duty (I prefer Battlefield), I'll give props to Activision Blizzard for striking a good balance between gaming and business. People love to complain, they love to, about annual retreads of Call of Duty, but that is pretty much the case with any large publisher and their main franchises. So what if CoD is the same basic concept year-in/year-out, millions of people love it. If you do not, let those that do enjoy their entertainment as you would yours. I love Battlefield, and conceptually Battlefield 3 is the exact same thing as Battlefield: 1942.

One day we all might wake up and find that AB is the only real gaming company left. Scary thoughts.

it still is by a wide margin.

That's that wonderful sentiment I love to see-this doesn't affect me so why did you post it? *clap*