Kotick Tells His Side of Brutal Legend Story
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
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Kotick PR group needs to be shot. At least half of them needs to be retired from the job.
Or they need to be able to muzzle him properly. He is almost like a real life Tony Stark.
Some of his statements do make sense in a capitialistic business POV. Some of his statements make him and his company look bad. The PR group that works for Double Fine and EA did a good job in making his company look like the bad guy.
Or they need to be able to muzzle him properly. He is almost like a real life Tony Stark.
Some of his statements do make sense in a capitialistic business POV. Some of his statements make him and his company look bad. The PR group that works for Double Fine and EA did a good job in making his company look like the bad guy.
Why would he even bring this up again? Everyone's pretty much forgotten about this whole fiasco. Now he's pretty much set Tim Schafer up to make a witty retort and everyone will side with him because he's Tim Schafer and Bobby Kotick isn't. Seriously this guy fails at PR.
The issue here is pretty fair, as I see it.
Double Fine gets advanced some $20 million by Vivendi to make a game. They're doing so, when Vivendi has to make a difficult decision--Vivendi hooks up with Activision, and Activision says, "Yeah, this looks like a dude. We're dropping it." Vivendi seems okay with that, so Double Fine's project gets dropped.
Then Double Fine decides to take this project, which was created using borrowed money, and just ship it elsewhere. Problem: It's possible, just as Kotick says, that the rights were not theirs to sell. We'd need to see into the terms of that advance, but once you start working with a publisher, you've pretty much signing over SOMETHING in terms of rights. You can't just take the work that they paid for (you may have done the work, but they paid the bill) and go somewhere else without permission... or at least without paying back what you were lent.
It's one thing if they just gave up on the project and called it a loss. It's another thing if the studio decides to take what you paid for, go somewhere else, and sell it behind your back without so much as a tip. Activision is a publisher, not a charity.
Depending on the terms (to which we are not privy), this is a fair appraisal of the situation.
Double Fine gets advanced some $20 million by Vivendi to make a game. They're doing so, when Vivendi has to make a difficult decision--Vivendi hooks up with Activision, and Activision says, "Yeah, this looks like a dude. We're dropping it." Vivendi seems okay with that, so Double Fine's project gets dropped.
Then Double Fine decides to take this project, which was created using borrowed money, and just ship it elsewhere. Problem: It's possible, just as Kotick says, that the rights were not theirs to sell. We'd need to see into the terms of that advance, but once you start working with a publisher, you've pretty much signing over SOMETHING in terms of rights. You can't just take the work that they paid for (you may have done the work, but they paid the bill) and go somewhere else without permission... or at least without paying back what you were lent.
It's one thing if they just gave up on the project and called it a loss. It's another thing if the studio decides to take what you paid for, go somewhere else, and sell it behind your back without so much as a tip. Activision is a publisher, not a charity.
Depending on the terms (to which we are not privy), this is a fair appraisal of the situation.
Along with everyone else's point of it already being spent money that would never have been returned if Double Fine hadn't found another publisher, there's also the point that Activision actively tried to keep the game from getting published. This is just Kotick making some half-assed attempt at recovery but he's woefully inept at it, especially when people with memory of the kerfuffle actually remember the details.
Sounds fair to me at first, but lets think about this: If Activision decided they didn't want to have ANYTHING to do with that game, what did they expect was going to happen to the money they lent out? Did they still have to pay it back? I doubt it. It's a publisher's job to make money off of their investments, and they decided to kill it before it cost them more money. They only demanded to be paid back because the game was still going to get released, though it was now EA's money funding them. What is EA supposed to do? Pay both the developers AND their old publishers because they wanted in on the cut?
Taking into consideration that Activision is still quite successful, and making money, and BK still has his job, then I would have to say that he is a lying and yet competent dork. I would bet good money that there are those in Vivendi who would be quite happy to see Kotick go packing, but as long as he keeps Activision legal in the books and keeps the moneymill running, then he has excellent job security.The_root_of_all_evil said:
But the real question here is why is Bobby putting this out now trying to play the innocent/repentant card? I doubt he is trying to woo Double Fine back as that will be a cold day in hell thrice over. I think we might be seeing a surprise coming in Activision's future.
To the Rumormobile!
But you do realize we have entire forums devoted to his games, and that we are always discussing his next project, he may not be a commercial success, but he is a success nonethelessTsunamiWombat said:
This reminds me of the Poor and Stupid episode of south park where Cartman gives all his money to Butters saying "Seriously take it, I don't ever want it back again" and then by the end of the episode he's all like "GOD DAMMIT BUTTERS YOU BETTER GIVE ME BACK ALL MY MONEY" Once he fails...
My wonderment about this is how much of the negative press Kotick has to absorb. He said he had very little involvement in all this, why not believe him? Maybe he was acting like a responsible manager and delegating the work like all CEOs in every successful corporation around the world do. I know that my top top bosses never came down to slum it on the shop or catering floor with me so why would I expect Kotick to be involved in every single deal his company makes.
Activision is not one man, however much you may want to attack Mr Kotick.
Activision is not one man, however much you may want to attack Mr Kotick.