Call of Duty is my favorite indie game
Call of Duty-maker Activision is going indie. The New York Times reports gaming monstrosity Activision Blizzard “has a reached an $8.2 billion deal to separate from Vivendi and become an independent company.”
The French conglomerate Vivendi controls Activision Blizzard. The latter has brokered a deal wherein Activsion Blizzard and a group of investors would buy back Vivendi’s owned shares in the company. Activision Blizzard will be buying “about 429 million of its shares and certain tax attributes from Vivendi for roughly $5.83 billion in cash.”
Activision’s Bobby Kotick and co-chairman Brian Kelly, heading the group of investors, are planning to purchase an additional 172 million shares of the company from Vivendi for about $2.34 billion. The group of investors will own about 25% of the company. Kotick and Kelly are both personally in for a pooled $100 million.
Vivendi isn’t being bought out completely, but it won’t have a controlling interest. Kotick will remain at the juggernaut’s head and Kelly as the sole chairman rather than co-chairman. Apparently, the scuttlebutt of the year was that Vivendi would try to offload its stock in Activision Blizzard. In buying itself back, Activision Blizzard is betting on its own ability to do things independently, rather than have another corporate sugar daddy.
Unfathomable sums of money being tossed about while people languish in poverty. Videogames have really made it.
Also, active fission. C’mon, guys.
Activision in $8.2 Billion Deal to Buy Back Stake From Vivendi [The New York Times]
