What a wild take.
Frederic Legrand, Shutterstock
Bobby Kotick, former Activision CEO, has a high opinion of Elon Musk, it seems, as he thinks Musk would be "the best owner of any game company."
"Elon truly would be the best owner of any game company," he said on the Rushmore podcast (thanks, PC Gamer). "No, he would. There's not a person who'd be more qualified to build and run a game company."
Well, that's certainly an interesting take. Musk is known for enjoying Path of Exile 2 and Diablo 4, but he also admitted to boosting his accounts, paying people to play for him. Still, he says he's "pretty good at videogames." Is it enough to be the best owner of any game company?
We might know soon, as he recently promised that his xAI company "will release a great AI-generated game before the end of next year." An genAI game, sounds exciting, eh? Well, at least we'll see how he'll adhere to Kotick's high praise.
What makes this whole situation weirder is Kotick himself, a controversial figure in the industry. He led Activision from 1991 to 2023 but was let go soon after Microsoft acquired Activision. In 2021, the company was bombarded by lawsuits accusing it of workplace misconduct and discrimination, with Kotick allegedly protecting a worker who sexually harassed another employee from being fired.
He is known for his at times questionable statements and a very pro-business approach, which sometimes disregards human elements. You can learn more about work at Activision from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier's Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment.
While Musk would be the best owner, in Kotick's opinion, ex-Electronic Arts and Unity boss John Riccitiello is the worst CEO in the industry. But Kotick's praise doesn't end here: he also defended Musk's decision to buy Twitter.
"For the betterment of society he needed to actually own X," he said. "He's way too capable. The things he's working on, there are too few people in the world that actually could do that. So those are the priorities of how do you actually save humanity, improve society, he's got his priorities right."
I hope this gets him a free blue check mark on Twitter – sorry, X – at the very least.
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