Is Bobby Kotick bad for Blizzard?

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

1-22-2009 @ 3:09PM

Firestride said...

I want WoW to stay great too, but let's not confuse what a CEO's job is: his or her job is to make as much money for the company as he legally can. Sure, it seems better in the long run to produce a quality product, but that is secondary to the point.

1-27-2009 @ 6:14AM

Coren said...

Actually the job of the CEO is defined by the goals set to him by his shareholders, commonly in the form of a reward structure like stock options or stock. The goal of shareholders is (almost) always higher market value for their stock, which is defined by the profit in the future. Hence in a perfect world the CEO's goal would be to do investments that increase the value of the firm in the future, which would mainly rely on customer satisfaction and repeat-buying of the product (in this case probably, this is purely my speculation).

But because a lot of reward structures are in fact more short term in nature than long term you might be right. Let's hope Activision's shareholders are smart enough to not put out a short term reward for the CEO ;-)

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