FormerActivisionCEO Bobby Kotick is no stranger to controversy.
The man once dubbed “the most hated person in gaming” helped grow Activision into the behemoth it is today before beingpurchased by Microsoft for nearly $70 billion.
Kotick himself is no stranger to studio acquisitions. Activision notably merged with thenBlizzard EntertainmentVivendi Games in 2008 and Candy Crush developer King in 2015 for $5.9 billion.
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Those aren’t the only acquisitions Activision made during Kotick’s tenure. At the time, one that was a somewhat big deal was Bizzare Creations, best known for developingProject Gotham RacingandGeometry Wars.
Activision acquired the Liverpool-based studio in 2007 for $67.4 million. If the team hit goals by 2012, they would earn an additional $40 million. Unfortunately, the opposite happened: the studio shut down in 2011.
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In an interview with venture capital firmKleiner Perkins, Kotick talks about the Bizzare Creations acquisition as an example of a bad business decision.
“It was $80 million, and we wrote it off two years later. Everything about it violated all our principles. [It] was an expensive lesson.”
The team at Bizzare would release four games published by Activision:Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2in 2008,James Bond 007: Blood Stonein 2010, andGeometry Wars: Touchfor iOS, also in 2010. Their biggest game was 2010’sBlur, an arcade racer with vehicular combat that is a spiritual successor to the Project Gotham Racing series.
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None of these games would find the right audience, though, and the studio would close a year later, resulting in the cancelation ofBlur 2.
Some former studio members would quickly launch a new company,Lucid Games, which employs over 150 people. They have released two games:Geometry Wars 3: DimensionsandDestruction AllStars.
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