What's good internet? It's January 21st, 2022 and you are listening to Waypoint Radio Episode 455. I'm your host Rob Zachny and today I'm joined by Patrick Lopich.

Hello producer Ricardo Contraris.

Yo.

And you know as we've predicted it's been a quiet start to the year in games and there's not much to talk about but then praise be.

Baste Phil Spencer came through for us yet again.

Now the last we heard.

Baste Phil was taking the revelations about a permissive culture of harassment and abuse of Activision Blizzard very seriously and examining every aspect of Microsoft's relationship with Activision.

And you know from a certain point of view they were.

Because as we learned this week Microsoft has been working on a nice $69 billion acquisition of the mega publisher so it turns out that the moral audit Phil implied Microsoft was undertaking was actually more of a standard pre merger financial audit of Activision's position and susceptibility to a takeover.

Patrick talks through this deal a little bit like what is Microsoft buying here in terms of properties and what do they stand to inherit from Activision's myriad culture and labor problems.

First of all before I get into all those all the very interesting analysis I want to point out the bravery of Rob Zachny which is that this story has been written up in a lot of places right and there's a lot of ways you can go with the number 68.7.

A lot of people chose you know not incorrectly to say around 70 billion not an accurate it's like a nice round number.

Some people chose 68.7 I want to be precise I want the people to know like where this fits in the math and Rob he chose differently he said 69 billion.

I just I just I just want to out there that I noticed it it was nice that you did that and I just want to go too far past without recognizing your brave stance and setting up the story.

Yeah Microsoft is this is the largest acquisition of its kind by like tenfold right like I think the the the the the I wanted to call it the star field acquisition which it kind of is which it kind of is the Bethesda Zenomax acquisition was like roughly seven six seven billion dollars and this is something where you just add a zero to it they are purchasing a troubled asset as they might call it.

Arguably the only reason they're purchasing it could purchase it is because it is a troubled asset but they are buying a company that was irrelevant a couple of decades ago after like there was Activision was a real prominent player you know early in video gaming history and then basically was ground into dust by a serious of poor decisions was scooped up by Bobby Codic and he was there was a lot of money and I was going to do that.

He was there alongside its it's rise to like real video game prominence in the past 15 years or so alongside franchises like do like a call of duty purchases like Blizzard that bring in you know Diablo Overwatch World of Warcraft.

You have easy to forget that Activision was also Destiny before before Bungie got themselves out of like another naughty arrangement as that studio is want to do it is a company that is in appin in I would say like the highest of public esteem in terms of the games it's been making for quite a quite a period now like even long prior to the exposure of the like real toxic underbelly of the game.

So I think it's a lot of it's workplace culture one then which I call of duty was really on the way until war zone came along and they were able to really capitalize on the rise of the battle royale genre like war zone I think I think I think arguably could say like essentially saved call of duty as a franchise as the single player games have really petered out in terms of cultural relevance like sales driver like does anyone remember that van guard came out a couple of years ago.

I don't I don't I don't and no I'm excited you have a studio like Blizzard who again absent knowledge of what was going on as a workplace is like basically incapable of shipping products like the moment you have to call in rod Ferguson the person who was brought in to tell Ken Levine like here we're going to crack some knuckles we're going to ship a fucking game like that's what I'm here to do we did that for years of war he did it for bio shock and we're going to do that for the game.

When you hire rod Ferguson you're bringing in someone to be like hey this game looks like it's not coming out for five to six years how about to and let's let's turn this into a shipable product just a company like in a really weird place as it tried to figure out how to position itself for the future and alongside that comes you know a report over the last summer by the state of California you know having one of their divisions the California Department of Fairhouse.

Employment and housing find a lawsuit against the company following a two year investigation more or less exposing a horrifying workplace culture and environment in which accusations of harassment assault day to day shittiness like just an awful place to work and by by all accounts very little has been done to try and address those issues and in fact a bolster by reporting at places like the way.

...