In a stunning move, Activision Blizzard is set to buy back their independence from parent company Vivendi, in a deal worth approximately $8.2 billion.
Eye watering numbers, right? When the deal is complete, the company will be majority owned by the public and this should help give the company new financial flexibility...
The move comes just as Vivendi was due to receive $3 billion in a dividends pay out by Activision Blizzard. When the deal is complete, Vivendi will only hold 13% of Activision's stock, an additional 25% will be held by ASAC II LP - a private investor group backed by Bobby Kotick (AB CEO) and Brian Kelly (AB co-chairman) as well as Tencent, owners of League of Legends - and the rest will be owned by public shareholders. The deal will put Activision about $1.1 billion in debt, but now they have autonomy from Vivendi, and should be able to recoup the money after another cycle of games gets published.
To clarify, the deal most likely won't have an effect on what we see published by Activision or any of the games they currently own. So World of Warcraft players can rest easy, the deal doesn't mean anything for existing or upcoming IPs. But AB are now going to profit more from the games they publish, and won't have to worry about Vivendi or any other group having a majority say in what goes on at the company.
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PC Specs
I'll be damned :D
PC Specs
I hope Activision starts making better titles now. That is probably a dream, but I can still hope :)
PC Specs
A little off topic, but relevant enough to say here I believe, but I've noticed that whenever Vivendi has acquired a license to a game franchise, those games start to degrade significantly in quality...I mean, I'm sure I don't need to remind everyone of the nightmare that was Spyro: A Hero's Tail, right? Possibly the most notable example of this would be the Call Of Duty franchise, which has taken a lot of heat the past few years...Activision was aquired by Vivendi in 2007, which was the year Modern Warfare was released; often considered to be the first game that wasn't quite "up to par" with the others, and I frequently hear people say that it was all downhill from there. What's up with this company?
PC Specs
Not to mention how Blizzard was making game gold with their games until Activsion bought them and sense then WoW has sucks, D3 is a mess and I mean Starcraft 2 is good, but holds nothing on the first one.
PC Specs
Now that they have more independence, they won't have to tow anybody's line and make proper games... Take Bungie for example... If they had more money back in 1999 and were independent throughout the last decade, they might have made Halo series multi-platform rather than towing Microsoft Game Studios' line...
PC Specs
Maybe they will make WoW F2P and rake in the fat stacks that come with such a move. Then again they won't because you know Activison is evil...