{"id":10953,"date":"2011-03-29T15:05:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T13:05:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T22:00:00","slug":"cut-kotick-some-slack-says-blizzard-boss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/10953-cut-kotick-some-slack-says-blizzard-boss","title":{"rendered":"Cut Kotick some slack says Blizzard boss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Morhaime, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, has said in an interview that Bobby Kotick has an undeserved reputation in the gaming media.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcvuk.com\/features\/902\/INTERVIEW-Blizzardx\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"MCV\">MCV<\/a> Morhaime said &ldquo;I have an advantage there because I know Bobby personally and we have very long, in-depth conversations, so my view of him is not limited to small sound bites taken out of context.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Activision and Blizzard were merged in 2008 when Blizzard parent company Vivendi acquired Activision, creating what is now one of the most powerful gaming publishers in the world, Activision Blizzard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption_image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/mike_morhaime_300_264310195.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"125\" height=\"155\" \/><br \/>Mike Morhaime<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We wouldn&rsquo;t have supported the merger had we not believed Bobby and Activision understood how special Blizzard is and weren&rsquo;t supportive of our values,&rdquo; said Morhaime. &ldquo;We were convinced that they did, that the two businesses were complementary and that we wouldn&rsquo;t be giving up our creative autonomy in any way. And that&rsquo;s exactly how it has panned out.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I can tell you that Bobby has been very supportive of Blizzard and that we have a great relationship with him. I don&rsquo;t think the public image that some people have of him is fair or accurate,&rdquo; said Morhaime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Morhaime thinks that Bobby Kotick is a nice guy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":157,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}