A long-running lawsuit objecting to Microsoft’s $69-billion purchase of Activision Blizzard has received an extraordinary reply from former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick—and swift pushback against one of its most volatile claims.
The ongoing lawsuit, filed by Swedish pension fund Sjunde AP-Fonden (also known as AP7) in Delaware’s Court of Chancery in late 2022, alleges that Kotick rushed the sale of Activision Blizzard in late 2021 to avoid the consequences of sexual misconduct scandals swirling around the company.
The AP7 fund has sought to make their suit a class action, claim additional payments for shareholders and to even invalidate the deal. It names Microsoft, Activision Blizzard and the company’s former board of directors, including Kotick, as defendants.
In a newly disclosed court filing that was submitted by Kotick and his lawyers in December and published for public consumption yesterday, the veteran gaming CEO denies AP7’s claims via an official “Answer” to the suit.
In that Answer, Kotick doesn’t just deny the allegations and offer a defense of his run overseeing the makers of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush.
He also attempts to assign blame for those workplace scandals, the bad press and even for the AP7 lawsuit.
Behind this specific litigation, he suggests, is another powerful games industry player, The Embracer Group (makers of Tomb Raider, and Dead Island, rights-holders to Lord of the Rings). He describes Embracer as a potential secret collaborator on the suit or at least, to him, a conspicuous potential beneficiary.
As Kotick and his legal team write:
“This Delaware lawsuit was apparently aimed to help pave the way for Embracer to increase its foothold in the California market at the expense of Activision, making it more difficult for Activision to recruit talent and expand through M&A activity of the sort that Activision relied on to grow historically.”
Embracer has colorfully denied any such claims, telling Game File, in part that, “perhaps difficult to accept for Mr. Kotick, but we did not and do not need any help from a Swedish pension fund in competing with Activision.”
This is a wild one, folks, and we haven’t even gotten to the part where Kotick suggests the plaintiffs should be thanking him.