Activision Blizzard announces that former Google executive Daniel Alegre will be its president and chief operation officer as of April 7, 2020. Alegre replaces Coddy Johnson, who moves to an advisor role under Activision Blizzard’s CEO Bobby Kotick. The new title comes with a large annual salary as well as multiple initial bonuses totaling a few million dollars, with more bonuses reported to potentially come in the future.
Alegre isn’t the only Activision Blizzard executive that boasts a huge salary. Last year, Kotick landed 45th in a list of the top 100 most overpaid CEOs. This news came not too long after Activision Blizzard gained a new CFO, Dennis Durkin, and reportedly gave him millions in stocks and bonuses in addition to his $900,000 annual salary. Clearly, Activision Blizzard doesn’t skimp when paying their executives. For Kotick and Durkin, their payouts came after Activision Blizzard announced a record year of sales in 2018.
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According to GameSpot, Alegre will move away from his position as a Google executive and will take on the presidential and COO roles in early April. He will be in charge of Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, and King Digital, and will report directly to Kotick. His starting annual salary is $1.35 million, and bonuses totaling 100% of his salary could come Alegre’s way in the next year. He also receives an initial starting bonus of $2.5 million and now has stock in Activision Blizzard worth $5 million. The combination of Alegre’s salary, plus starting bonuses, stock, and insurance policies total almost $14 million, with more million-plus dollar bonuses likely.
With that success, it makes sense the company can afford to give its execs such large salaries and bonuses, while also taking equal financial care of its employees. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Reportedly, Kotick makes almost 306 times that of his average employee, and in 2019, the company was repeatedly lambasted on social media for laying off hundreds of Activision Blizzard employees despite its 2018 financial success.
The disparity between Activision Blizzard’s executive and employee pay is staggering. With Alegre now joining and the reports of his salary and bonuses coming to light, it’s becoming more and more clear that the company many not have the best interests of its employees at heart. Their financial success cannot continue if they do not have the creators and developers necessary to create their games, and those employees won’t stick around if they don’t have the incentive to do so. Activision Blizzard can clearly afford higher salaries for their workers, and if Alegre and Kotick truly care about their company and its employees, they will focus more on how to create a better financial environment for everyone.
Source: GameSpot
