Blizzard’s bosses were initially excited to work with Tippl’s successor, Coddy Johnson, who had struck them as cordial and reasonable a few years earlier, when he had been Kotick’s chief of staff. But in April 2018, Johnson put together an off-site conference for leaders across all three of Activision Blizzard’s divisions: Activision Publishing, Blizzard, and King. The theme was unification: streamlining operations into “One ABK” rather than maintaining three autonomous entities. Kotick and his team were spelling out what had been apparent to Morhaime for years: He didn’t want Blizzard to be
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