Bobby Kotick says EA’s former CEO was so bad he ‘would have paid to keep him in charge’

Former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has called former Electronic Arts boss John Riccitiello “the worst CEO in video games.”

Kotick, who left Activision Blizzard in 2023, shortly after Microsoft completed a $69 billion acquisition of the company, recently took part in an interview with venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, alongside Kleiner Perkins advisor Bing Gordon, who had previously served for 10 years as COO at EA.

When asked about their friendship, Kotick said he was always worried that Gordon would take over from Riccitiello, who was CEO at EA from 2007 to 2013, because he felt Riccitiello was doing a bad job and he liked seeing a rival company struggling.

“We’ve known each other since 1983,” Kotick said of Gordon. “He’s the best guy. Our fear – and I’m not saying this because he’s sitting here – our fear was always that Bing was going to run [EA]. We would have paid for Riccitiello to stay as CEO forever. We thought he was the worst CEO in video games.”

Gordon then added: “He hastened my departure.”

Riccitiello was president and COO of EA between 1997 and 2004 but left the company to work for a private equity firm. He returned in 2007 to serve as CEO, before resigning six years later due to the company’s financial performance.

Riccitiello’s resignation came two weeks after the release of EA’s 2013 version of SimCity, which became infamous for its disastrous launch. The game’s requirement for a persistent internet connection and its release through EA’s Origin software led to mass network outages, resulting in disconnections, crashes, and lost save data.

Riccitiello joined engine maker Unity in 2013 and led the company from the following year. In 2023, he resigned following a backlash from the development community over controversial new monetization plans for its popular game engine.

Kotick and Riccitello faced off during one of the most competitive periods for the two companies, when their flagship first-person shooter series Battlefield and Call of Duty competed for players.

The publishers’ rivalry came to a head in 2010, when Call of Duty creators Jason West and Vince Zampella were fired by Activision. After several lawsuits, the pair formed a new studio with EA, Respawn, which went on to create the Titanfall games, Apex Legends, and Star Wars Jedi games. Activision is said to have responded by attempting to poach EA’s own game leadership, but such a move never materialized.

In 2011, it was even claimed that EA turned away Bobby Kotick at its E3 booth so that he could play the new Battlefield game (a claim Activision denied at the time).