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Penny Arcade - Comic - With Not One But Two Clowns
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - With Not One But Two Clowns
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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EDIT: According to the NYT Bobby could earn over $400 million from the deal.
> It really seems to me like his lax management exposed the company to incredible scrutiny, where monstrous, Boy's Club wickedness harmed people and then destroyed morale - placing acquisition of the organization within striking distance. It's all in the contract of course, but it's hard to imagine rewarding someone for that.
They don’t pay you hundreds of millions of dollars for a job well done. They pay you hundreds of millions of dollars to go away.
Shareholders and the Board of Directors all love Bobby, because he has made them all a lot of money over the years. None of those C Suite people care about the hobby or the fans. They care about money. And Bobby is great at making money. So no, they're not paying him to go away. They have continually looked the other way over the years and ignored all the accusations and dirty scandal shit, because they love the money that Bobby brings them more than they love integrity and ethics.
They pay you hundreds of millions of dollars because you're the kind of person who can structure things to pay you hundreds of millions of dollars. It applies to success or to failure, good conduct or bad.
You don't have to imagine very hard. Activision-Blizzard's sales of Diablo 4 are living proof that the brand was not devalued due to the bad PR. There was no way to prevent this except by not purchasing the game
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
That last part is especially on point. I know there are a subset of people that like to shrilly insist that profit/capitalism is immoral (right up until it benefits them of course), but all they are demonstrating is that they are missing the lesson.
These systems are amoral. If you want a moral outcome, one has to put in the effort to make that happen instead of being a whale that contributes their grist to the mill and then haplessly wondering why it keeps grinding.
Yes, that means one is going to at times miss out on New Thing. Yes, that sometimes means "punishing" the people in non leadership roles that help create New Thing. But until people individually and collectively learn to defer gratification well enough to shape outcomes better, all their complaints are Sound and Fury, signifying Nothing.
I can't quite get onboard that take. All systems are amoral, in a sense. Capitalism, communism, socialism, aristocracy, theocracy, authoritarianism. None of them in any way require the government to be bad, nor do they require it to be good. To pick one example, a king could be humble and kind and do everything for their subjects, treating them fairly and not enriching themselves.
(And yes, I know I'm mixing forms of government with economic structures, but those things aren't really easily separable.)
But considering that's a tautology, I find it to be a useless philosophical discussion. What I would say is that while all system similarly have the potential to be corrupted, capitalism is one which is especially weak to it. It's one in which the goal is to make money, and therefore success at making money is given a blessing. Inability to make money is inherently a failure. Nothing else particularly matters. In this sense, I do find it to be immoral.
kotick, along with the rest of the board, had ownership stakes in the company. Giving them money for it is sort of a core part of the whole 'buying the company' transaction
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
He's also getting a $15 million bonus on top of all that stock. Because he's such a swell guy. Literally.
If they were instead to say, no, Bobby, you have been a shitty guy, and succeed in firing him with cause, he wouldn't get that.
And before someone says "oh, they had to do that, because...", the key thing to remember is that Microsoft didn't have to buy them. They could have said "we will buy them, but only after they change this golden parachute." But Microsoft placed the financial benefit over the moral benefit. After all, some other company might have been willing to make that calculation. That's how capitalism is structured. Morality has a dollar value placed on it, and companies are urged to make the most money. So morality is negotiable.
Was he sweating evil?
Feel like there is something
I am missing in this
Genuine exchange of
Humble words
Together
Communicating a series of
Logical feelings
Unifying towards a
Breakthrough of understanding