Oh, maybe he wants to move house and needs a bit extra, just to be safe.

I wonder if he works 95-hour work weeks around each and every one of the many crunch times he presides over.

I have no problem with a CEO cashing out his / her options to make a profit. Take into consideration those options were granted to him by a board of directors and CEOs like Kotick were elected to their position. Before we see anyone bashing ANY CEO for the profits they make, consider how they got there, who put those individuals there (and allowed such salaries + options), and what they do for the particular company.

If Kotick makes $20M in options but puts out games MW2 that bolsters the company stock and company in general, then he's worth the profit. Additionally, if he's smart enough to see the industry and can take sufficient risks to warrant the money spent to make a MW2, then he's worth every penny, and we as gamers should be happy that we get good games like MW2.

On the flipside, if a CEO pumps up the stock of a company and then jumps ship, then instead of being completely bitter at the CEO, spread some of that bile for the morons that put such a CEO in that position and didn't incorporate any checks and balances.

If you have a problem with how much money some of these guys make while all the people actually doing the work get laid off then stop buying the games they make.

I haven't bought (or pirated or rented) an Activision or EA game all year, and I don't plan on buying any in the future. If you don't believe in the system then stop paying into it. Support indies, stay indie, and preserve your soul.

...

J Boone makes great points about this situation. These massive stock payouts happen all the time with CEOs of companies that do very well. I think Steve Jobs recently made 300 million on an exchange. My question is does Bobby, as someone who has worked his way up in the industry (and he has), reward and acknowledge his ATVI staff for their stellar work that helped to realize his fortune?

Granted his staff gets compensated by the company, but as a CEO who is now ultra wealthy he should not overlook the efforts of his line troops in his success.

A reward can be as simple as a self-written thank you company wide email or as generous as a self-funded party event.

"Netted" seems to be the wrong term. First, I doubt he paid $1.9 million for the base shares. Second, a windfall $20 mill will be taxed at at least 50% in the U.S. Maybe more? Still it's good money. Particularly if these are non-qualified shares that he can do stock swaps with to reduce his tax liability.

Capital gains is taxed at 15%.

Don't grief Bobby. He deserves it. At least these were stock options tied to company performance rather than some obscure executive bonus where execs get rich no matter how well the company does. Case in point - the former Clorox salesman running EA.

"Capital gains is taxed at 15%." what about the AMT?

"Short-term capital gains are taxed at a higher rate: the ordinary income tax rate. "

http://people.forbes.com/profile/robert-a-kotick/1126

If Kotick makes $20M in options but breaks great series like CoD with the POS that is MW2 (for PC), then he deserves to be fired and put on an island, far far away to avoid him ever doing any more damage to this industry.

He knows how to make money. I'm have no preference of indie or mainstream. I actively search for new, cool iTouch games and XBL Indie games. But there's no denying the fun and competition that comes with a game like MW2. They even innovated and took chances with games like DJ Hero (which, from what I've played, is pretty great).
I mean no one should be "worth" that much but he has done well. He talks like an idiot sometimes, but the end products are reliably decent. Customers like that.

Two things...

First, the fact that he made $9-10/share off this transaction is due in part to how he's lead the company. It's a much more successful company than it was in 2000 when the options were granted. I don't know all the implications of this trade on the stock price and whatnot, but you have to admit that 9-10x profit on options is pretty good.

Second, I'm not sure if people understand the irony, but when you boycott companies you shouldn't claim to care about the employees of those companies. If your motives were altruistic and based in concern for the employees who crunch and get laid off to make the stock go up a little bit, why would you start a boycott that, if effective, would make it more likely that the employees get laid off?

Management by terror shouldn't grant the right to suck so much money out of people's work.

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/bobby-koticks-goal-to-take-all-the-fun-out-of
-making-video-games/

This will be petty change when the $ from MW2 are said and done.

Bob Stevens summed it up perfectly.
And for those of you who don't understand how options work, look it up in Google Finance.

Boycotts hurt the lower tier employees in the same way that trade embargoes(like US/Cuba) hurt the Cuban civilians. I never understood it. CEOs still cash out, even for doing a poor performance. I won't pretend to understand the economics of huge stock payouts. All I'll say is that there are over 1000+ laid off employees that could use some of that 30 million right about now.

Bob: "First, the fact that he made $9-10/share off this transaction is due in part to how he's lead the company"

Do you think this could have something to do with the industry going from nascent to mass cultural media in this time period?

Bob: "Second, I'm not sure if people understand the irony, but when you boycott companies you shouldn't claim to care about the employees of those companies."

Do you think buying more EA games would keep those people working who are being fired to cut $100 million at the same time the EA pays owners (and upper management via options) $300 million for Playfish?

Given your stated knowledge, I will assume that you understand public companies are driven by unachievable year over year growth practices and regardless of how much we consume, this, like our current way of consuming, is unsustainable and when the market corrects, as it always does, the only way to maintain growth is "restructuring" a perfectly viable organization in-order to boost profits. And as a result of this "good" work CEOs like Kotick still get performance bonus even though the real value of the company, its employees and assets has in fact dropped.

Patrick:

"Do you think this could have something to do with the industry going from nascent to mass cultural media in this time period?"

Of course, Kotick isn't the reason year on year revenue has shot up for the industry at large, but there are a lot of companies that have failed in this industry since 2000. At the same time you can't attribute all of Activision's success to the expansion of the gaming market. This is why I said "in part".

"Do you think buying more EA games would keep those people working who are being fired to cut $100 million at the same time the EA pays owners (and upper management via options) $300 million for Playfish?"

Not necessarily, but I do think that a /successful/ boycott would result in reduced revenues, making it more likely that employees get laid off. Your point makes the boycott even more fatalistic: if we can't help the employees by buying games and we can't help them by *not* buying games, we shouldn't consider either action something that should be done because we care about the employees.