Activision staff react to Xbox acquisition announcement

News
By published

Devs tweet about becoming part of the Microsoft family

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
(Image credit: Activision)

Activision Blizzard employees have been reacting online to Microsoft announcing that it's buying the Call of Duty publisher for $68.7 billion.

Public reactions from current staff at Activision Blizzard have been broadly positive so far, with content producer Devon Newbury saying: "I've always dreamt of working at Xbox, and now my dream is coming true."

That sentiment has been mirrored by Product Lead/Senior Producer, Esports/Partnerships on Call of Duty: Mobile @BlakeEsports, who uses a Fast & Furious gif to sum up his feelings. 

Treyarch studio design director said what most people probably would if they found out they were about to become a Microsoft employee.

Interestingly, Mike Ybarra, who was once a corporate vice president at Microsoft before leaving in 2019 to join Activision Blizzard, kept things nice and a simple with an emoji. 

The Microsoft Activision purchase was announced just earlier today, with the Xbox giant acquiring the Call of Duty, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft publisher for an astonishing $68.7 billion. For context, that is a larger sum of money than the entire GDP of Croatia.

While the two companies will still be run independently until the deal closes in 2023, Microsoft has already stated that: "Activision Blizzard games are enjoyed on a variety of platforms and we plan to continue to support those communities moving forward", but that doesn't mean we know yet if Call of Duty, Overwatch 2, and more might end up being Xbox exclusives. 

The Call of Duty publisher has been in the spotlight in recent months due to the Activision Blizzard lawsuit, which you can find out more on the link.

Ben Tyrer
Ben Tyrer
Contributor

Ben Tyrer is a freelance games journalist with over ten years experience of writing about games. After graduating from Bournemouth University with a degree in multimedia journalism he's worked for Official PlayStation Magazine as a staff writer and games editor, as well as GamesRadar+ (hey, that's this website!) as a news editor. He's also contributed to Official Xbox Magazine, Edge, PC Gamer, GamesMaster, PC Games N, and more. His game of the year - no matter the year - is Rocket League.