Xbox co-founder mocks Activision CEO Bobby Kotick in tweets after merger deal closes

Original Xbox co-founder Seamus Blackley took to Twitter to mock Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. Yesterday, after about 21 months of pilgrimage, Microsoft finalized its merger with Activision-Blizzard-King, and Kotick will remain CEO of Activision until the end of the year. Much has been said about the controversial mega-deal, and Microsoft also owns the rights to a plethora of titles, including Call of Duty, Spyro, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Guitar Hero.

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Shortly before Microsoft completed the deal yesterday, the UK regulator CMA announced its approval of the merger. After the decision was made, the original Xbox co-founder mocked Bobby Kotick on Twitter for now being acquired by Xbox and mentioned "karma."

"When we pitched Guitar Hero to Bobby and he told us no one would stock it and turned us down (only to later buy it!), I reminded him that just a few years ago he had said that to me about the Xbox and he laughed," Blakely wrote on Twitter.

The father of Xbox also said: "Now that he's been acquired by Xbox, Retribution is a bitch."

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time Blakeley has blasted Kotick over the matter. After his time at Microsoft, Blakely represented video game creators at Creative Artists Agency. In this role, he pitched Guitar Hero to Activision. Back in 2021, Blackley hinted that the Activision CEO turned down Guitar Hero and later acquired the publisher that released the game (RedOctane). The follow-up on this matter in 2021 is as follows:

Earlier this year, during an XboxEra podcast, Blackley again spoke about his role in pitching the game to Kotick, revealing that he and Kotick didn't like each other that much. "With Guitar Hero, they tried to destroy the music game franchise, and they basically did it -- they released 30 SKUs based on Guitar Hero in a year, they buried Guitar Hero, stripped it, mined it, consumed it to death, and a lot of it was just pure resentment towards RockBand, because the way I contracted the division for Harmonics was that Harmonics owned the intellectual property and Activision wanted that game," Blakely said on the podcast.