Updated: Activision CEO Earned $64.9 Million in 2012

[Aeshi]

The amount of Sour Grapes in this thread is almost palpable.

 

[walrusaurus]

Obscene amounts of wealth for one person. Just obscene.

And the notion of "incentive pay" or bonuses just for doing your job? If it really worked we'd all be getting it. Instead only the people holding the purse strings receive that cash, and we can see through to what it really is: lining your own pockets.

I'm not defending the amounts here, just wanted to clear something up. Incentive based compensation is actually really common when you work for large corporations. At my office we get paid a low base rate and then our hourly can increase by up to 50% based on perfomance metrics. Its pretty standard practice.

 

[90sgamer]

Imagine that your job never really stops. You don't have weekends, and going home to see your family doesn't mean jack. If you screw up, you cost hundreds of people their jobs and piss away the money you borrowed from hundreds more. Also, no one will ever hire you again. CEO salaries aren't that ridiculous when you factor that stuff in.

I think you are the only person in this thread who is able to see the situation sensibly.

That is a fair point, one I hadn't considered before. But it should be recognized that him working for that much in just one year means he can live relatively comfortably for damn near the rest of his life, I'd say that more than makes up for the downsides.

Captcha: yes_this is /dog/
Wtf?

I believe CEOs are financially liable, unlike every other employee in the company. If the company doesn't do well, share holders can file suit for negligence, fraud, or whatever. Suddenly, all that money earned is gone.

 

[Strazdas]

To be fair, I'd imagine being the CEO of a large company is a pretty hard job. Hence why not everyone is one.
That said, $65 million is a wee bit excessive. I can only guess that since Activision has grown so much under him that he feels he deserves the Lion's share of the profits.

Yes, and he should be paid appropriately. Say 250.000 a year, which brings it over 20.000 a month. But 65 millions, and they say the world is in crysis. its in crysis because somones getting rich if your work.

Imagine that your job never really stops. You don't have weekends, and going home to see your family doesn't mean jack. If you screw up, you cost hundreds of people their jobs and piss away the money you borrowed from hundreds more. Also, no one will ever hire you again. CEO salaries aren't that ridiculous when you factor that stuff in.

Which justify high pay, not ridiculous pay.

I'll say the same thing I say about movie stars and professional athletes when I see people bitching about the crazy money they make. You can only make that much if someone is willing to pay you that much. Whether those people paying you are a board of directors or customers or whoever that money is coming from someone who thinks your value to a particular company or institution is worth said amount of money.

and they are wrong in wanting to pay them so much.

 

[thomaskattus]

Imagine that your job never really stops. You don't have weekends, and going home to see your family doesn't mean jack. If you screw up, you cost hundreds of people their jobs and piss away the money you borrowed from hundreds more. Also, no one will ever hire you again. CEO salaries aren't that ridiculous when you factor that stuff in.

Yes they are still that ridiculous. If you are laying off people and still earning that much as a CEO, you are not doing your job right. If Activision was expanding, showing uber profit, and doing really good. Then yea, I could see it being justified.

But it is not.

OCCUPY ACTIVISION!!!!!

 

[pointless vandalism]

...What the fuck does he spend it all on? Honestly, I'd feel lost with so much money, I'd be like a lvl 50 dragonborn in Skyrim, dafuk do I do with all this? Dump it in a room and roll in it?....Actually...

The CEO of Papa Johns has a fucking MOAT circling his Florida island mansion...... Mike Tyson had a 100% gold plated bathroom. So, basically entirely worthless shit that only ultra rich people want. I hate this country......

 

[Riobux]

$64.9 million? If he was able to earn that much, why doesn't anyone else? Laziness. There is no economic crisis, just laziness.

Margaret Thatcher for UK Prime Minister 2015.

 

[Berithil]

As much as I think that's too much for one person (heck, 1 million a year would be more than enough for me), he wouldn't be making that much if someone wasn't willing to pay him. Plus, CEOs jobs aren't all that easy, having an entire company resting on your shoulders.

 

[thehorror2]

Imagine that your job never really stops. You don't have weekends, and going home to see your family doesn't mean jack. If you screw up, you cost hundreds of people their jobs and piss away the money you borrowed from hundreds more. Also, no one will ever hire you again. CEO salaries aren't that ridiculous when you factor that stuff in.

There is no amount of work that can be worth $64M a year, I'm sorry. No one's contribution to society is worth rewarding that much, even less so someone who only benefits one company. And even if there were people who deserved that much money for what they do (I'm one who thinks management and blue/white-collar workers should switch pay grades) Bobby FRICKING Kotick would never in a hundred thousand years be one of them. Shamus Young wrote an Experienced Points article on the subject a while ago, and he's basically Activision's John Riccitiello: a stuffed shirt with no love for gaming, and no idea how the market he's supposed to be serving actually thinks or functions, and only manages to make a profit because his company owns several IPs that are A) huge cash cows (CoD/WoW, and the sport franchises to be specific) and B) were created by much more creative, useful people who predate him. (Infinity Ward/Blizzard, and their stable of EA [city name] respectively)

I still argue that nothing anyone does for any company can be worth the ENTIRE PROFIT OF ONE OF THEIR GAMES. (A game that moves one million units these days is a failure! A failure that brings in $60M dollars!)

 

[Jumwa]

I'm not defending the amounts here, just wanted to clear something up. Incentive based compensation is actually really common when you work for large corporations. At my office we get paid a low base rate and then our hourly can increase by up to 50% based on perfomance metrics. Its pretty standard practice.

It's common in certain sectors of the economy at certain levels. Like if you work in direct marketing sales. Calling up clients with offers or pitching products to people in a store.

It is not, however, ON THE WHOLE a common practice for workers.

My partner works for the largest corporation in the world at a fairly high tier and still doesn't see it.

And like you said, you get a low base rate. CEOs are not getting low base rates. They get very, very high base rates, and then absurdly high bonuses on top of that. It's rather different. Especially since a CEOs position, as they are hypothetically appointed by investors, is already SUPPOSED to be highly incentivized. i.e. Do your job well and receive dividends from your share in the stock. Don't, and face sacking.

So yes, while low level sales people or midlevel management (for cutting costs and such) have reasons for getting such pay, a CEO who just ran a rather "meh" year getting record high $65 million payout is not the same thing. That's what I was trying to say: he got paid a massive bonus for just doing his job. It's not as if Activision had a particularly good year even.

I doubt any sales people are seeing massive incentive pay for running a typical week of sales.

 

[Fappy]

Imagine that your job never really stops. You don't have weekends, and going home to see your family doesn't mean jack. If you screw up, you cost hundreds of people their jobs and piss away the money you borrowed from hundreds more. Also, no one will ever hire you again. CEO salaries aren't that ridiculous when you factor that stuff in.

People tend to lose sight of this rather easily. I was about to point this out as well, but you did a fine job of it already.

A single person getting paid this much for any job can be hard to swallow, but it's not like it's a job anyone can do. CEO's are some of the most stressed out people on the planet. Anyone in corporate can tell you that.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Wow what a lot of whiners on here, maybe if you lot actually did something with your lives instead of spending so much time on forums and playing games you could earn decent money instead of whinge at those who said fuck working for minimum wage as a faceless nobody I'm going to make companies want to pay me decent money.

I wish I had your optimism. We aren't living in the 50's anymore, the days where you could actually say something like what you just said and be truthful are long-gone.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Imagine that your job never really stops. You don't have weekends, and going home to see your family doesn't mean jack. If you screw up, you cost hundreds of people their jobs and piss away the money you borrowed from hundreds more. Also, no one will ever hire you again. CEO salaries aren't that ridiculous when you factor that stuff in.

People tend to lose sight of this rather easily. I was about to point this out as well, but you did a fine job of it already.

A single person getting paid this much for any job can be hard to swallow, but it's not like it's a job anyone can do. CEO's are some of the most stressed out people on the planet. Anyone in corporate can tell you that.

Would you say that running an entire country is more stressful and time-consuming than managing a company? Because the Prime Minister of Britain earns much less a year than Bobby Kotick ever will. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister_of_the_United_Kingdom
And the president of one of the world's largest super-power has a salary much less than that
http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/how-much-money-does-the-president-make/
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_money_does_the_US_President_earn

The job of a CEO is stressful, and time-consuming, sure, but so are most other jobs and I'm sure a lot of the people working at Activision are having an equally stressful time working as him, whilst not having millions of dollars to fall back onto if they get fired.

 

[Ickorus]

No wonder they need so much for a game to be considered a success..

It really is criminal that they can give themselves this much, criminal and yet there are no laws against it.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Man... that must be nice.

I cant hate the guy for it, I'd hope one day I cuold be that rich (though I'd hate the responsibility that comes with it). Good on him I suppose.

 

[Colt47]

At 80,000 a head you could hire 800 people on that salary.

How do these companies justify layoffs again?

Because that isn't his actual salary. The total amount listed there includes milestone incentives and other bonuses that are highly variable depending on what is happening year after year. His actual salary is probably sub one million dollars due to US restrictions on excessive income.

I'd still peg the true salary being somewhere close to a million though, and a lot more money than 99% of the US population could ever dream of earning. CEOs tend to be given a lot in the way of incentives due to the high demand for the position and low number of qualified individuals.

 

[Ickorus]

Imagine that your job never really stops. You don't have weekends, and going home to see your family doesn't mean jack. If you screw up, you cost hundreds of people their jobs and piss away the money you borrowed from hundreds more. Also, no one will ever hire you again. CEO salaries aren't that ridiculous when you factor that stuff in.

Then I should be paid something comparable to them then, you don't know stress until you work as one of the sole IT administrators for a multi-million pound software company where one simple fuck up can spiral out and potentially cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.

 

[Lawyer105]

What most comments in this thread seem to be missing is that, regardless of how legal this is (and it is legal), or how working-as-intended it is (and it is WAI), the basic fact of the matter is that this sort of thing is, at it's very core, immoral!

Capitalism, as currently practiced, can and will (and already is) lead to increasing levels of monopoly, increasing wealth and income distribution inequalities and do not, in any way, actually reflect the absolute or relative value-to-society of the various individuals involved.

The idea of capitalism is good. The implementation of that idea has been appalling, and has led to extraordinarily immoral welfare inequalities throughout the entire world.