Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision, confirms in an interview with Portfolio what we've suspected for years—Electronic Arts runs on the power of human souls! Maybe we're reading it wrong, but Kotick definitely said that EA "did a very good job of taking the soul out of a lot of the studios it acquired." Hey, even EA boss John Riccitiello kind of agrees, pointing out at DICE this year that older acquisitions like Bullfrog, Origin and Westwood were examples of the publisher blowing it and that taking away developer autonomy is "a profound mistake."

Kotick says the soul-harvesting machine doesn't fly at Activision, which has "built a model that celebrates entrepreneurial, opportunistic, independent values" and a new Tony Hawk game every fucking year. And they have free bagels on Mondays!

Game Boy [Portfolio via Develop]

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