EA ‘Passed’ on Buying Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and Even World of Warcraft Studio Blizzard, Former Exec Reveals

EA “passed” on buying a number of blockbuster Activision Blizzard games, including Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and even World of Warcraft developer Blizzard.

That’s according to former EA chief creative officer Bing Gordon, who said on the Grit podcast that “Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Blizzard… EA saw all those first and passed on all of them.”

Talking to former Activision boss Bobby Kotick, Bing said: “This is why I have double-high respect for [Kotick] saying, ‘no, no, this is going to be good to own.’ And then you kept the people around.

“I’m pretty sure that some of those companies, the creative leaders, would not have stuck around [for a company other than Activision], so you did some kind of miracle of keeping them productive for long periods of time.”

The merger between then Blizzard owner Vivendi Games and Activision in July 2008 created the Activision Blizzard we know today. At the time, World of Warcraft was already the world’s biggest subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game. According to Gordon, EA was among the publishers approached to buy Blizzard ahead of the merger, but declined the offer.

While Guitar Hero has fallen by the wayside, Call of Duty and World of Warcraft continue to make millions with each new game and expansion fueled by live service revenue, which flows up to parent company Microsoft.

During the same interview, Kotick said EA tried to buy Activision and Blizzard several times. “They tried to buy us a bunch of times, we had merger conversations a bunch of times,” Kotick revealed.

Gordon added: “While you were doing Blizzard, that EA passed on, and you were doing King, EA did PopCap — just stupid things.”

In the same interview, Kotick declared ex-EA CEO John Riccitiello “the worst CEO in video games.” Kotick also opened up about Universal’s 2016 adaptation of Activision Blizzard’s Warcraft, calling it “one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].