Activision Head Bobby Kotick Used Secret Companies To Donate To GOP Campaigns

Bobby Kotick, CEO of the massive game developer and publishing company Activision Blizzard, used a secret company to make donations to 2020 GOP campaigns to avoid public scrutiny. Kotick also used another LLC to donate to Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick who is running in Pennsylvania this year.

Federal Election Commission filings reportedly showed that Kotick’s company named Norgate LLC made two separate payments back in 2020 totaling $500,000 to the Senate Leadership Fund. The fund is a political action committee operated by people connected to Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and supports Republicans vying for U.S. Senate seats. Kotick has also made several public donations to McConnell over the years.

CNBC reported that Norgate LLC listed an identical address in California to another company, with the poetic name 807080A LLC, in one of its FEC filings. Both of these companies also have addresses listed that are linked to foundations Kotick operates. Donations totaling $100,000 apparently went through 807080A LLC to the campaign of McCormick, a former CEO of Bridgewater that is running for the seat of Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania), who recently announced his retirement.

The CEO of the Call of Duty developers isn’t a secret Republican and Kotick has made plenty of public donations to GOP figures and the Republican National Committee. These payments are significantly more than any donations with his name publicly attached to them, however.

Kotick has also been in hot water due to being a central figure in the allegations of equal pay violations, sex discrimination and workplace misconduct brought to Activision Blizzard in a lawsuit by the state of California that was filed in July of last year after two years of investigation.

It was also later reported in November 2021 by The Wall Street Journal that Kotick failed to disclose knowledge of the company’s culture of harassment to its board of directors. Kotick faced calls to resign, but remained in his position and received statements of support from the company board of directors. While Kotick requested a 99.9% pay cut in the wake of the scandal drummed up by the lawsuit, the recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft means he could be walking away richer by as much as $390 million when the deal is finalized.