> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://aftermath.site/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why It Took Years For A Story About Bobby Kotick Sending Journalists Legal Threats To Come Out - URL: https://aftermath.site/podcasts/aftermath-hours-podcast-bobby-kotick-games-journalists/ - Published: 2026-09-25T15:00:36.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-25T15:00:35.000Z - Description: "It wasn’t about pulling together the evidence. It wasn’t about doing the research. That was done pretty early on" - Author: Nathan Grayson - Tags: Podcasts, podcast, bobby kotick, games journalism, people make games, xbox, microsoft, HALO He’s not the CEO of Activision anymore, but Bobby Kotick is back in the headlines. This week, independent investigative YouTube channel People Make Games published [a lengthy video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKwpp-Bn8jI&ref=aftermath.site) about Kotick’s pattern of sending legal threats to games journalists—a story that’s been in the works for years. But why did it take so long to come to light? On the latest episode of Aftermath Hours, we find out, straight from the source. This time around, we’re joined by Nathan and Riley’s former Washington Post colleague, [Mikhail Klimentov](https://bsky.app/profile/leadergrev.bsky.social?ref=aftermath.site), to discuss his years-in-the-making report on Kotick. We dig into why the story took so long to find a home, what Kotick—no longer running Activision and obviously quite wealthy—stands to gain from this, and how the knowledge that such a thing *could* happen shapes reporting coming out of sites without the time or resources to combat a defamation suit. Then we move on to this week’s big headline: [more layoffs at Microsoft](https://aftermath.site/xbox-layoffs-halo-obsidian/), this time reducing *Halo* Studios to a shell of its former self and putting Activision in charge of a series synonymous with Xbox going forward. We come to the conclusion that [Microsoft has no overriding, long-term plan](https://aftermath.site/microsoft-xbox-layoffs-halo-activision/) at this point; its decision making—like that of many other C-suites in the video game space—is largely reactive, and the end result is chaos. Finally, we talk about something everybody should try at least once: playing *Half-Life: Alyx* in VR at Gita’s birthday party. You can find this week's episode below and on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/7qtlX6MNeEoyNuHBU0chUJ?si=a2f12b75911f43cb&ref=aftermath.site), [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/aftermath-hours/id1727407094?ref=aftermath.site), or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, leave a review so that we can grow large and powerful enough to open our own law firm dedicated to defending games journalists, specifically. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity): **Nathan:** You’ve been working on this story for a couple years now. Why has it taken so long to come to light, especially when—as you said—it’s in Kotick’s Wikipedia? It’s out in the open. What made you and various publications hesitant to publish it? **Mikhail:** Not to undermine myself, but the basic facts of the story are simple, and they’re out there, and there’s a lot of public documentation. When I was running into headwinds getting the story out, I thought “What’s the minimum viable product? Can I run a story that’s just ‘Why do these five articles about Bobby Kotick have weird editor’s notes on them?’” without pointing out what I actually knew—in a way that would legally fly under the radar. But the truth is that the challenges were mostly about getting the story published. It wasn’t about pulling together the evidence. It wasn’t about doing the research. That was done pretty early on. The real challenge was making sure that every sentence was fully buttoned up, \[that\] nothing would open up me or whoever was publishing this to legal scrutiny. And I do want to shout out that the first place that really, seriously considered this story was The New York Times. I worked with them for a long time on it, and I had a great editor who would get into the documents with me and really knew the story inside and out. Sometimes the mainstream-est of the mainstream media, they have the resources to tackle these things, Then unfortunately—this is not a fault of The Times at all—for work and contractual reasons, that story with The Times didn’t work out. It went to a different outlet that at first said they wanted the story and then didn’t edit it for a couple months. Then they got back to me and were like “What if we change the story completely to be something different?” And at that point, I was like “This is stupid. You guys are killing this. Can I please take this somewhere else?” That process dragged on forever. One incident that really stood out to me was, I pitched the story to a major national magazine—a magazine you absolutely, 100 percent heard of, kind of synonymous with the idea of magazines—and the feedback I got from the editors there was “We like this story, but going into the second Trump administration, we are so nervous about lawsuits from Elon Musk, Donald Trump, \[and so on\] that taking on this additional risk vector is too much for us. We’re not interested for that reason.” A lot of the challenge was like “Who can I find who will back this story, indemnify me, provide the legal backing, and pay for lawyers?” I started talking to insurers who might offer media liability insurance, and the feedback I got was, the threshold you start to get insured is if your outlet is making $50,000 a year. I write a free newsletter that makes zero dollars a year. There’s nobody who would insure this story and give me legal protection. I would go to some media lawyers and ask for their advice. They were super helpful; it’s good that that resource exists. But it costs money. It’s expensive to talk to a lawyer for however much time and get their advice and get them to read a draft. All of the costs were piling up, so honestly a big portion of the time it took to get the story out had to do with wrangling and logistics around “Where’s this going to go? Who has the resources to publish this? Does anybody want to publish this?” **Chris:** It’s really funny because the difficulty in getting the story done is also the story in certain ways. It is a thing that’s self-contained. Why is it such an uphill battle to get that part of the story to come to light? You are having to put yourself at risk. **Nathan:** It’s very much an instance of “What are you gonna do? Stab me?” - Man who just got stabbed. You’re reporting on this behavior, this tendency, and there is a possibility that Bobby Kotick will react by going after you for talking about it. **Mikhail:** It’s a tough pitch, for sure. Like, “Hey, do you want to run this story about a guy who is sending legal threats to media outlets? Are you interested in that?” To an extent, I get why that is a hard sell. ## Recommended [Report: Bobby Kotick Files Defamation Suit Against Gizmodo And Kotaku - AftermathThe suit is over details in a pair of articles about Kotick’s rumored interest in buying TikTok![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/icon/favicon4-c03bea77-3f71-4283-8622-d97781eed676.png)AftermathRiley MacLeod![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/thumbnail/screenshot-2025-03-14-at-11-26-02-pm-3-139cf5e3-1cb7-4a75-9dc4-56d6239eddc7.png)](https://aftermath.site/kotick-kotaku-gizmodo/)