Kotick joins as an independent director the same day Paramount's $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery takeover closed. What it means for WB Games is still an open question.
The appointment
Skydance Corporation announced October 6, 2026 that former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is joining its board as an independent director, effective immediately, with a seat on the nominating and governance committee. He joins alongside Laurene Powell Jobs as independent directors, co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as a board advisor.
The timing isn't a coincidence. The announcement landed the same day Paramount's roughly $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery closed and the combined company launched as “Skydance.”
What about the games?
Here's where it gets interesting for us. With the deal closed, Warner Bros. Games transferred to Skydance ownership — that's NetherRealm (Mortal Kombat), Rocksteady (Batman: Arkham), Avalanche Software (Hogwarts Legacy) plus the Portkey Games label, TT Games (LEGO), and WB's studios in Boston, Montreal, New York, and San Francisco.
But — and this is important — Skydance's official announcement made zero mention of video games. No outlet has confirmed any plan to merge WB Games with Paramount's existing Paramount Games Studio (formed June 2026, with Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra and a Star Wars project in the works). Whether the studios consolidate or operate independently is, as Shacknews put it, something that “remains to be seen.”
KongMNG's take
Kotick back on a major board was only a matter of time — the man ran Activision for over 30 years, and love him or hate him, he knows the business side of games cold. But the real story here isn't Kotick, it's WB Games. NetherRealm, Rocksteady, Avalanche — that's a murderers' row of studios sitting in limbo while Skydance figures out what it wants to be. If you care about Mortal Kombat, Hogwarts Legacy, or whatever Rocksteady does next, this is the corporate shuffle to watch.
Board appointment via Skydance's official release (PR Newswire, October 6, 2026) and Variety; WB Games ownership transfer via GameSpot, Shacknews, and MobileSyrup. No consolidation of game divisions has been announced or confirmed.