As the pandemic took hold back in 2020 and people retreated inside for months on end, seeking solace in gaming and other technological outlets, it was inevitable that many of the companies in the gaming and tech sector would see a boost to their bottom line. A new survey from market intelligence firm Games One, however, now reveals how much of those 2020 profits went to the CEOs of the companies in question.
Leading the pack by a significant margin is mobile gaming company Playtika’s CEO Robert Antokol, who earned a staggering $372,008,176 in total compensation in 2020. Nipping at his heels is Activision Blizzard’s Bobby Kotick, who was clearly enjoying his $154,613,318 in the months before stories started hitting the press about his company’s toxic workplace and his own involvement in it.
The survey calculated its figures from “a mixture of salary, bonus, stock, benefits,” and also included the median employee salary for a handful of companies in order to work out the pay ratio between the average employee and CEO. Activision, unsurprisingly, wound up on the bottom, with a pay ratio of 1:1,560. Indeed, it should be noted that the top three highest-earning CEOs — Antokol, Kotick, and Skillz’ Andrew Paradise — together earned almost three times the combined compensation of every other CEO on the list.
It’s interesting to see these figures laid out for 2020, especially as analysts will likely soon start seeing similar data for 2021. In the intervening months, both Activision Blizzard and EA announced that they would be cutting executive pay, and Activision was beset by the various controversies with which it’s still reckoning. If the CEO earning figures look too similar to 2020, it could be another nail in the proverbial coffin of some of these high-earning executives.
