Only six of Activision Blizzard's 10,000 employees caught the coronavirus.
Activision Blizzard's old headquarters.
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How Activision Blizzard is dealing with the pandemic and reopening

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 10 min

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick took responsibility for the safety of his company’s 10,000 employees. He gave them all his mobile phone number and went to work securing help.

One of the people who took him up on that was Amy Tekell, a veteran esports broadcast associate producer at Blizzard Entertainment, who has suffered from COVID-19 for several months now. She hasn’t had to pay any of the costs for her care, which includes house calls from doctors and full coronavirus treatments.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.