author: Miriam Moszczynska
Bobby Kotick Second Top-paid CEO of 2020 in Gaming Industry
The creator of Games One has collected data on the richest CEOs in the video game industry. Surprisingly, Bobby Kotick is not the king of the list.
- The richest CEO in the video game industry in 2020 was Robert Antokol, founder and director of Playtika, a company that creates mobile games;
- The second place was taken by Bobby Kotick;
Journalist Evan Van Zelfden released a report that compiled data on the top earning CEOs in the gaming industry in 2020. He included 42 CEOs from companies around the world in the ranking. The richest among them is Robert Antokol, CEO of Israeli mobile game company Playtika. In 2020, Antokol earned a total of $372 million, which is $186,000 per hour.
Bobby Kotick, whose total earnings in 2020 amounted to more than 150 million dollars, or about $77 thousand per hour, was ranked second. Activision Blizzard's head is still a little short of the title of the richest CEO in gaming.
Below you can find the full list.
No. | Name | Company | Earnings |
1. | Robert Antokol | Playtika | $372,008,176 |
2. | Bobby Kotick | Activision Blizzard | $154,613,318 |
3. | Andrew Paradise | Skillz | USD 103 321 052 |
4. | Andrew Wilson | Electronic Arts | $34,715,802 |
5. | Frank Gibeau | Zynga | $32,003,768 |
6. | John Riccitiello | Unity Software | USD 22,001,733 |
7. | Strauss Zelnick | Take-Two Interactive | USD 18 111 761 |
8. | Taek-Jin Kim | NCsoft | $15,620,773 |
9. | Min-Liang Tan | Razer | $10,457,000 |
10. | Debbie Bestwick | Team17 | $10,242,642 |
11. | Nick Earl | Glu Mobile | $8,633,871 |
12. | Owen Mahoney | Nexon | USD 8 311 079 |
13. | George E. Sherman | Gamestop | $7,609,754 |
14. | David Baszucki | Roblox | 6,775,108 USD |
15. | Jorgen Madsen Lindemann | Modern Times Group | 4 309 571 USD |
16. | Stéphane Roussel | Gameloft | $3,673,362 |
17. | Yosuke Matsuda | Square Enix | USD 4 169 594 |
18. | Hajime Satomi | Sega Sammy | USD 2,949,168 |
19. | Shuntaro Furukawa | Nintendo | USD 2 839 072 |
20. | Andrew Paul | Corsair | USD 2 796 433 |
21. | Juergen Stark | Turtle Beach | $2,275,770 |
22. | Joshua Wilson | SciPlay | $1,635,171 |
23. | Andrew Day | Keywords Studios | US$1,299,104 |
24. | Frank Sagnier | Codemasters | US$ 1,267,155 |
25. | Frédéric Chesnais | Atari | USD 1 124 870 |
26. | Adam Kicinski | CD Projekt | USD 1 054 090 |
27. | Marcin Iwinski | CD Projekt | USD 1 032 536 |
28. | Yves Guillemot | Ubisoft | USD 925 314 |
29. | Dmitry Kozko | Motorsport Games | USD 737 672 |
30. | Alain Falc | Nacon | $727,739 |
31. | Abramo and Raffaele Galante | Digital Bros | $712,560 |
32. | Carl Cavers | Sumo Group | USD 685 495 |
33. | David Braben | Frontier Developments | USD 581 516 |
34. | Kati Levoranta | Rovio | $535,722 |
35. | Anton Gauffin | Huuuge Games | USD 470 800 |
36. | Alex Nichiporchik | tinyBuild | USD 419 460 |
37. | Darcy Taylor | East Side Games | $418,473 |
38. | Adam Foroughi | AppLovin | $409,462 |
39. | Hannes Wallin | Hannes Wallin | 238 447 USD |
40. | Claude Guillemot | Guillemot Corporation | 185,004 U.S. dollars |
41. | Lars Wingefors | Embracer Group | $162,293 |
The data Van Zelfden used to create this ranking is available in the companies' files, and all "foreign" currencies were converted into USD by the author of the summary. As we can read in the explanation attached to the ranking, the total earnings of individual CEOs depend on many variables, such as pay, bonuses, shares held, benefits and, of course, taxes.
Van Zelfden also shared the median salary of employees at the largest companies of the video game industry. These amounts too are expressed in dollars:
- Electronic Arts: 123,935
- Activision: 99,100
- Zynga: 98 781
- Glu Mobile: 89 738
- Take-Two: 72,046
- Gamestop: 11,033
One must admit that such a dose of information gives a good view of the situation in the industry. After all, you can see that games for smartphones bring manufacturers considerable benefits. After all, as many as three among the first five CEOs manage companies involved in mobile gaming.