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News video games 14 January 2022, 14:56

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.

IN A NUTSHELL:
  1. The richest CEO in the video game industry in 2020 was Robert Antokol, founder and director of Playtika, a company that creates mobile games;
  2. 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:

  1. Electronic Arts: 123,935
  2. Activision: 99,100
  3. Zynga: 98 781
  4. Glu Mobile: 89 738
  5. Take-Two: 72,046
  6. 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.

  1. Games One - official website