Value skyrocketed, but IP was demolished. Warcraft and Starcraft are two of the most popular game franchises ever. Today, nobody cares about the story of these games anymore. Popular characters have been written into a wall or killed off in an unsatisfying way. The overall story is a tangled mess of retcons, 1000 IQ BBEG, and directionless plot lines. While Activision made record profits, they did it at the cost of player numbers. Every new character is shallow, uninspired, quickly killed off, or never used again after their initial use(Bwonsamdi, Rexar, many more). By failing to appease players with the story, and putting systems designers in charge of gameplay, they have been draining the value of their IP for the last 10 years.

For games to be successful today, they need popularity. Twitch streamers need to play it. Youtubers need to make "how-tos", and word of mouth is king. Activision drove the final nail in their coffin with the PR nightmare this year. No amount of necromancy (Warcraft Reforged, Classic WoW, Diablo 2) can save the company long term.

On the other hand, since the news that he knew about years of sexual harassment at the company the stock has dropped 33%. If "maximising shareholder value" is the only metric for success it seems that making one of your employees kill themselves for failing to tackle a culture of abuse seems like a poor way to do that.

Kotick got a good run for the shareholders - he's now a liability having had all the sexual harassment under his watch. The sexual harassment/lack of leadership discipline has discounted the sale price of ATVI (microsoft swoops in) - he sticks with firm for a bit during transition to ensure smooth transfer and steps away afterwards. I don't see any other way - he's become a liability especially for a company like Microsoft.

I don’t think this acquisition is about stock value as much as it is about acquiring IP and games for MS game pass offering.

Short term it was increased but how much long term damage was done? Warcraft III Reforged has yet to receive most of the promised features or even a single patch.