FormerActivision BlizzardPresident Daniel Alegre will be joining Yuga Labs, the parent company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, as its new CEO in 2023, as reported byCoinDeskearlier this week.Alegre announced his departurefrom Activision Blizzard late last week and it has now been confirmed that he will start at Yuga in the first half of 2023.The previous CEO of Yuga Labs was Nicole Minuz, who joined in September 2021. She will stay on as a partner and strategic advisor. Alegre, for his part, had been President of Activision Blizzard since April 2020. Before that, Alegre had spent over 16 years working for Google in various presidential roles at the company.RELATED:Activision Blizzard President And COO To Leave Company Next YearA press release from Yuga Labs cites Alegre’s “deep expertise” in areas like the gaming world, but his departure from Activision Blizzard for the frontiers of Web3 and NFTs comes at a dubious time for both areas. Most notable for Alegre, who hadalready been namedin an FTC lawsuit regarding Activision Blizzard’sstill-contested acquisition by Microsoft.
For the part of Yuga Labs and the Bored Apes, the brand has seen its own issues in the wake of the ongoing downturn in overall crypto prices following the collapse of FTX.Yahoo News reported in Novemberthat the USD price of a Bored Ape had fallen 82% since the brand’s peak on April 29. It was alsoreported on December 12that a class-action lawsuit was being filed against Yuga Labs, alleging that its paid celebrity endorsements were manufactured to mislead customers about the value of assets that could not be maintained.
Nonetheless, Yuga Labs has pushed forward with its Web3 ventures, including a metaverse project called The Otherside, the gamified aspects of which might have been a motivation to secure someone like Alegre, with experience in the games industry.
It’s the sort of business manoeuvre that makes clear that the worlds of gaming and Web3 are probably not going to come untangled any time soon, despite what some players would hope.Microsoft had already declaredin an announcement in January that its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which Alegre was still President of then, was at least partly to “provide building blocks for the metaverse”. Apparently not able to wait to get on that particular train, Alegre’s incipient job change has already seen himswitch his profile pictureto one of Yuga Labs' Mutant Ape NFTs.
