Investment group CtW has said that Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick is still paid too much, despite the exec's salary set to reduce.

In a statement on its website, the outfit asked shareholders to opposed the company's "Say-On-Pay" proposal due to the fact that Kotick now has a shorter employment contract. This combined with it Shareholder Value Creation Incentive – which sees the CEO receive bonuses based on Activision Blizzard's share price – basically nullifies the changes made to his base compensation.

"Because the contract extension is only until the end of March 2023, the only full year for which Mr Kotick will see a meaningful equity pay reduction is 2022," CtW said in its statement.

"In other words, the extension is not long enough to represent an earnest effort by the Compensation Committee to reduce the CEO’s outsized equity pay over a sustained period.The Compensation Committee is silent about its long-term incentive approach after March 2023.

"Further, the substantial payouts for Mr Kotick’s 2020 and 2021 awards alone are so large that they severely undermine the contractual reductions that apply largely to 2022. Mr Kotick has already received a windfall sufficiently large enough to cover reductions in pay through early 2023because of the Shareholder Value Creation Incentive."

Back in June 2020, CtW Investment Group said that Activision Blizzard had "unnecessarily enriched" Kotick. The exec's compensation was reduced during April of this year, pending approval from shareholders.

CtW has levelled similar concerns at Electronic Arts, saying that its CTO and CFO are overpaid. The result of the investment group's statements led to EA shareholders voting down exec pay proposals.