There must be something in the water this year that's making video game industry personalities want to take jabs at each other in public. One of the more popular being the saga from Alganon, but in more recent news, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, known for being a bit outspoken at times, has taken a few shots at Electronic Arts in a recent interview with Edge Magazine. Kotick takes a few jabs at EA and the way that they handle acquired developers. But Kotick didn't stop there, he goes on to explain that Activision tries to maintain a developer's culture when they acquire it, but EA takes it and turns it into another EA branch.

"The thing is, it doesn’t work that way - you can’t be a floor wax and then decide that you’re going to become a dessert topping," he says. "That doesn’t work, it’s your DNA. [EA’s] DNA isn’t oriented towards that model - it doesn’t know how to do it, as a culture or as a company, and it never has... Look, EA has a lot of resources, it’s a big company that’s been in business for a long time, maybe it’ll figure it out eventually. But it’s been struggling for a really long time. The most difficult challenge it faces today is: great people don’t really want to work there.

Kotick goes on to slam EA a bit more and in so many words states that people who have few other options might end up working there.

But EA is responding to Kotick's comments in kind. EA corporate communications VP Jeff Brown's response to Gamasutra includes citing Kotick's own legal troubles with the Infinity Ward fiasco and the Call of Duty franchise as well as Activision's exchange with Double Fine.

"His company is based on three game franchises – one is a fantastic persistent world he had nothing to do with; one is in steep decline; and the third is in the process of being destroyed by Kotick’s own hubris."

Activision and EA have become heated rivals in recent years and it looks like that rivalry is only becoming a bit more heated.