The Washington Post - USA (2022-02-13)

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EE AX FN FS LF PW DC BD PG AA FD HO MN MS SM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/BUSINESS G

COLOR OF MONEY

The Equifax data breach

settlement offers millions

free credit monitoring. But

is it even worth it? G2

HELP DESK

With coronavirus tests

hard to find in parts of the

country, we evaluate new

app-based home tests. G4

ECONOMY

A video game studio did a

trial run of a four-day

workweek. Employees

said it was a lifesaver. G4

BY GUS GARCIA-ROBERTS

AND SHANNON LIAO

los angeles — In the early

1980s, Bobby Kotick, a Univer-

sity of Michigan undergrad who

religiously studied the Forbes

400, co-founded a software com-

pany. Kotick didn’t know any-

thing about how computers

worked. But his roommate, How-

ard Marks, did. Their idea was to

make computers accessible to

Luddites using a program they

named Jane, which would sim-

plify certain tasks on an Apple II.

Kotick persuaded casino mag-

nate Steve Wynn to invest, and

the employees of their company,

called Arktronics, included

members of the university’s com-

puter science faculty. Kotick and

his partners asked their employ-

ees to forgo part or all of their

pay in return for shares in the

company, court records show,

with Kotick thanking one hire

for “the confidence and dedica-

tion you have demonstrated by

your deferral of salary for stock,

it is appreciated and should

prove rewarding.”

But Apple’s next model made

Jane obsolete, and the employees

claimed their thousands of

shares — said to be worth $1 each

— were in fact worthless. “We felt

that we had been lied to and

perhaps cheated,” said former

employee John Wiersba.

Five employees sued Arktron-

ics and its principals in 1985,

records show. Arktronics and the

employees reached a settlement

— but then the company claimed

SEE KOTICK ON G5

How Bobby

Kotick

outlasts his

opponents

Activision CEO is a

controversial fusion of

prescience, persistence

BY JOANNA SLATER

L

ike many Americans, Tracey Albert has grown accustomed to shortages at supermar-

kets over the past two years — toilet paper, cat food, potato chips, ramen noodles. ¶

Then the pandemic came for her chocolate milk. ¶ Albert, 38, has been drinking the

chocolate milk made by Houlton Farms Dairy in northern Maine since she was in elementary

school. Now she buys it for her own children. “Nothing holds a candle to it,” she said. ¶ But

when Albert went to the supermarket late last year, the shelf where she finds her weekly

one-gallon jug was empty, the latest casualty of a supply chain warped by two years of a global

pandemic. ¶ There was no problem with the cows. A farm near the town of Houlton in

Aroostook County, pressed up against the Canadian border, continued to supply fresh milk

seven days a week, just as it had for as long as anyone could remember. ¶ The issue was a

custom-made chocolate powder, normally delivered four times a year from a factory in

Illinois. When Eric Lincoln, the co-owner of the dairy, spoke to his supplier in December, he

learned it might take 12 weeks — triple the normal time — to receive the crucial ingredient.

That’s when Lincoln knew he’d have to curtail production. The story of the disappearing

chocolate milk is a microcosm of a much larger struggle. Businesses are grappling with

historic transportation delays and shifts in behavior as Americans buy more goods than they

did before the pandemic. That has produced abrupt and sometimes baffling shortages

affecting anything from baby formula to semiconductors, while also spurring rising prices. ¶

SEE CHOCOLATE MILK ON G3

TRISTAN SPINSKI FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Houlton Farms Dairy has curtailed production of chocolate milk. The supplier of its chocolate powder faces longer delivery times because of the warped supply chain.

What happened

to the

chocolate

milk?

At a small Maine dairy, supply chain snags force rationing of a loved s taple

BY NITASHA TIKU

Americans tuning in to the

Super Bowl on Sunday will be

inundated with ads from crypto-

currency companies, including

the trading platform FTX, which

plans to give away millions of

dollars in bitcoin.

FTX has spent heavily on

sports partnerships to try to

make itself a brand name in

crypto, including an ad with NFL

star Tom Brady, a sponsorship

with Major League Baseball and

a $135 million deal to rename the

Miami Heat’s stadium the FTX

Arena.

Co-founder and chief execu-

tive Sam Bankman-Fried, who

recently moved FTX’s headquar-

ters from Hong Kong to the

SEE SUPER BOWL ON G2

CEO touts

bitcoin

to build up

his brand

FTX’s Super Bowl ad

aims to woo customers —

as well as regulators