Tony Hawk

And to be fair, at that time in my life, someone even saying half a million dollars sounded outrageous.

It's like someone saying, oh, I'm going to give you half a billion dollars.

okay, sign me up.

But there was a sense that things were kind of turning around in the skate industry.

Things were definitely turning around in my career opportunities.

I was doing pretty well.

I just, I just bought a house that I could really afford the mortgage of.

And I had my second kid at that point.

And I thought, I'm,

Maybe I just let it ride.

I mean, it seemed like an insane gamble, but I felt pretty secure.

And so I did that.

I said, no, I'm just going to see how it goes.

I mean, it was the best financial decision of my life, for sure.

I mean, the game changed my life.

The royalties were absurd.

At one point, we were releasing our fifth game, which was Underground, and the previous four games were still in the top 10 of all video game sales.

so we had a good run okay so they knew what they were doing when they offered to buy you out at that rate yeah and you know what i know but well i don't think they thought there was going to be sequel upon sequel upon sequel i i don't think anyone was trying to pull a fast one they're a company you know they're trying to be profitable i i am so thankful for my relationship with activision like there's no way i could sit here and denounce that they they tried to do that um and the

To me, that was, I guess it was more, that was a boost of confidence that maybe I needed back then.

Because everything was uncertain.