Some Blizzard employees are dreading BlizzCon
latimes.com
latimes.com
Many people seem to think you can't be professional and allow things like this, but you absolutely can. You can let someone who wins a tournament have a few seconds to say something personal, we see this all the time in sports. Lance Armstrong was allowed to lie while disparaging all of the people who were correctly accusing him, Peter Sagan was allowed to make a wonderful political message.
When sports bodies crack down on this in the name of 'professionalism', history does not judge them kindly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salu...
The biggest example in recent history was the kneeling movement in the NFL and the NFL's stance of blacklisting and penalizing prominent players won.
Similarly with the NBA, player agents have indicated an overwhelming support by players to NOT speak out for fear of losing their endorsements from Nike, Adidas, Anta, and other firms deeply embedded in the Chinese industrial complex. Even with the Commissioner coming out in favor of voicing the issues, its the big stars the fans care about and without them there will be a significantly fewer repercussions.
Did it? I'm genuinely asking and seeing contradicting results trying to search. At least super bowl stats look like they've lost quite a bit. [anecdata] I know myself I quit watching football as a result of that and the injuries.
Players want to be able to speak freely. Many of them have started their support for the Hong Kong protests.
But seriously, where are the citations that multiple players support censorship, let alone NBA players in general?
Because the reporting on ESPN and CBS Sports is the exact opposite--players may choose the remain apolitical with respect to Hong Kong but want the right to speak out if they choose.
We don't know what would have been the result if the NFL had simply ignored the whole thing and let the players peacefully protest. A lot of effort was put forth by the NFL and the president to get people angry about that before they shut it down. Maybe don't do that.
The players didn't "win" necessarily, but I'm not sure if there was ever a criteria by which they could have won. The goals of the protest were too diffuse. I guess the main goal was awareness of police violence, but the people that needed to hear it the most immediately pretended it was about something else (the troops, patriotism, etc.).
I think with what's happening in the NBA, the truth is a lot of these "woke" individuals are only woke as long as it doesn't affect their business interests. It is what it is. This isn't a new thing.
You can't have it both ways. You're either progressive in marketing and action, or you're a hypocrite and deserve the market's backlash when you show your greed over ethics. It's why Lebron got pummeled so hard for his HK remarks.
Depending on your personal politics, any given corporate action is either 'brave, standing up for principles' or 'obviously a sellout to the corrupt bad guys'.
Now if a person declares something "blasphemous", everyone will think that the person is on the "bad" side.
Setting a precedence lead to ugly slippery slopes and keeping to the absolutes in the guidelines is generally more inclusive.
Yes, brilliant catch there, you really got us.
You can think that they're totally, obviously wrong, but that's politics.
Saying: "I want people to just get along together" doesn't imply that one group should be murdered for that to happen.
Gets a bit more complicated when you strip away the drunk modifier.
I can subjectively say that Nazis are bad.
I can objectively say that Nazi policies had a deleterious effect on Jewish populations.
Similarly, I can objectively say that Beijing's policies have a deleterious effect on human rights as defined by the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I can subjectively say that the Chinese government is bad.
I assert that, for many (though possibly not all) moral questions, that there is a fact of the matter as to whether a thing is good or bad or neither.
The sparse examples I've seen of Chinese people actually being exposed to the reality in HK and being surprised, tells me the state media is being effective in its Ministry of Truth role.
I don't know what the yellow vest protest is.
Catalonian independence is something I agree with. They've been exploited extremely hard by Spain more or less since they lost their autonomy.
That's exactly what they show.
Whether these groups favored solutions to the fuck-ness are the correct solutions totally tangential to that. When people take to the streets something ain't right.
This, exactly. It takes a lot to get people to resort to civil unrest. I wish it was respected as being that, the last resort of a populace losing faith in it's leadership, and not derided as it is so often as just people who disagree with something. Protests should be a sign of not just disagreement but profound disgust not just for what is being done, but for the processes and the system that permitted it to happen in the first place.
Body of a 15 year old female protestor was found floating naked in the sea. Many speculate she was raped and killed by police.
We do have evidence of torture: HK police (or mainland military acting as such) posing with an individual in a 'tiger chair' and mocking their suffering.
I for one don't weigh issues like this by the number of people who are on side X, I weigh individual people by the positions they take on such issues.
Both were surprised, almost shocked, that the rioting, damage to public and private buildings, and constant street fighting, with deaths on both sides,that they had heard about was completely untrue.
Both seemed to want to temper their comments but still were very surprised that the story they had been told was so different from the things they saw in person.
My two points of data involving Chinese residents visiting HK and commenting on the difference between the media stories they had heard, and what they experienced in HK personally, were the basis of my comment.
I am certainly aware that there are about 7 billion different opinions about this topic.
As for it being subjective, does that matter? Millions of people are also racist and feel racism -- their racism, anyway -- is A-okay. That doesn't make racism somehow less bad, just because it's technically subjective and some people are fine with it.
HK protestors are for democracy, which is good. The PRC is opposed to democracy, which is bad.
Come on, you should know that the ability to distill complicated issues into slogans is orthogonal to truth.
"Abortion clinic bombers are for life, which is good. Abortion doctors are opposed to life, which is bad."
I don't need to constantly wring my hands about declaring Nazis to be evil asshats, just because they were humans with varying motivations or whatever.
More insightful and deeper analysis may be warranted at times, to be sure, but summarizing them as genocidal, evil maniacs isn't wrong in the least.
The wumao '50 sent army' is active on twitter, in both Chinese and English.
I don't accuse said posters of being members of a 50 peso army. I assume that their (nationalistic) opinions are just that.
You should extend these same assumptions to China.
The right of LGBTQ people to exist is not politics, that's human rights. The people who support this are good and right, and the people who oppose it are bad and wrong.
If you don't want to be bad and wrong, don't hold those beliefs. It's very simple, really.
That's not to say that there aren't good and convincing actual arguments, I just don't think this is one of them.
And I don't give a shit what gives grifters like Ben Shapiro "ammunition." He's proven well versed in turning literally anything into ammunition for his bad faith arguments. People like him do not need to be "beaten," they need to be ignored.
Now that I think about it, for most people it seems to simply be an issue of good vs bad.
Maybe I expected too much of them.
Like if they said, in America, "Of course, USA #1, never forget 9/11, freedom baby", that would just be more boilerplate pandering and not really political.
Is the level of hostility that high that even such sweet nothings are treason?
I keep hearing that greed is the ultimate motivation, but if you want to work within China for any reason you must follow the governments ethical guidelines.
For some people within Blizzard, they want to work within China because it is their country or their ancestoral heritage.
The only issue they saw was displeasing the CCP, it's blatantly obvious.
Part of this fiasco is how blatantly it is implementing a government's crackdown on speech.
They should take a stand. You can't please everyone, so it might as well be those with the right values. And people who think that Muslims should be interred or that HK should cede all political freedom are wrong.
By 'right', you mean of course YOUR right.
You can't please everybody, so you should please ME.
Fascism and the removal of political freedom should not be taken lightly. This should not be controversial.
Corporations are chartered to act on behalf of the interests of their shareholders, not, insofar as the two groups are different, their employees.
2) The article specifically references employees, so I also added that angle.
Sure, but literally anything can be “acting with values”, depending on the value system chosen. There's no particular reason that would be determined by the political preferences of employees. It would be more natural for a corporation interested in sacrificing near term returns for some kind of ethics to do so based on the shareholders preferences than employers (or, if the gesture at ethics was intended as a long term business health approach, to do so based on what it was expected potential future customers would respond well to in the corporate story.)
Comments criticizing corporate or governmental entities should be encouraged.
But if they go against their stated principles, like "oh yeah, let's erase all traces of our pro-LGBT stances we care sooo much about in games for Chinese and Russian markets, because uuuuuuuuh... reasons", you bet people would get upset.
But this particular event may be their reckoning.
Also, did any computing company eventually turn their products into slot machines? Because Konami would be the THEM of the gaming industry: https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/12/20911313/silent-hill-slot...
I find that sort of honesty refreshing when companies like Blizzard, appear to champion social causes in order to gain a mass following to sell games, rather than sell a good solid game without the political fluff piped in.
(I do wish they'd left the old Wii online stores open, but that's another issue.)
(Given the hmmm after)
Didn't DOTA start as Starcraft mod or something? I don't know what the legal status of mod/spinoffs is. Could I sell my own Mario fanhack game?
AFAIK Skeleking -> Wraith king was a purely -China- ceremonial thing
Yes, the "pressing ceremonial reasons".
No one did. Blizzard's failed lawsuit established precedent. Now we know.
>Could I sell my own Mario fanhack game?
If you are using any assets from the original without permisison, or any copyrighted names/characters, no.
The only ethics corporations have are making sure their share holders maximize profit as much as possible, any other ethics they pretend to have exists because they think it will lead to that or they're forced to. Corporations are mandated to do this. If it's a choice between ethics and shareholder profits for a corporation, the latter will always come first because that's why corporations exist. Corporations never have and never will have ethics as long as they exist in their current form where their entire purpose is maximizing profits. I have no idea why people seem to forget this these days.
Even apart from that, it just seems like an overly reductionist perspective. Why couldn't an honest commitment to act ethically help the bottom line?
Well if it did you'd think corporations would act ethically, whereas reality says otherwise and they don't unless forced by government or public pressure. The world's totally fucked right now because of corporate greed.
Every day I read a new story about how some corporation is acting completely and utterly unethically. It
https://www.hoover.org/research/what-purpose-corporation
>There are two levels of corporate duties to shareholders. First, corporate boards and officers deal at arm’s length with outsiders, and here, their responsibility is governed by the so-called business judgment rule, which protects them against suits by shareholders so long as they follow appropriate procedures in reaching a decision and act in good faith to maximize shareholder value. This rule both constrains corporate insiders but also protects them from liability if their good faith efforts turn out less well financially than expected. Indeed, if officers had to make good on every loss that occurs when deals go sour, no one would take on such roles. And second, whenever corporate officials enter into any kind of self-dealing transaction, the standard of care is much higher, given the conflict of interest. For such transactions, insiders must analyze whether corporate shareholders received “fair value” from the transaction.
Corporations regularly flout environmental protection laws, they regularly flout human rights, they spy on us, they do skirt any and all laws they can, they abuse tax systems, they're responsible for large environmental disasters and end up throwing money at things to make everyone shut up about it, they lobby governments to get laws changed in their favour, they exploit children and impoverished people, they go after drinking water, healthcare and the basic necessities of a modern civilization in search of more profit at the expense.of people. Fuck corporations.
The sooner that people learn that almost every company ever is only out to make money and is not your friend the better. This has been a more difficult realization for some due to it being a video game company.
Maybe your perspective is that corporations shouldn't do this image curation thing, and yeah maybe so, but in a world where they do, it absolutely makes sense for individuals to push back on them when they are then hypocritical. Otherwise they get the benefits of standing for causes without taking on the risks inherent in doing so.
The folks that care should really be taking lessons from the anti-abortion people picket outside of a physicians home.
Certainly you will be the first to take time out of your day to do this....
Key words there.
Also, since ActiBlizz is a publicly traded corporation, there are people in that organization that are legally or contractually obligated to make decisions in the best interest of ActiBlizz.
Sure, but at the same time executives in these organizations do have power. Twitter just walked away from that sweet political ad money for ethical reasons, for example. You just have to find the correct arms to twist.
Go boycott the company. Make sure to make it clear that bad actions will have consequences. But please, do not go bully random people.
Huh, I thought it was obvious to folks as to what people are upset about. It's not about preventing a comment on their platform.
And of course they can limit whatever comments they like. I suspect blizz_ack would also not want racist, or other discriminatory language, displayed on their platform.
>Go boycott the company. Make sure to make it clear that bad actions will have consequences.
It won't work. To make a dent in a company of that size, a significant portion of their user base would need to cease buying products. That simply won't happen.
>But please, do not go bully random people.
Oh please..these are far from random people. There is no place on this Earth for folks that place greed over the greater good of the people.
This sounds so obnoxious and short-sighted.
If I own a business that doesn't align with your values, it's one thing to boycott and protest my business. It's another thing to follow me around to a restaurant, dentist, or park to protest my business decisions. You're disturbing the enjoyment of those places for other people who might have nothing to do with my decisions. I suppose spouses, children and even extended family should have to endure this as well?
The intent is to be obnoxious. But I'm not seeing how it's short sighted.
>If I own a business that doesn't align with your values, it's one thing to boycott and protest my business. It's another thing to follow me around to a restaurant, dentist, or park to protest my business decisions.
The size of the organization matters. It's much easier to completely shutdown "Dave's Coffee Shop" after they find out Dave supports the KKK. But to seriously impact a multi-billion dollar company with millions of users would require a large coordinated effort....which is unlikely to occur. So as we've seen in the past, status quo will be maintained.
>You're disturbing the enjoyment of those places for other people who might have nothing to do with my decisions. I suppose spouses, children and even extended family should have to endure this as well?
If we want results, we must exploit people's weaknesses. You want it to stop? Stop the decisions people are unhappy with. No is forcing these executives to work. Don't like what you're being subjected, and you don't have the power to change it? Then quit!
Eventually this process gets you to the Saturninuses of your world and the streets run with blood. You, who did not appreciate history, has just repeated it.
Take the park example. A group is protesting against my business decisions, so they follow me to the park where I run at 6 every evening. All the other park patrons now have to endure with your protest even though my business has nothing to do with my run at this park. Or the patrons at a restaurant. Or at a sports/concert venue.
You might be protesting me to change my business decision, but other patrons are the collateral damage caught in the cross fire. You might be suffering for what I have done. Why do these other people who are away from my place of work have to as well?
Right, but when people picket outside of a building or march down the street in protest....are bystanders there not suffering the same fate? Why is that not acceptable only when it's directed at a person? Do you think picketing outside of a large corporate building has much effect other than an attempt to raise awareness to others?
Which makes this headline framing by the LA Times even more upsetting. I mean, yes, it's a PR disaster, but even in context that's not the important fact to convey here. They're dealing with outrage because of an expressly political act they took, not merely a mistake in the management of "Public Relations".
If political stances are taken by the PR/marketing department in isolation, they risk finding the company's actions in contradiction of its words.
But those people who know better would say that it is the job of the PR department to coordinate the internal discussions regarding a company's political stance with the appropriate decision makers (which might include the CEO and board but would not include HR, or any of the other departments you've mentioned), and to coordinate the disclosure, dissemination, and followup of said stance once the decision-makers have weighed in.
And yes, in most companies, it is the PR department that determines the company's political stance, not the CEO, because the the people in the PR department have a much better understanding of the consequences, because it's literally their job to understand this stuff. In that respect, they are no different than than Legal or Accounting departments.
And like the Legal and Accounting departments, when it comes to PR issues, the head of PR gets to tell the CEO what to d. (This doesn't mean the CEO will actually do that, see Elon Musk, but at the overwhelming majority of companies the CEO will trust the expert.)
And yes, in most companies, it is
the PR department that determines
the company's political stance
I can assure you, it is not within the power of the PR department to make that decision.
And yes, now that China is a political issue, you can bet that the PR department is involved in the decision to buy Chinese-made components and the COO will take their advice into strong consideration, since they're the ones that will be explaining the decision to society, and their choice of logistics structure could affect their future logistics mobility.
tl;dr when you posture as a pillar of morality people will call you out if you aren't consistent.
There followed a steady trickle of Activision staff into the holes left by the departed, which IMHO was also reflected in gradual shifts in recruiting practices. Morhaime's departure was the final farewell. I can't say what Blizzard's culture is today, but I'm confident that Every Voice Matters isn't what it used to be.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/11/boeing...
There are some high profile examples of studio acquisitions I’ve had insight into where the publisher has been blamed for perceived changes in a studio’s output post-acquisition. The reality on the ground was almost the inverse: the publisher gave the acquired studio a great amount of autonomy and runway, even more than than internal studios, and the acquired studio struggled in an environment where they had relatively more freedom than they did pre-acquisition. It let bad habits fester and poor managers calcify in roles they never could have survived in during scrappier times.
However if you look at EA and the acquire/in-house cycle they go through every 4-5 years, there's no way you can hope to be stable under those circumstances. Ditto Microsoft and the 2-3 cycles they went through with similar disasters.
Fundamentally the two types of companies have different goals which drive their culture. Publishers exist to make money, pure and simple. They diversify risk by supporting multiple developers but at the end of the day they want to see growth and cash. A developer on the other hand may be happy staying mostly cash-neutral as long as it keeps them afloat to keep creating the art/experience that drives them.
I'd argue that those two cultures are at distinct odds(based on what I saw play out when I was in the industry) and trying to merge them leads to disaster.
The recruiter responded with something about being able to understand that perspective. I probably burned a bridge, but I don't really care.
The old "Blizzard" has been gone for years, another company ruined by greed.
Another reason is access to the Chinese market. Congress can't really do anything to stop companies from complying with the Chinese government so that they can publish their games in the Chinese market.
The point is, this is a long term issue of national security. US companies bolstering a foreign authoritarian regime by facilitating it's propaganda and censorship gives aid an comfort to a regime incompatible with our values.
When specifically talking about Blizzard, yes, but not when you think of companies like Riot.
It's an intl trade issue, it's impossible to expect every company to stand up to the CCP when they use access to one of the biggest markets in the world as a weapon
That's because you reduce it to the word "freedom of speech", and then expand it again, to all sorts of other things. Call it freedom to criticize governments, totalitarianism, murder, and so on, and there will be no issue.
https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-milli...
Most people don't want to be treated like this. So, either they are against it, or they don't get to speak anything on the matter, being hypocrites. A double standard is no standard. It really is that simple.
China has an interest in their global censorship, American companies don't have the same impetus towards free speech. China has roughly 4x the population of the United States, and, as their GDP per capita raises, they will increasingly start to fulfill the American role: vacuuming up trade surpluses. It would be a poor business decision for Western companies to not seek the larger, emerging market.
These companies don't have nations, they just have the pursuit of shareholder value. You're fooling yourself if they're going to express any sort of value system contrary to that stated goal.
At the end of the day, while china is a huge market, it isn't the whole market.
That does mean, however, if you think that Blizzard's actions are immoral, then vote with your wallet. This doesn't work in every case (particularly where companies have practical monopolies on essential goods and services), but at the end of the day, Blizzard is a company that peddles luxury products.
0. https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-d...
Businesses should have no power except to sell their products and services (Not even indirect power that helps them sell their products and services better)
Blizzard though set themselves up as being a bastion of western values, the turned against that when it came to Chinese criticism.
why is it immoral to play by the rules of a country in order to access that country's population? the country's people should decide for themselves how they should be governed. or do you think you know better?
In some countries, beating your wife is completely legal. Certainly you wouldn't argue that it's moral.
Laws aren't written by average people, they're written by politicians who do immoral things and get away with it. They allow immorality for their own benefits.
The rank and file employees who by all accounts had nothing to do with this decision, and don't support it?
I generally agree with the position against censorship on behest of an authoritarian government, but I find the harassment of Blizzard employee's appalling.
The employees by and large who are attending BlizzCon want to do so to celebrate their hardwork and interact with their fanbase. I hardly think they deserve to feel dread.
If you're referring to GP's comment "They should be dreading it" then yes, obviously. They are and absolutely should be dreading this event. I would be. Wouldn't you?
> I generally agree with the position against censorship on behest of an authoritarian government, but I find the harassment of Blizzard employee's appalling.
No one has said anything about harassing Blizzard employees. What on Earth are you talking about?
> The employees by and large who are attending BlizzCon want to do so to celebrate their hardwork and interact with their fanbase. I hardly think they deserve to feel dread.
Too bad. They should be dreading this event. Blizzard have publicly fucked up in a very big way, and now the people that represent Blizzard are going to have to deal with that.
> Too bad. They should be dreading this event. Blizzard have publicly fucked up in a very big way, and now the people that represent Blizzard are going to have to deal with that.
What do you think the Blizzard employees are going to "have to deal with" if not harassment at BlizzCon?
maybe just annoyed at having to do lots of video editing to hide it from the CCP overlords.
If your fans want to ask why you are betraying the values you espouse, then they're gonna ask it. And this is not harassment.
None of this is harassment. You can't just use the word "harassment" any time someone challenges you or says something you don't like.
Certainly, a simple protest is not harassment, nor is asking pointed questions. But all it takes is one unhinged person to make it turn violent.
Likely? Not really. But certainly not outside the realm of possibility.
They will have to deal with negative publicity and people not liking their events, and refusing to buy their games, therefore causes them to be less successful?
Why shouldn't they deserve to receive negative financial impact, as a company, for doing stuff that pisses off customers?
"Employees said they have fielded venomous backlash on social media and in emails and been confronted by passersby while wearing company apparel off Blizzard’s campus."
From the article in question.
Every employee tacitly uses their labor to support the actions their company performs. They obviously don't have 100% culpability for everything the corporation does, but it's definitely not 0% either.
Yes, them. Exactly them. They're likely going to be faced with protestors and other types of pushback, and it seems rational to not look forward to that. They're at the event representing their company, and so they must face the conequences of those decisions.
They should not, themselves, be directly blamed, but it's their job to front for the company, and that won't be a comfortable thing to do right now. Now though, if they decide to keep working for the company, they are complicit In it's actions because now they know better. I wouldn't expect them all to quit at once, but if they don't start looking around for other opportunities then they share an increasing part of the blame.
We all face this in our work. Decisions we disagree with, we must decide if it's something we can live with it not. If we decide we can live it then some level of culpability accrues to us. Certainly this can be mitigated by working to change things from within, but it's still a factor.
They both were anti Hong Kong, but few remember and care Apple's actions.
Asking in case I ever F up and need to go damage control.
Blizzard took away the winnings from one of their own loyal / hard working gamers, whom other gamers are sympathetic to as it could have been "them". This was a public forum with a specific person who seemingly did nothing wrong being punished unfairly, leading to the controversy were seeing.
Apple just removed some apps that people in the west weren't really using that much. More anonymous and somewhat blameless, a-lot of people aren't app developers and can't relate to that experience.
HKers didn't really care either, those who had installed the app still have it on their phones and the rest have no trouble accessing the same information from tens of other sources.
* Apple's decision hurts vast groups of people, not individuals. People have problems emphasizing with huge groups (e.g. Hong Kongers, Ulghurs, Muslims, Catholics) but are very good as emphasizing with individuals. This is why propaganda aimed at appealing to emotion always focus on individuals: especially children/women. Blizzard went after not just individuals, but tournament winners/players.
* Apple's product is less liquid than Blizzard's. I can stop playing instantly. I can unsubscribe from WoW instantly. Selling my phone and moving to another platform is much harder. The alternative offerings are also all extremely pro-Chinese Party, so even if I went off-Apple for HK reasons, I am just making the problem worst. With games, there is competition and there is no lack of good games in each category (save perhaps RTS, but SC2 is tiny for Blizzard).
Censorship sucks and all, but in the end the actions taken by Apple didn't really harm anyone. Blizzard definitely fucked over Blitzchung.
I think the biggest thing that sparked the situation was the casters. While some people feel that they were not neutral due to some comments made, Blizzard themselves in their response did not mention those comments. As such, it appears that Blizzard fired casters for merely allowing controversial topics spoken, which makes it very unclear how Blizzard wants casters to handle similar situations. In other words, Blizzard fired people who were neutral-ish and who were stuck between a rock and a hard place instead of clarifying the situation. TLDR: If a situation is complicated and unclear, clarify instead of firing.
Blizzard pre-emptively (and severely!) punished Blitzchung for daring to support the protests during stream.
Completely different situations.
On the flip side, if Blizzard just suppressed the stream but didn't "retaliate" with the bonus punishments, they would be in a lot less of a bog right now.
I think it's easy to argue that Blizzard's actions were more egregious, but at the same time Blizzard as a company is also much less important from a cultural perspective (i.e. Blizzard is a popular gaming company whereas Apple operates the most influential application platform on the planet)
More like the Singles Day of Blizzard now.
World of Warcraft is growing stale and they seem to not have a replacement (as far as zero leaks).
Overwatch has been a big success and leaks suggest Overwatch 2 with more PVE.
That's fine and all but that's not going to be the cash-cow that WoW was for them. I was a dedicated player since launch but left after Legion and won't be returning.
https://www.newsweek.com/world-warcraft-subscriptions-triple...
Blizzard is as stale as it gets right now.
It is very sad that Blizzard was:
- the creator of Warcraft, which popularized RTS,
- Starcraft which basically created esports (and popularized RTS even more)
- Diablo which popularized hack-n-slash RPGs
And now all they do is remaster after remaster (or "classic").
Those transactions were a massive source of profit in later expansions and completely eclipsed subscription revenue. Even as the WoW playerbase dwindled, revenue grew thanks to things like game-time tokens, level boosts, mounts, cosmetic items, etc.
All of those things are 100% antithetical to the premise of Classic WoW.
Instead with the Hong Kong dust-up, I faced the facts. The blizzard I grew up with and loved is dead. Even with Wow Classic released, the world has moved on.
Instead I initiated a full Battle Net account delete, which nuked all my Wow characters, Hearthstone decks, etc.
I realized I was aging when I figured out that WoW Classic is Oldies Radio but for people in my age bracket.
I was a hardcore Everquest player prior to WoW. I actually ran the biggest market site at the time, EQPrices.com.
So you want to talk about aging ... but yes, WoW Classic, while interesting, was not enough to get me back in.
And I played at launch. So I know all about having to carry around arrows and all that other jazz.
Their last Blizzcon was pretty bad ("Diablo for mobile: Don't you all have phones!?") and they somehow managed to make things worse right before this Blizzcon.
Things are looking grim for a company that used to be an industry game changer.
It's really not that simple. An analogue in software would be "Ford could have just made a fully self-driving car."
MMOs are both technically hard and artistically hard, and even Blizzard has failed at making them in the past:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Blizzard_Entertainment_...
Eventually they rage quit because they never actually wanted to get better at the game.
This same thing happened with Dust 514, where there was nothing at all for the person who couldn't aim, (unlike EvE which has some barely passable PvE).
I'm guessing that Blizzard is looking at these stats, and noticing that people log back in for the limited pve content in OW.
I absolutely love the artwork and characters also, but only from what I've watched on Twitch or seen in images.
I won't play it, because it's a twitch shooter and that is simply not my genre anymore ... too old for that sort of thing.
If they could pivot off that idea into something that isn't a shooter, perhaps I'd jump in.
My only theory is that they didn't want to cannibalize the WoW playerbase, but that's how you get stuck in a rut as a corporation.
They scrapped it and its corpse ended up becoming Overwatch.
It's not (or at least, primarily not) that they're scared of cannibalizing WoW's playerbase: it's that MMOs are incredibly hard to get right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Blizzard_Entertainment_...
Ahhhh the good days....
An MMO might not work, but with regards to Blizzard, there is the example of Starcraft Ghost where they got to the point of releasing trailers and sending empty boxes to stores as advertisements for the upcoming release. I'm sure they'd have sold it if there was a way to do so without damaging the brand.
Since then, the MMO market, to my knowledge, has shrunk, as other genres have become popular. There's no indication that a World of Starcraft released today would be anywhere near successful.
I wonder about this though. While Overwatch as a game has been successful, I've heard some people say that they feel like Blizzard has lost their magic after Overwatch and Hearthstone. I used to always be interested in any new game Blizzard was working on, but those days are gone.
ON the flip side when I was a child, we had no internet and I remember long boring weeks of Summer (In a rural area, meant I spent a lot of time alone). But as an adult I basically am never bored. Is this because of having more stuff to do? Or because of being older?
I don't think they lost their magic.
I was a WoW hardcore player for years. I won't play Overwatch due to it being a twitch shooter but I love the art direction.
Hearthstone is awesome. Can be played lightly, whenever, and is extremely well built for a "card game".
Also, keep in mind that they don't even use subscriptions as a metric anymore, since now they have the in-game store with micro-transactions and the WoW Token which sells for more than the price of a subscription.
It took four days for a response and then it was sort of half a response.
Individual employees now go and suffer the consequences on the front lines.
* make deleting accounts hard due to "technical difficulties"
* Wait until late Friday night to put out a press release, so publications are less likely to pick it up.
* Have the release contain a meaningless non-apology
* wait for a bit until everyone moves on to the next thing
The outcry was largely contained to a small Reddit and hardcore fan bubble.
The stock didn't suffer at all.
Blizzcon could be interesting though.
Didn’t they cancel all their PR marketing for Overwatch coming to the switch ?
Aside from existing fan outcry, it seems to me having them quiet their PR moves while entering holiday season would be the bigger consequences.
I don’t know for the small bubble, or we should at least include tech sites and youtube gaming channels in the bubble.
See: https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/10/verified-chinese-bli...
They're actually Bethesda/Zenimax.
Disregard the GP
https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/9488/wow-community-feel...
Before people chime in with "but they technically didn't say that they would add the toy revenue on top", that is exactly how it is typically done by other companies in the same situation. They made a ton of money and didn't have to put up a dime of their own.
Who exactly is working PR over there?
a lot of the blizzard developer interactions with players at blizzcon has been the developers acting like condescending, down-talking jerks to players during q&a.
let's see those egos take what they like to dish out.
say this is the issue that makes you want to walk out. you'd have to accept that this might mean losing not only your dream job, but a job full-stop - games is a very competitive industry and you might have a long period of unemployment.
this would have to be a "I would give up my career in the games industry for this" issue. it is for some. it's not for others.
All customers can do is boycott and protest. Nothing else will cause any change in behavior. Unfortunately, employees will be hurt in the process.
Wouldn't it be better for employees to stage a big moment now, force Blizzard to backpedal, and resume being a game company sooner? A long, drawn out thing is worse for everyone.
keep working, hope that blizzard reverses course.
this is the first seriously backwards move in 30 years of the company afaik. quitting immediately isn't the answer to your average employee.
and please reread what I wrote. I know many blizzard employees. as much as it hurts them to see what their company did, quitting simply can't be an option to them. not in a massive immediate show of support. not everyone can afford to be political.
Blizzard had a good run. I don't doubt the company name itself will go on as a branding on a whole slew of rehashes and remakes, like a little label to be stuck on a reskin of an original idea from 15 years ago that's been crunched, mashed and reinterpreted as a mishmash of whatever individual elements are deemed popular and "the reason X was a success". But for me, it's over. Blizzard is no more. I would go so far as to say that the company should lose the Blizzard trademark given how far off they are from what that name originally stood for.
Tickets were sold out long before the controversy hit. Obviously there are a lot of us die-hard fans that are upset, but I dont think there's many people here with the intention of causing trouble.
it's in the Dev Tool options (F1) in Chrome
How hard can they clamp down really? Have a peaceful protest outside the venue in public and there is nothing they can do. (I'm assuming you have freedom of assembly and right to protest in the US)
And I might be wrong, maybe Blizzard will do drastic, irrational actions like involve riot police or something. Who knows.
That's the real problem they're facing with this situation. They pretty much lose right now regardless of what choice they make. I do feel a little bit bad frankly, but at the same time, I'm also quite excited for some schadenfreude.
They might try to straddle the US and China, on the basis that the US has no real teeth, but they aren't going to abandon it.
That's the point. The US can't really shut out Blizzard even if they engage in this kind of behavior, because the US gives them freedom to make their own decisions. I'm saying that if it's a lose-lose sustain then Blizzard might pick appeasing the Chinese market, because there's a limit to what can happen to them in the US. The players might get mad, but plenty of gaming companies exist that lots of players are angry about (eg EA, Ubisoft).
It's not clear to me how likely the US government is to do this, but it's something they have to be aware of given that whole bipartisan letter from congress thing.
0. https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-d...
IMHO that would be a serious tactical error and prove Blizzard's critics right (i.e. this is about China, Blizzard cares more about revenue from the Chinese market than about freedom of expression). If there's zero crackdown, the people in pro Hong Kong stuff will look a little goofy in retrospect. Like they were just overreacting to the initial ban like gamers are wont to do sometimes.
If there's zero crackdown, then the protestors have won and they have a platform to show their support in a public setting for HK. I don't see the downside here. Isn't that what people want? To be able to protest the Chinese government and their actions in HK freely and without punishment?
I don't think most gamers actually care about Hong Kong specifically. If they did there are more effective venues for protest than Blizzcon. My sense is that what really got people upset is the suppression of - seemingly virtuous - speech, and the perception of Chinese influence on Blizzard's policies.
For example, showing up to Blizzcon in a Winnie the Pooh outfit is effectively an attempt at trolling Blizzard and doesn't do much to inform or sway anyone on Hong Kong. If Blizzard responds, the troll has been proven right (Winnie the Pooh is offensive only in the very narrow context of CCP leadership). If Blizzard does nothing, it's just a guy cosplaying Winnie the Pooh and the attempt fizzles out.
Edit:
To reframe this a little bit, I think protestors are going into Blizzcon with a hypothesis: Blizzard is suppressing a certain kind of free speech because of its financial ties to China. So far, Blizzard's official position has been that this is not about China at all. While I'm sure many would like to help Hong Kong, what they really want out of Blizzcon specifically is for their hypothesis to be validated. For them to be proven right (I include myself in this group, by the way).
If Blizzard basically ignores the protestors, it lends credence to the official line that banning Blitzchung was a purely impartial, administrative action and the hypothesis remains unproven.
However after the "don't you have phones" fiasco, Blizzard may be so out of touch that we'll see a video of armed guards dragging away some popular twitch streamer in a "Free Hong Kong" t-shirt.
What will be interesting is if these people even get in and how quickly they are put out when they do. If they are silent, just in costume, will that provoke a response as well?
I see discussion all the time about rejecting pre-ordering, rejecting games that are beta-quality at release, rejecting microtransactions and predatory mechanics like loot boxes, rejecting companies that abuse their employees, rejecting games that move core features into paid expansions, rejecting pay-to-win, rejecting invasive rootkit-style DRM, rejecting single-game-store exclusives, and so on.
And yet, games companies continue doing all those things regularly - giving me the impression gamer boycott attempts don't have much impact.
I think that's just it. The vocal gaming crowd is very quick to talk big talk about action but they're a tiny minority of the actual customerbase. For all the bravado you see on Reddit about boycots there's wayyyy more people who just want the latest title from popular publishers or the most anticipated shooter; they're not even aware of the drama going on in the background.
To me the phone and computer are much more difficult to find a replacement for, if I were to boycott Apple. There's all the data tied up in iCloud, and there's a bunch of software on both the phone and computer that would have to be found alternatives for.
In short the sunk cost in games can be pretty deep, but not very wide. On computing platforms the sunk cost can be both deep and wide.
When staring down an existential crisis your clients can and will push you around for misbehaving, even if that misbehaving is out of a desire to get out of said existential crisis.
Put shortly: fuck corporations.
I've had far more fun playing Battle for Wesnoth than I ever did playing WoW.
Cancelling those tickets would be an even bigger PR disaster, and that's saying something.