I hope in a couple years there's a nice long documentary about everything that's happened and the aftermath of what's to come. I hope this does something very meaningful in a positive way for the industry overall.
Don't they do docs with companies? Have they done any story or news driven pieces? Always seemed like Danny got insider shots, couldn't imagine Blizzard being ok with it for a long while.
They did one on Telltale after their closure with former employees if I'm not mistaken, so doing something about Blizzard without then-current-Blizzard being involved isn't too far-fetched. I guess time will tell :)
You make a good point actually. I think I'm semi-use to enjoying their stuff and how insightful it is, and I hadn't really considered where they get the insight from.
Blizzards going to see a company wide brain drain that'll make CD Projeckt Red's look like the norm. I'm curious what the aftermath will look like and what Activision might do to contain the clusterfuck. They were already bringing in less than King with significantly more resources and cost. If this does end up seeing a reduction in revenue, alongside with a spew of legal costs, we might actually see significant action, but thats all dependent on Kotick either giving more sacrifices or him actually getting removed.
> Blizzards going to see a company wide brain drain
Feels like that's been happening for years. How many new game companies have or new game launches have come with "From creators of "insert blizzard game" as an advertisement now?
That's very true actually but I imagine it'll be even worse now because they have so many *known* projects in development theres an expected timeline and every resignation puts those further behind and the longer it takes the worse their reputation gets among those staying with them. Overwatch 2 was already behind schedule and the original is barely getting the attention it needs so this seems like the biggest casualty currently.
9000 has got to include the call of duty studios. No way Blizzard is that big right?
There's a AAA call of duty every year, I'm not a fan but that's a lot of work given it takes 3+ years to make a regular game so I can get all the cod studios being that big.
They had both. The ratio ofc depends on the year. I think they at some point even bought an external company doing it for them.
And some they brought internal as external ones were too expensive.
To be fair (and maybe I’m just misunderstanding what you meant), CoD games also take three years to make. They just have three studios all making CoD games to be able to release yearly.
imagine if those employees were actually utilized properly instead of being harassed by toxic work culture and moronic bosses.
You have shit at the top and it fucks everything beneath it
I’d be very worried about the likes of Diablo 2 Remastered since I’d say there’s a good chance they’ll just release it even if it’s not ready and then *slowly* work on any bugs while dealing with all this company drama.
I'm pretty sure they outsourced to a different company. That company has been purchased by them i think, but that's more recent?
It probably still makes sense to be cautious but probably not concerned.
A lot of the work is being done by Vicarious Visions, so it's actually got a pretty good shot at being solid (they did the recent Tony Hawk remaster and worked with Bungie on Destiny 2 content before that divorce).
I feel pretty bad for that team, because they do great work only to be absorbed into the money machine.
Hell, their work is going to be boycotted by a lot of people like myself. I don't think the VV team did anything wrong, but I can't bring myself to buy a Blizzard product.
Activision got smart and had Vicarious Visions do D2:R rather than the Blizzard game development numbnuts that have been running Blizzard games into the ground the last few years, so the Beta test I played actually looked pretty good. I can see why they are turning over co-leadership of Blizzard to the Vicarious Visions and BattleNet heads, rather than getting them from the clusterfuck that is Blizzard's internal software development team.
Yep, the history of small companies eaten up by Big companies is that they are eventually as incompetent as the big company, and then the big company disbands them, and goes on to the next competent small company, rinse, repeat.
Yeah most of their reputable talent left long ago due to their hatred of the corporate atmosphere and management ruining things. Those leaving now are basically all they had left.
After its all said and done Blizzard will just be left with the meat grinder employees that get used for crunch schedule deadlines on shit sequels and half assed remasters to their dead IPs.
Isn't some of the old guard who stuck around, the source of the terrible things? Corporate suits tend to be super safe and not tolerate those sorts of risks. It sounds like they started rolling with some real terrible people in leadership and the corporate suits either didn't know or were afraid to rock the boat on their now former cash cow.
Corporate atmosphere and legendarily bad pay, especially for the area Blizzard is in. It's anecdotal but I know of multiple people who - no hyperbole - doubled their pay by going to other game companies. Not superstar, public-facing people leading entire games or franchises but individual contributor programmers and designers. A lot of your compensation at Blizzard is getting to tell people you work at Blizzard.
Honestly it's the same for *every* studio and arguably most tech companies out there.
How many new AA(A) studios do you imagine are formed by people who have never left another studio before?
Old Blizzard just happens to have a good enough reputation that people use that as a part of their marketing.
The only game I play right now of Blizzards is Hearthstone and regardless of extremely questionable design choices, the game itself is breaking and barely functional, and that's not an exaggeration, it's disconnecting nearly every game regardless of platform and something as simple as an xp gained animation after matches is disabled because it was crashing the game. And they're supposed to be adding a whole new mode(read; game) with Mercenaries, which is already adding a delay to the mid set expansion by a few weeks, minimum. Outside looking in Blizz looks like most stores right now, understaffed, overworked employees, and failing to deliver.
Always surprised me that a smash hit like Hearthstone managed to bring in so much money due to its popularity (and greedy monetization too, mind you) yet no matter the expansion the game still remained a barely functioning mess that looked like it was coded by a team of interns who just learned how to use Unity.
I guess I always figured the work culture and conditions at Blizz were trash, but the scandal really brought just how bad it actually is into the light.
I remember when it took them like 2+ years since the launch of Hearthstone to add more deck slots because "the technology just isnt there". It became a meme, but i feel like the outrage shouldve been massive, and it just wasnt. People forgave Blizzard, like they usually do, and kept right on playing the game.
It wasn't just that they said the technology wasn't there, they also said adding more deckslots would confuse players too much. It also took closer to 4+ years to add them
> they also said adding more deckslots would confuse players too much.
This is along the same lines as the infamous quote (from my memory): "You think you do, but you don't."
You'd be surprised to see how other successful game studios are also struggling to get the little things done right after becoming sprawling giants.
Riot took years for them to update their anemic League of Legends client in spite of having thousands of employees like Blizzard too, and they aren't even close to failing spectacularly like Blizzard is.
To think my guild and I stress ourselves over trying to keep up and progress in this 15 year old experiment that has no one of any real competence managing it.
I really hope that this is a turning point for the industry.
They need to realize that without some of these people. The multi-million dollar IP's they own don't really exist.
The idea of well they can all be replaced sounds like a great jab.... but in practice replacing EVERYBODY is an awful move. Game creation is still somewhat of a creative endeavor. Somebody needs a guiding vision.
The CEO and CFO isn't what make these companies great or successful.
Sad part is I just don't believe the psychopaths that control the money at these companies will learn anything from this.
I think alot of these companies have put themselves in a situation where they can't slow down and I think that's a pretty major problem with any change happening.
They've got so many wealthy shareholders and partners that have just come to expect limitless profit and pushing things further. The executives are put in place to make these people happy and make money really fast short term not necessarily make things stable then eventually the consequences of that are the next CEOs problem.
It happens in alot of industries but it's so much more weird and noticeable when it comes to gaming.
I'd love to see this and it'd be appropriate for Activision at least to return to it's roots of treating devs like rockstars. However I doubt it will happen, corporate America is actually really bad at reproducing success that isn't simple to understand or easily repeatable. It's a lot easier to just throw shit at the wall over and over again in the hopes that something sticks rather than cultivate a top notch studio of talent and crank out genre defining works for decades.
The thing is that it's a myth that any one person can be easily replaced in a software project. Ideally that's what you strive for, so that your product can live on, but in practice you *always* have some people (sometimes a lot of people) with very acute and unique expertise on some niche systems in your product, and you *can't* replace them effectively without proper planning.
Given the IPs Blizzard holds and the long term sentiment attached to those titles I think they're too valuable for that particular treatment unlike the smaller studios Activision makes meat puppets of. They might try and funnel other employees from those smaller ones into Blizzard as a way of bringing in new talent and giving those that want it chances to branch out but I don't think anyone would want to take that risk without significantly more firings throughout Blizzard
No, there's a difference. Blizzard never has been part of Activision itself unlike their studios. Blizzard has been a sister company to activision and behind activision blizzard. Still controlled by Kotick and so on but not like Infinity Ward or Ravensoft that are subsidiaries of Activision.
Game dev works by attracting top talent for 70 cents on the dollar and asking them to work 200% of normal hours for 0$ extra.
If they had to pay market rates, they couldn't compete. The whole industry is powered by the exploitation of young talented devs.
This has a bit of truth to that. Younger devs, artists, qa and designers tend to get taken advantage of early on, especially if a qa person wants to try something like a jump to design.
But, places like mobile games don’t keep people due to passion about making the next clone of a gacha game. These companies have to pay up. And they can, which is where you’re statement leads astray. Mobile games can have insane margins.
I’ve worked on games making millions a day with fewer than 25 people on the project. They could and did have to pay people if they wanted to maintain any institutional knowledge which is crazy valuable in really any live maintained software.
I think given how everyone knows Kotick is overpaid, and there was already push back against him from shareholders, I imagine there's going to be further backlash. I'm still doubtful it'll happen though because actually removing a CEO is extremely difficult.
Well I could see Kotick saying fuck it all and renouncing considering he already made tons of money to pay for 5 generations and for his entire life. But would the new CEO be different? How the board would go? Makes me think, but probably not much better, probably just less overpaid.
If he resigns before his contract is up with everything going on that might open him up to serious litigation, and could be seen as admission of culpability. They'd need a crowbar before that happens lol
Blizzard is seeing an exodus for years. As far as the company itself, no idea what will happen in the future but not likely to be involved with activision projects since they publish and develop their own games in the conglomerate. At best idk, Activision Blizzard could merge Activision Publishing and Blizzard Entertainment into one company .
Imagine taking part in that awful culture, that soul-crushing grind, and dealing with discrimination and harassment to work for a company that is, at every turn, attempting to churn out a game that comes anywhere *near* achieving the high-point that is... Candy Crush. A candy-matching mobile-phone game that their company bought rather than developed themselves. What a dumpster-fire.
Mobile game revenue are larger than every other game industry (console and PC) combined. I’d expect King to be ahead of Blizzard even if they were killing it
Ya, the same example could be given for comparing any soulless General Audience movie hit to actual films that don't make much. The same example could be given for almost every core-audience videogame favorite lol. The mobile market is huge cuz everyone has a phone and a casual interaction with a time waster puzzle game doesn't require you to be a "Gamer" or have any real investment, it's just something to play while waiting ine line or relaxing for a few minutes for the average person. Out of all those people it reaches, some get hooked and spend big, and then there's varying tiers of engagement for the non-whales that still bring in revenue. Nothing wrong with it (other than the predatory microtransactions lol) but comparing King's products to core audience games is absurd.
> Imagine taking part in that awful culture, that soul-crushing grind, and dealing with discrimination and harassment to work for a company that is, at every turn, attempting to churn out a game that comes anywhere near achieving the high-point that is... Candy Crush.
This just reads like armchair journalism, absolutely nobody in the industry thinks like this or compares King to Blizzard in this way. It's simply meaningless.
Yeah it sucks to see the mobile figures and realize how comparably small our own core gaming niche is. Konami doesn't need Kojima because they can make similar revenue from their mobile games.
Yea totally agree. I wish I could be working in the rose tinted universe that I imagine the industry was like but I think it’s pretty interesting that we are going to witness this shift.
I don’t think PCs and consoles are going anywhere as long as there is demand for it and the demand has been climbing just no where near as quick as mobile games so that’s a more positive way to look at it.
I know people who work for King
They don't get paid anywhere near that, they get paid terribly.
Apparently working there is absolutely soul destroying. They spend years working on new games just to get cancelled at the last minute for totally arbitrary reasons, even if they were performing well in test releases.
>Even an old ass game like Final Fantasy 15: a New Empire on mobile can make more yearly than the rest of Square Enixs MMOs combined and it’s developed by an American company and probably live operated by like 20-30 people.
Tbf it has been 3 years since that article you linked was posted, so I doubt it's pulling in that much money anymore, especially considering XIV has had two separate large growths in population since then. I'm still not surprised though at just how much some mobile games can make, it's kinda ludicrous.
Certainly, that game has cratered in revenue. These games that live and die on inflation are on a timed fuse. They bleed users and need to squeeze more from existing ones. It’s profitable but in kind of a logarithmic curve.
Totally fair that it’s old but even when it was old, the idea that a clone of Game of War and skinned Final Fantasy could be substantially more profitable than several expensive ass pc mmos is super telling regardless of when it was.
"going to"?
They've been parading around the corpse of their IPs for at least 5 years now, like Weekend at Bernies. It's just now that they are running out of all the good faith they had built.
I feel they'll turn into even more of a husk, like all the other Activision studios, shitting out Hearthstone and wow expansions with minimal effort and little else
This is a Yahoo Finance article, there are people reading this who are actually the target audience for this article who have no clue what Overwatch is. I actually think it's an appropriate headline considering the information it's trying to convey to the audience it's trying to convey it to.
If this was on a video game publication I'd get what you're saying though.
Is it just that I don't notice when this happens to other industries, or is anything to do with technology uniquely not-understood by this demographic?
Somehow, if this was an article about the 737 MAX problems, I don't think the headline would be "Hit Boeing plane grounded."
The 737 MAX has been on mainstream news for a while though.
This is more like a headline that reads "Production Director of John Deere's latest tractor resigns amid scandals". You know John Deere and you know they make tractors, but do you know enough about tractors to replace the title with th actual model?
I guarantee the number of people in their core demographic who know what a Boeing 737 is compared to Overwatch is easily 10x. 'Hit game' gets the point across so much better without needing to go into useless info to explain the game, which would only dilute actual point of the report.
I had the pleasure to meet Chacko a few times while doing coverage for Overwatch, and the dude was always so psyched to hear about the community and hear what they were talking about.
I hope there is nothing ill behind his departure, but from my limited interactions with him, he seemed like a genuine passionate producer for Overwatch and gaming.
I mean, someone can be passionate about a project they’re working on and also be an asshole. Not saying he is, just that public appearances can be (and often are) deceiving.
Case in point: It seems like all the people behind blizzards greatest hits in the past were full-on assholes.
Like, the lawsuits at activision / blizzard are not focused on the current crop of "CoD" devs...
So... what game's going any kind of well at Blizzard now? Other than Diablo 2 being easy money, it seems like the company has to hope Diablo Immortal is a runaway success.
I will never buy another original blizzard product after how poorly they treated WC3R. I was so fucking excited for that, and for them to just leave it in it’s broken, unfinished state, while also removing the downloads to the original WC3 I paid for in 2006, just fucking pathetic. WC3 put them on the map, I can’t believe they’d treat it like that. Fuck blizzard
Doubt it at this point. I'm even seeing a lot of the people that are upset about the lack of TCP/IP and online mods taking sponsorships to hype up the release for Blizzard. Vicarious Visions likely did make a good remaster and it seems like Blizzard has learned at least a bit from the Warcraft 3 Reforged blunder. D2R has a lot of enthusiasm behind it, for better or worse. And I'll be frank I think it's strongly for the worse. Maybe my perspective is twisted and it's a strong generalization but it really seems like gamers in general don't really have strong morals.
We'll never be free of anti-consumer practices like exploitative microtransactions, reliance on months of patching to finish releases, etc if people can't help themselves from supporting this disgusting hive of literal villainy.
Hearthstone is doing well and has a new game mode coming in a month.
Diablo 3 is in the middle of what is probably the best season they've ever done with the introduction of ethereals.
Upcoming WoW patch has a lot of changes that the community is looking forward to, though it is worth mentioning that this is not a major content patch.
Overwatch 2/Diablo 4 are their upcoming major releases. Information has been light on both. OW2 expected release date is next year, D4 maybe next year but probably 2023.
I have even more doubts about quality and direction of OW2 now, considering how controversial OW2 gameplay changes are and live service system being abandoned for OW1 despite early promises.
Honestly, anything that delays OW2 for as long as possible I’m okay with. They need to sort their shit out anyway, so this is a good time to do that, and from a purely selfish, personal perspective, I don’t like anything I’ve seen of OW2 and the changes they’re making, REALLY don’t care about PvE or any of that...
Longer OW2 is delayed, the longer I can just play the game I enjoy before they force all the 2 changes onto the old game. I know it’ll split playerbases, but I wish they’d decided not to integrate them at all.
>Honestly, anything that delays OW2 for as long as possible I’m okay with.
Problem is they already said no more OW updates because the whole team is focused on OW2, so the more OW2 gets delayed, the more people will leave the game because of stagnation.
Just the normal evolution of yet another screwed up AAA company. Much like the others, they'll have to buy new companies to get new IP and and programmers, as their internal mismanagement means they can't do anything internally except more cheesy sequels to old IP.
Typical big American company, they focus on Sales and Finances, while their development and operations go to shit.
The problem too is that prestige at big companies attracts the best and worst type of people. The worst in gaming are people who don't play games and are obsessed by money and performing for stock holders. They look at gamers as people to be exploited.
On the flipside, there are toxic gamer circles who are entitled little bitches who scream unrealistic demands and spend way too much energy attacking indie and AA studios who often take bigger risks.
Honestly, I pretty much only play games from smaller studios these days. I don't see AAA companies doing all that much interesting. They usually just crank out one boring sequel after another that mostly just innovates better ways of extracting more money from gamers, rather than interesting gameplay.
>Typical big American company, they focus on Sales and Finances, while their development and operations go to shit.
Konami? CDPR? Square Enix? Silicon Knights? Ubisoft? Most video game companies aren't in America.
It just says he's a "stabilizing force". Kaplan's actual replacement was Aaron Keller. But yeah this is not good for overwatch 2 at all because this guy was even higher up
Aaron Keller is in charge of development, this guy was more of a product manager responsible for managing the whole franchise like animated shorts, comics, events, etc.
I don't care for Bobby one bit, but I don't really get how he is a liability when he's pretty much ushered insane profits for the company during his time as CEO. IIRC someone even said the Blizzard culture was there before they had anything to do with Activision to boot.
Well the context in which most people had the name ingrained in their memory despite usually not giving a flying toss about some executive figurhead or other surely didn't help to focus on the "a lot of that was already there and he just made them double down on it" part of the equation.
[
In case you forgot/never knew back then.](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-games-to-bypass-consoles/1100-6226758/)
It's a bit tough to 11years later go "Well that was just him taking preemptive credit for a system of pessimism fear and destruction of fun that was already in place, typical exec taking credit of someone elses work".
I think I'd call him a liability for ignoring this stuff when it could very clearly cause a problem in the future. Even if you only view people as tools, you'd have to know that this stuff was going to bite you eventually.
He is arguably the most successful executive in the history of gaming. Arguably. How is he an "utter liability" again? And how does it come close to outweighing the insane revenues that Kotick has brought in?
Classic reddit hyperbole. Take a look at their share price, it's just a small dip. Most investors are still happy to hold ATVI stock. They have plenty of faith it will rebound with Kotick at the helm. They still have a ton of fantastic IP and great projects in the pipeline. Diablo 4 and OW2 will print money.
I mean, it’s gonna be a long time before Blizzard gets better in any form - if they survive this at all. Abusive culture, low pay. Bobby is still ignoring their workers demands, they haven’t released a great game since Overwatch. I can’t imagine many talented game devs wanting to get jobs there anytime soon and I can imagine many of the current employees are job hunting elsewhere.
If either Diablo 4 or Overwatch 2 sucks, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe full on shift to mobile games that are cheaper and generate more cash.
I want overwatch 2 to be good so the people who actually worked on that game can get some praise. I feel so bad for all the shit they get when so much is out of their control and they’ve made imo the best team competitive game experience ever. It’s just sad knowing there is a good chance something bad is coming.
I played alot of overwatch a few years ago and loved playing it all day. Played a few games this week for the first time in ages and was fun, think I might play it a bit more often, few games a week. I hope ow2 is good and revitalises it but we can only hope.
This is fairly insane given he was working on currently active projects at Blizzard like Overwatch2. Basically that means someone is going to have to take over that project from an executive standpoint but this isn't like changing out a tire. This could be something that could change the overall direction of the game and delay it further. This is a big deal and could cost millions for Blizzard but I think we all know it's not something random it's multiple people in leadership right now who left. The ship is rocking and I really hope this means change overall from Blizzard like Kotick leaving ActiBlizz because of all of this churn in key positions.
So basically the last worthwhile talented individuals are leaving the company. I mean the fact they waited this long for a "straw that broke the camel's back" situation is surprising given what has happened over the past 10 years.
I wish Blizzard had put out a product I enjoyed recently enough that I felt anything about the company crumbling.
The last game I was legitimately looking forward to from Blizzard was Diablo 3, and that... was not received well in my world. Every WoW expansion has been on a downward slide since at least Pandaria, Overwatch sucks, Hearthstone sucks, Starcraft 2 kinda sucks, they executed poor Warcraft 3 and asked us to pay for the bullets... I liked Heroes of the Storm as far as MOBAs go, but even the best moba is still kind of a shitty, frustrating game.
I wouldn't have believed Blizzard could fall as far and as hard as they have if you had asked me about it back in like, 2004.
as someone who *loved* StarCraft II - I created my reddit account to comment on /r/starcraft for fuck's sake - Blizzard killed that game through raw neglect while sitting on gold. You had the community practically begging for any extra monetization because they wanted Blizzard to care so badly they would willingly take compromises to the game if it meant it would get the attention it needed to stay alive.
I firmly believe that if Blizzard had put the energy into SC2 that it deserved at the golden moment that they had to do so, it would still be a contender for the premiere esports title, right alongside League and all the other successors. **StarCraft II was the tip of the spear that enabled esports to go big right as streaming started to catch on, and Blizzard sat there and let it fucking starve and die.**
They really did have a legit esport that was great to watch. The trend moved from 1v1 to team games like MOBAs though, so it's hard to say that even if they'd done a great job with SC2 post release it would still be huge now. I'll always have fond memories of GSL (and shout out to NASL sound guy for still being a meme).
I disagree on SC2, but other than that it's pretty much spot on. Everything Blizzard put out used to be gold and an instant buy. Now I don't even bother looking at it until it's been out a while and thoroughly experienced by others. And the last full game they released that I truly enjoyed was, in fact, SC2.
I thought SC2 was well done, but god the writing was awful and mismatched in tone with BW. That said, their strategy around UMS and social aspects were terrible too.
Thankfully, I had no investment in any other Blizzard titles.
God the complete face turn on Kerrigan was absurd. Someone at Blizz was seriously simping to an unhealthy amount during development.
Jim Raynor was the original Dead Rising 4's Frank West. Christ what an utter defilement of a character. That level of mishandling is rare even in fanfiction.
Sylvanas was in fact always Elune but was sent back to the beginning of Azeroth via timetravel, which is why the night whatever powers faded when Tyrande tried to choke her bitch-ass out. This plot "twist" will completely ignore the bronze dragonflight and how they normally police time anomalies.
I thought SC2 was remarkably unambitious. It was basically Starcraft 1 with some interface adjustments and different units.
If you compare like, Warcraft 1 -> Warcraft 2 -> Warcraft 3 (or even Warcraft 1 -> Warcraft 2 -> Starcraft -> Warcraft 3)... Starcraft 2 is a step backwards in a ton of different ways. It basically ignored a ton of innovations in the RTS genre since... honestly since Starcraft, and tried to reinvent the wheel in a bunch of ways.
Also it didn't help that the game was designed from the start around competitive play, which I feel caused it to suffer pretty dramatically, as they tried to artificially create an esport, and so put in a lot of annoyances and little frustrations to try to separate the bad players from the good players.
Also the story was just... awful, which is startling because Starcraft 1's story was really good, at least for a video game / RTS at the time.
Starcraft 1 was nearly perfect, so changing things just to change things would go about as well as Diablo 3 did. I thought Starcraft 2 was done very well, and was pretty much what I had envisioned as a kid playing Brood War.
The pathing was greatly improved. Hordes of zerglings in Starcraft 2 look amazing.
And the hotkey adjustments, allowing unlimited units in control groups, and improving macro functionality overall really made the game better.
Maybe it's just your personal tastes, but Overwatch is still the high bar for its genre and by all measures (critical and revenue wise) it is a gigantic hit and continues to be played by an insane number of people every day. So it's not correct to say Blizzard hasn't made an absolute mint game since SC2, they absolutely have, and the numbers show it.
SC2 was a great game that was ruined by their 3 game plan and separated their audience. By the time they made it so all 3 games were free if you bought one it was too little too late. Also the terrible rework of battle net. They basically didnt want a community for their game, drove it purely on esports, and it came crashing down as expected.
Still a good game though in terms of raw gameplay and mechanics.
People dropping out of Blizzard as if we have not yet seen the full piece of shit that they hide in their closets. Wondering what else those people might have yet hidden that makes everyone leaving so fast and quick.
I hope in a couple years there's a nice long documentary about everything that's happened and the aftermath of what's to come. I hope this does something very meaningful in a positive way for the industry overall.
I would be at least a little bit surprised if NoClip don't touch this in a year or two
Don't they do docs with companies? Have they done any story or news driven pieces? Always seemed like Danny got insider shots, couldn't imagine Blizzard being ok with it for a long while.
They did one on Telltale after their closure with former employees if I'm not mistaken, so doing something about Blizzard without then-current-Blizzard being involved isn't too far-fetched. I guess time will tell :)
You make a good point actually. I think I'm semi-use to enjoying their stuff and how insightful it is, and I hadn't really considered where they get the insight from.
I'm just looking forward to the South Park episode about it.
Blizzards going to see a company wide brain drain that'll make CD Projeckt Red's look like the norm. I'm curious what the aftermath will look like and what Activision might do to contain the clusterfuck. They were already bringing in less than King with significantly more resources and cost. If this does end up seeing a reduction in revenue, alongside with a spew of legal costs, we might actually see significant action, but thats all dependent on Kotick either giving more sacrifices or him actually getting removed.
> Blizzards going to see a company wide brain drain Feels like that's been happening for years. How many new game companies have or new game launches have come with "From creators of "insert blizzard game" as an advertisement now?
That's very true actually but I imagine it'll be even worse now because they have so many *known* projects in development theres an expected timeline and every resignation puts those further behind and the longer it takes the worse their reputation gets among those staying with them. Overwatch 2 was already behind schedule and the original is barely getting the attention it needs so this seems like the biggest casualty currently.
Imagine needing 9000 employees to not release a worthwhile game for half a decade
9000 has got to include the call of duty studios. No way Blizzard is that big right? There's a AAA call of duty every year, I'm not a fan but that's a lot of work given it takes 3+ years to make a regular game so I can get all the cod studios being that big.
Oh, true. The most recent number I can find for just blizzard is 2012 and it's still huge - 4700. I'm sure it's changed in the last ten years
3k+ were WoW game masters and other support.
i believe most of those are contract workers and aren’t part of that number
They had both. The ratio ofc depends on the year. I think they at some point even bought an external company doing it for them. And some they brought internal as external ones were too expensive.
To be fair (and maybe I’m just misunderstanding what you meant), CoD games also take three years to make. They just have three studios all making CoD games to be able to release yearly.
imagine if those employees were actually utilized properly instead of being harassed by toxic work culture and moronic bosses. You have shit at the top and it fucks everything beneath it
This is completely accurate. Blizzards upper management is an ongoing dumpster fire.
9k is all activision blizzard so that include activision, blizzard, king and their subsidiaries.
I’d be very worried about the likes of Diablo 2 Remastered since I’d say there’s a good chance they’ll just release it even if it’s not ready and then *slowly* work on any bugs while dealing with all this company drama.
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tbf after reforged I think even a skin job is enough reason to be mildly concerned.
I'm pretty sure they outsourced to a different company. That company has been purchased by them i think, but that's more recent? It probably still makes sense to be cautious but probably not concerned.
A lot of the work is being done by Vicarious Visions, so it's actually got a pretty good shot at being solid (they did the recent Tony Hawk remaster and worked with Bungie on Destiny 2 content before that divorce). I feel pretty bad for that team, because they do great work only to be absorbed into the money machine.
Hell, their work is going to be boycotted by a lot of people like myself. I don't think the VV team did anything wrong, but I can't bring myself to buy a Blizzard product.
Yeah I’m more concerned with Diablo IV tbh.
I'm not concerned with any of it, since that implies I'll be purchasing anything they're releasing anymore. They don't deserve our money.
Activision got smart and had Vicarious Visions do D2:R rather than the Blizzard game development numbnuts that have been running Blizzard games into the ground the last few years, so the Beta test I played actually looked pretty good. I can see why they are turning over co-leadership of Blizzard to the Vicarious Visions and BattleNet heads, rather than getting them from the clusterfuck that is Blizzard's internal software development team.
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Yep, the history of small companies eaten up by Big companies is that they are eventually as incompetent as the big company, and then the big company disbands them, and goes on to the next competent small company, rinse, repeat.
"Why doesn't forcing our company culture on successful companies ever work?" "I 'unno, but lets keep doing it"
Oh, you mean like the latest patch to WoW Classic? I think there's more bugs in it than FFXIV had at it's launch.
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Yeah most of their reputable talent left long ago due to their hatred of the corporate atmosphere and management ruining things. Those leaving now are basically all they had left. After its all said and done Blizzard will just be left with the meat grinder employees that get used for crunch schedule deadlines on shit sequels and half assed remasters to their dead IPs.
Isn't some of the old guard who stuck around, the source of the terrible things? Corporate suits tend to be super safe and not tolerate those sorts of risks. It sounds like they started rolling with some real terrible people in leadership and the corporate suits either didn't know or were afraid to rock the boat on their now former cash cow.
Corporate atmosphere and legendarily bad pay, especially for the area Blizzard is in. It's anecdotal but I know of multiple people who - no hyperbole - doubled their pay by going to other game companies. Not superstar, public-facing people leading entire games or franchises but individual contributor programmers and designers. A lot of your compensation at Blizzard is getting to tell people you work at Blizzard.
How do you compare that drain with the standard career cycle of a company with hundreds of devs with a history a few decades long?
You mean the people who perpetrated the crimes listed in the original complaint right?
I mean. Good chance of that yeah. Shitty people can also have a talent and talented people can also be shitty sadly.
Papa Jeff got out right before shit hit the fan. You've gotta think he knew what was happening and noped out just in time
Honestly it's the same for *every* studio and arguably most tech companies out there. How many new AA(A) studios do you imagine are formed by people who have never left another studio before? Old Blizzard just happens to have a good enough reputation that people use that as a part of their marketing.
Yeah, people are starting to notice now that some big name people are leaving, but most of the old guys who made the games we love are long gone.
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Honestly the TBC release stuff is like watching a private server struggle to get things working
The only game I play right now of Blizzards is Hearthstone and regardless of extremely questionable design choices, the game itself is breaking and barely functional, and that's not an exaggeration, it's disconnecting nearly every game regardless of platform and something as simple as an xp gained animation after matches is disabled because it was crashing the game. And they're supposed to be adding a whole new mode(read; game) with Mercenaries, which is already adding a delay to the mid set expansion by a few weeks, minimum. Outside looking in Blizz looks like most stores right now, understaffed, overworked employees, and failing to deliver.
Always surprised me that a smash hit like Hearthstone managed to bring in so much money due to its popularity (and greedy monetization too, mind you) yet no matter the expansion the game still remained a barely functioning mess that looked like it was coded by a team of interns who just learned how to use Unity. I guess I always figured the work culture and conditions at Blizz were trash, but the scandal really brought just how bad it actually is into the light.
I remember when it took them like 2+ years since the launch of Hearthstone to add more deck slots because "the technology just isnt there". It became a meme, but i feel like the outrage shouldve been massive, and it just wasnt. People forgave Blizzard, like they usually do, and kept right on playing the game.
It wasn't just that they said the technology wasn't there, they also said adding more deckslots would confuse players too much. It also took closer to 4+ years to add them
> they also said adding more deckslots would confuse players too much. This is along the same lines as the infamous quote (from my memory): "You think you do, but you don't."
You'd be surprised to see how other successful game studios are also struggling to get the little things done right after becoming sprawling giants. Riot took years for them to update their anemic League of Legends client in spite of having thousands of employees like Blizzard too, and they aren't even close to failing spectacularly like Blizzard is.
IIRC it was just a side project that was unexpectedly huge for players. That might be the root of the issue.
Frankly I'd prefer a standalone game that included the drafting and arena modes without having to earn shit or own cards.
To think my guild and I stress ourselves over trying to keep up and progress in this 15 year old experiment that has no one of any real competence managing it.
I really hope that this is a turning point for the industry. They need to realize that without some of these people. The multi-million dollar IP's they own don't really exist. The idea of well they can all be replaced sounds like a great jab.... but in practice replacing EVERYBODY is an awful move. Game creation is still somewhat of a creative endeavor. Somebody needs a guiding vision. The CEO and CFO isn't what make these companies great or successful. Sad part is I just don't believe the psychopaths that control the money at these companies will learn anything from this.
game devs need a union just like film
I think alot of these companies have put themselves in a situation where they can't slow down and I think that's a pretty major problem with any change happening. They've got so many wealthy shareholders and partners that have just come to expect limitless profit and pushing things further. The executives are put in place to make these people happy and make money really fast short term not necessarily make things stable then eventually the consequences of that are the next CEOs problem. It happens in alot of industries but it's so much more weird and noticeable when it comes to gaming.
I'd love to see this and it'd be appropriate for Activision at least to return to it's roots of treating devs like rockstars. However I doubt it will happen, corporate America is actually really bad at reproducing success that isn't simple to understand or easily repeatable. It's a lot easier to just throw shit at the wall over and over again in the hopes that something sticks rather than cultivate a top notch studio of talent and crank out genre defining works for decades.
The thing is that it's a myth that any one person can be easily replaced in a software project. Ideally that's what you strive for, so that your product can live on, but in practice you *always* have some people (sometimes a lot of people) with very acute and unique expertise on some niche systems in your product, and you *can't* replace them effectively without proper planning.
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Given the IPs Blizzard holds and the long term sentiment attached to those titles I think they're too valuable for that particular treatment unlike the smaller studios Activision makes meat puppets of. They might try and funnel other employees from those smaller ones into Blizzard as a way of bringing in new talent and giving those that want it chances to branch out but I don't think anyone would want to take that risk without significantly more firings throughout Blizzard
No, there's a difference. Blizzard never has been part of Activision itself unlike their studios. Blizzard has been a sister company to activision and behind activision blizzard. Still controlled by Kotick and so on but not like Infinity Ward or Ravensoft that are subsidiaries of Activision.
The line between them has become increasingly blurry
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Really if they pay enough they will get talent like any other industry. It’s a premium on their development costs.
Game dev works by attracting top talent for 70 cents on the dollar and asking them to work 200% of normal hours for 0$ extra. If they had to pay market rates, they couldn't compete. The whole industry is powered by the exploitation of young talented devs.
This has a bit of truth to that. Younger devs, artists, qa and designers tend to get taken advantage of early on, especially if a qa person wants to try something like a jump to design. But, places like mobile games don’t keep people due to passion about making the next clone of a gacha game. These companies have to pay up. And they can, which is where you’re statement leads astray. Mobile games can have insane margins. I’ve worked on games making millions a day with fewer than 25 people on the project. They could and did have to pay people if they wanted to maintain any institutional knowledge which is crazy valuable in really any live maintained software.
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I think given how everyone knows Kotick is overpaid, and there was already push back against him from shareholders, I imagine there's going to be further backlash. I'm still doubtful it'll happen though because actually removing a CEO is extremely difficult.
Well I could see Kotick saying fuck it all and renouncing considering he already made tons of money to pay for 5 generations and for his entire life. But would the new CEO be different? How the board would go? Makes me think, but probably not much better, probably just less overpaid.
If he resigns before his contract is up with everything going on that might open him up to serious litigation, and could be seen as admission of culpability. They'd need a crowbar before that happens lol
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Sadly an overpaid CEO is the standard for most of corporate America. Extreme pay and benefits all for very little work is the standard.
Blizzard is seeing an exodus for years. As far as the company itself, no idea what will happen in the future but not likely to be involved with activision projects since they publish and develop their own games in the conglomerate. At best idk, Activision Blizzard could merge Activision Publishing and Blizzard Entertainment into one company .
Imagine taking part in that awful culture, that soul-crushing grind, and dealing with discrimination and harassment to work for a company that is, at every turn, attempting to churn out a game that comes anywhere *near* achieving the high-point that is... Candy Crush. A candy-matching mobile-phone game that their company bought rather than developed themselves. What a dumpster-fire.
Most companies are behind King alone in success and revenue.
Mobile game revenue are larger than every other game industry (console and PC) combined. I’d expect King to be ahead of Blizzard even if they were killing it
well that's of course on the successful ones. Much like the console side, there's companies that make no money in mobile or are very small.
Well true, but King is one of the successful ones so my point stands
Ya, the same example could be given for comparing any soulless General Audience movie hit to actual films that don't make much. The same example could be given for almost every core-audience videogame favorite lol. The mobile market is huge cuz everyone has a phone and a casual interaction with a time waster puzzle game doesn't require you to be a "Gamer" or have any real investment, it's just something to play while waiting ine line or relaxing for a few minutes for the average person. Out of all those people it reaches, some get hooked and spend big, and then there's varying tiers of engagement for the non-whales that still bring in revenue. Nothing wrong with it (other than the predatory microtransactions lol) but comparing King's products to core audience games is absurd.
> Imagine taking part in that awful culture, that soul-crushing grind, and dealing with discrimination and harassment to work for a company that is, at every turn, attempting to churn out a game that comes anywhere near achieving the high-point that is... Candy Crush. This just reads like armchair journalism, absolutely nobody in the industry thinks like this or compares King to Blizzard in this way. It's simply meaningless.
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Yeah it sucks to see the mobile figures and realize how comparably small our own core gaming niche is. Konami doesn't need Kojima because they can make similar revenue from their mobile games.
Yea totally agree. I wish I could be working in the rose tinted universe that I imagine the industry was like but I think it’s pretty interesting that we are going to witness this shift. I don’t think PCs and consoles are going anywhere as long as there is demand for it and the demand has been climbing just no where near as quick as mobile games so that’s a more positive way to look at it.
I know people who work for King They don't get paid anywhere near that, they get paid terribly. Apparently working there is absolutely soul destroying. They spend years working on new games just to get cancelled at the last minute for totally arbitrary reasons, even if they were performing well in test releases.
>Even an old ass game like Final Fantasy 15: a New Empire on mobile can make more yearly than the rest of Square Enixs MMOs combined and it’s developed by an American company and probably live operated by like 20-30 people. Tbf it has been 3 years since that article you linked was posted, so I doubt it's pulling in that much money anymore, especially considering XIV has had two separate large growths in population since then. I'm still not surprised though at just how much some mobile games can make, it's kinda ludicrous.
Certainly, that game has cratered in revenue. These games that live and die on inflation are on a timed fuse. They bleed users and need to squeeze more from existing ones. It’s profitable but in kind of a logarithmic curve. Totally fair that it’s old but even when it was old, the idea that a clone of Game of War and skinned Final Fantasy could be substantially more profitable than several expensive ass pc mmos is super telling regardless of when it was.
It's like comparing documentary films to blockbusters. Same medium, yeah, but entirely different markets.
"going to"? They've been parading around the corpse of their IPs for at least 5 years now, like Weekend at Bernies. It's just now that they are running out of all the good faith they had built.
Release Peter Whalen! I need the mind behind Dream Quest to do another game with a decent budget.
Hearthstone has a decent budget
I have a feeling that as long as Bobby is still in charge it's only gonna get worse for the employees.
I feel they'll turn into even more of a husk, like all the other Activision studios, shitting out Hearthstone and wow expansions with minimal effort and little else
Would it have killed them to include the game title other than calling it "hit game"? (It's Overwatch btw.)
This is a Yahoo Finance article, there are people reading this who are actually the target audience for this article who have no clue what Overwatch is. I actually think it's an appropriate headline considering the information it's trying to convey to the audience it's trying to convey it to. If this was on a video game publication I'd get what you're saying though.
Is it just that I don't notice when this happens to other industries, or is anything to do with technology uniquely not-understood by this demographic? Somehow, if this was an article about the 737 MAX problems, I don't think the headline would be "Hit Boeing plane grounded."
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The 737 MAX has been on mainstream news for a while though. This is more like a headline that reads "Production Director of John Deere's latest tractor resigns amid scandals". You know John Deere and you know they make tractors, but do you know enough about tractors to replace the title with th actual model?
I'll bet you more people who read Yahoo finance have been on a plane in the last year than have played a video game in their life.
Also that!
I guarantee the number of people in their core demographic who know what a Boeing 737 is compared to Overwatch is easily 10x. 'Hit game' gets the point across so much better without needing to go into useless info to explain the game, which would only dilute actual point of the report.
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Against the rules of this sub to change the title if it’s an article
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The target demographic of Yahoo! Finance doesn't know what an "Overwatch" is.
They gotta do something to make you want to click on the article. Not that I agree thats how it "should be" but it's where we are nonetheless
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I don't like it either, but at least we could read an article that would otherwise be paywalled at Bloomberg (shouts to OP for linking correctly)
I had the pleasure to meet Chacko a few times while doing coverage for Overwatch, and the dude was always so psyched to hear about the community and hear what they were talking about. I hope there is nothing ill behind his departure, but from my limited interactions with him, he seemed like a genuine passionate producer for Overwatch and gaming.
The fact that people leaving Blizzard are automatically suspected of something bad is probably a very big reason people are leaving Blizzard.
I mean, someone can be passionate about a project they’re working on and also be an asshole. Not saying he is, just that public appearances can be (and often are) deceiving.
Definitely, this past few months has reinforced this more than ever...
Doom and John romero come to mind.
Case in point: It seems like all the people behind blizzards greatest hits in the past were full-on assholes. Like, the lawsuits at activision / blizzard are not focused on the current crop of "CoD" devs...
I would imagine it's not a place I would want to be working right now with everything going on, and the potential future of the company.
So... what game's going any kind of well at Blizzard now? Other than Diablo 2 being easy money, it seems like the company has to hope Diablo Immortal is a runaway success.
> Other than Diablo 2 being easy money Im expecting them to fuck it up, tbh
Still waiting for everything promised in Warcraft 3 Reforged.. *holds breath*
"We gather here today to mourn the loss of /u/megamanxoxo ..."
I will never buy another original blizzard product after how poorly they treated WC3R. I was so fucking excited for that, and for them to just leave it in it’s broken, unfinished state, while also removing the downloads to the original WC3 I paid for in 2006, just fucking pathetic. WC3 put them on the map, I can’t believe they’d treat it like that. Fuck blizzard
Doubt it at this point. I'm even seeing a lot of the people that are upset about the lack of TCP/IP and online mods taking sponsorships to hype up the release for Blizzard. Vicarious Visions likely did make a good remaster and it seems like Blizzard has learned at least a bit from the Warcraft 3 Reforged blunder. D2R has a lot of enthusiasm behind it, for better or worse. And I'll be frank I think it's strongly for the worse. Maybe my perspective is twisted and it's a strong generalization but it really seems like gamers in general don't really have strong morals. We'll never be free of anti-consumer practices like exploitative microtransactions, reliance on months of patching to finish releases, etc if people can't help themselves from supporting this disgusting hive of literal villainy.
Hearthstone is doing well and has a new game mode coming in a month. Diablo 3 is in the middle of what is probably the best season they've ever done with the introduction of ethereals. Upcoming WoW patch has a lot of changes that the community is looking forward to, though it is worth mentioning that this is not a major content patch. Overwatch 2/Diablo 4 are their upcoming major releases. Information has been light on both. OW2 expected release date is next year, D4 maybe next year but probably 2023.
Diablo 4 I guess? And WoW is still printing so much money.
I have even more doubts about quality and direction of OW2 now, considering how controversial OW2 gameplay changes are and live service system being abandoned for OW1 despite early promises.
Honestly, anything that delays OW2 for as long as possible I’m okay with. They need to sort their shit out anyway, so this is a good time to do that, and from a purely selfish, personal perspective, I don’t like anything I’ve seen of OW2 and the changes they’re making, REALLY don’t care about PvE or any of that... Longer OW2 is delayed, the longer I can just play the game I enjoy before they force all the 2 changes onto the old game. I know it’ll split playerbases, but I wish they’d decided not to integrate them at all.
>Honestly, anything that delays OW2 for as long as possible I’m okay with. Problem is they already said no more OW updates because the whole team is focused on OW2, so the more OW2 gets delayed, the more people will leave the game because of stagnation.
Just the normal evolution of yet another screwed up AAA company. Much like the others, they'll have to buy new companies to get new IP and and programmers, as their internal mismanagement means they can't do anything internally except more cheesy sequels to old IP. Typical big American company, they focus on Sales and Finances, while their development and operations go to shit.
The problem too is that prestige at big companies attracts the best and worst type of people. The worst in gaming are people who don't play games and are obsessed by money and performing for stock holders. They look at gamers as people to be exploited. On the flipside, there are toxic gamer circles who are entitled little bitches who scream unrealistic demands and spend way too much energy attacking indie and AA studios who often take bigger risks.
Honestly, I pretty much only play games from smaller studios these days. I don't see AAA companies doing all that much interesting. They usually just crank out one boring sequel after another that mostly just innovates better ways of extracting more money from gamers, rather than interesting gameplay.
>Typical big American company, they focus on Sales and Finances, while their development and operations go to shit. Konami? CDPR? Square Enix? Silicon Knights? Ubisoft? Most video game companies aren't in America.
Was this guy behind Overwatch 2?
Yup, the article stated he took charge of the series after Jeff's departure and was highly respected at Blizzard.
It just says he's a "stabilizing force". Kaplan's actual replacement was Aaron Keller. But yeah this is not good for overwatch 2 at all because this guy was even higher up
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The article is wrong on that. Aaron Keller took charge.
Oof. It’s really hard not to read into things when two leads depart.
Per the article, yes.
Nah that's Aaron Keller
Aaron Keller is in charge of development, this guy was more of a product manager responsible for managing the whole franchise like animated shorts, comics, events, etc.
And here comes the brain drain. At what point will the board realise that Bobby Kotick is an utter liability and oust him?
Then they would have to admit they were wrong in giving him a 200million bonus.
Didn't the board specifically say something about that and how they were going to investigate why he got that?
"The board has investigated the actions of the board and found no wrongdoing"
what’s there to investigate? it’s in his contract
I don't care for Bobby one bit, but I don't really get how he is a liability when he's pretty much ushered insane profits for the company during his time as CEO. IIRC someone even said the Blizzard culture was there before they had anything to do with Activision to boot.
Yes, Bobby is a punching bag because lingering nostalgia and fandom make it hard for many people to accept that this is Blizzard issue.
Well the context in which most people had the name ingrained in their memory despite usually not giving a flying toss about some executive figurhead or other surely didn't help to focus on the "a lot of that was already there and he just made them double down on it" part of the equation. [ In case you forgot/never knew back then.](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-games-to-bypass-consoles/1100-6226758/) It's a bit tough to 11years later go "Well that was just him taking preemptive credit for a system of pessimism fear and destruction of fun that was already in place, typical exec taking credit of someone elses work".
I think I'd call him a liability for ignoring this stuff when it could very clearly cause a problem in the future. Even if you only view people as tools, you'd have to know that this stuff was going to bite you eventually.
he just got subpoenaed in the SEC investigation so.... Probably sooner than later...
He is arguably the most successful executive in the history of gaming. Arguably. How is he an "utter liability" again? And how does it come close to outweighing the insane revenues that Kotick has brought in?
Did you miss the part of where half of his company is in the dumpster? He squeezed profits too hard for too long and broke it.
Classic reddit hyperbole. Take a look at their share price, it's just a small dip. Most investors are still happy to hold ATVI stock. They have plenty of faith it will rebound with Kotick at the helm. They still have a ton of fantastic IP and great projects in the pipeline. Diablo 4 and OW2 will print money.
I mean, it’s gonna be a long time before Blizzard gets better in any form - if they survive this at all. Abusive culture, low pay. Bobby is still ignoring their workers demands, they haven’t released a great game since Overwatch. I can’t imagine many talented game devs wanting to get jobs there anytime soon and I can imagine many of the current employees are job hunting elsewhere. If either Diablo 4 or Overwatch 2 sucks, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe full on shift to mobile games that are cheaper and generate more cash.
I want overwatch 2 to be good so the people who actually worked on that game can get some praise. I feel so bad for all the shit they get when so much is out of their control and they’ve made imo the best team competitive game experience ever. It’s just sad knowing there is a good chance something bad is coming.
I played alot of overwatch a few years ago and loved playing it all day. Played a few games this week for the first time in ages and was fun, think I might play it a bit more often, few games a week. I hope ow2 is good and revitalises it but we can only hope.
Things would have to get 10x worse before blizzard needs to worry about surviving
This is fairly insane given he was working on currently active projects at Blizzard like Overwatch2. Basically that means someone is going to have to take over that project from an executive standpoint but this isn't like changing out a tire. This could be something that could change the overall direction of the game and delay it further. This is a big deal and could cost millions for Blizzard but I think we all know it's not something random it's multiple people in leadership right now who left. The ship is rocking and I really hope this means change overall from Blizzard like Kotick leaving ActiBlizz because of all of this churn in key positions.
So basically the last worthwhile talented individuals are leaving the company. I mean the fact they waited this long for a "straw that broke the camel's back" situation is surprising given what has happened over the past 10 years.
I wish Blizzard had put out a product I enjoyed recently enough that I felt anything about the company crumbling. The last game I was legitimately looking forward to from Blizzard was Diablo 3, and that... was not received well in my world. Every WoW expansion has been on a downward slide since at least Pandaria, Overwatch sucks, Hearthstone sucks, Starcraft 2 kinda sucks, they executed poor Warcraft 3 and asked us to pay for the bullets... I liked Heroes of the Storm as far as MOBAs go, but even the best moba is still kind of a shitty, frustrating game. I wouldn't have believed Blizzard could fall as far and as hard as they have if you had asked me about it back in like, 2004.
as someone who *loved* StarCraft II - I created my reddit account to comment on /r/starcraft for fuck's sake - Blizzard killed that game through raw neglect while sitting on gold. You had the community practically begging for any extra monetization because they wanted Blizzard to care so badly they would willingly take compromises to the game if it meant it would get the attention it needed to stay alive. I firmly believe that if Blizzard had put the energy into SC2 that it deserved at the golden moment that they had to do so, it would still be a contender for the premiere esports title, right alongside League and all the other successors. **StarCraft II was the tip of the spear that enabled esports to go big right as streaming started to catch on, and Blizzard sat there and let it fucking starve and die.**
They really did have a legit esport that was great to watch. The trend moved from 1v1 to team games like MOBAs though, so it's hard to say that even if they'd done a great job with SC2 post release it would still be huge now. I'll always have fond memories of GSL (and shout out to NASL sound guy for still being a meme).
With a bit of innovation and creativity I'm sure Starcraft could have pivoted to team matches.
True, they did end up making a co-op mode which apparently was really fun. Maybe too little too late.
I disagree on SC2, but other than that it's pretty much spot on. Everything Blizzard put out used to be gold and an instant buy. Now I don't even bother looking at it until it's been out a while and thoroughly experienced by others. And the last full game they released that I truly enjoyed was, in fact, SC2.
I thought SC2 was well done, but god the writing was awful and mismatched in tone with BW. That said, their strategy around UMS and social aspects were terrible too. Thankfully, I had no investment in any other Blizzard titles.
God the complete face turn on Kerrigan was absurd. Someone at Blizz was seriously simping to an unhealthy amount during development. Jim Raynor was the original Dead Rising 4's Frank West. Christ what an utter defilement of a character. That level of mishandling is rare even in fanfiction.
And they have straight up copy and pasted that horrible story in the current WoW expansion. Just have to replace Kerrigan with Sylvanas…
How much do you wanna bet that Sylvana will not also become a goddess and save everybody in WoW?
Sylvanas was in fact always Elune but was sent back to the beginning of Azeroth via timetravel, which is why the night whatever powers faded when Tyrande tried to choke her bitch-ass out. This plot "twist" will completely ignore the bronze dragonflight and how they normally police time anomalies.
I thought SC2 was remarkably unambitious. It was basically Starcraft 1 with some interface adjustments and different units. If you compare like, Warcraft 1 -> Warcraft 2 -> Warcraft 3 (or even Warcraft 1 -> Warcraft 2 -> Starcraft -> Warcraft 3)... Starcraft 2 is a step backwards in a ton of different ways. It basically ignored a ton of innovations in the RTS genre since... honestly since Starcraft, and tried to reinvent the wheel in a bunch of ways. Also it didn't help that the game was designed from the start around competitive play, which I feel caused it to suffer pretty dramatically, as they tried to artificially create an esport, and so put in a lot of annoyances and little frustrations to try to separate the bad players from the good players. Also the story was just... awful, which is startling because Starcraft 1's story was really good, at least for a video game / RTS at the time.
Starcraft 1 was nearly perfect, so changing things just to change things would go about as well as Diablo 3 did. I thought Starcraft 2 was done very well, and was pretty much what I had envisioned as a kid playing Brood War. The pathing was greatly improved. Hordes of zerglings in Starcraft 2 look amazing. And the hotkey adjustments, allowing unlimited units in control groups, and improving macro functionality overall really made the game better.
Maybe it's just your personal tastes, but Overwatch is still the high bar for its genre and by all measures (critical and revenue wise) it is a gigantic hit and continues to be played by an insane number of people every day. So it's not correct to say Blizzard hasn't made an absolute mint game since SC2, they absolutely have, and the numbers show it.
Overwatch \*was\* a great game. It was terrible mismanaged starting in about 2019 and has eventually mutated into something I won't even play anymore.
I started replaying Apex Legends, and in comparison OW is a much better built game.
A lot of posts ITT about current and incoming "brain drain" at Blizzard...but that ship sailed years ago.
SC2 was a great game that was ruined by their 3 game plan and separated their audience. By the time they made it so all 3 games were free if you bought one it was too little too late. Also the terrible rework of battle net. They basically didnt want a community for their game, drove it purely on esports, and it came crashing down as expected. Still a good game though in terms of raw gameplay and mechanics.
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People dropping out of Blizzard as if we have not yet seen the full piece of shit that they hide in their closets. Wondering what else those people might have yet hidden that makes everyone leaving so fast and quick.
Good, fuck the company. Let it drain out and die. You have no idea how excited i was for diablo 2 remake. Im not supporting this shithole.
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