David Brevik : Activision taking over Blizzard

[Osmeric]

Deficineiron: I suspect it all traces back to those parts of the bylaws that were introduced with the combination of Vivendi Games and Activision, which imposed certain limits on what the CEO of ATVI could do to the Blizzard segment without prior written board approval. The internet echo chamber mutated that into some sort of wall isolating Blizzard.

Of course those parts of the bylaws are now gone, removed when Vivendi was bought out.

[Maudib]

If that's what's happening then it seems to be for the better. Legion and BfA are both great expansions on par with WotLK. I just want to see more of that direction in the game.

It would be interesting to know just how the community overall feels. I personally feel that the last few expansions are nowhere near as good as BC/Wrath were and it is because of the direction they have taken the game.

Maybe that is the reason they are doign Classic.. to provide both types of development. I'm OK with it now. They can do with modern WoW what they want, it's no longer a game I am interested in... but bring on Classic, then hopefully Classic BC and Classic Wrath.... I'll be a happy, never ending my sub, camper.

[xpose]

People surprised employees that have been there for 20 years want to take a break and move on. Like they stay at their mcdonalds job for more than a year.

[tratra]

I've seen a lot of David Brevik's work and design process. I don't 'know' the guy but he isn't a nobody.

That said... He has been separate from Blizzard for FIFTEEN YEARS. His opinion on Blizzard and Activision is nearly as useful as anyone elses.

I agree that he isn't a nobody and people in this thread are acting like kids when they are saying that about someone that has created one of the most successful games of all times.

On the other sentence... well I believe he is still in the scene and his POV is not completely irrelevant. He's still in game development and he is in within the circle that gets information before the rest of us does, so I don't think his opinion is as useful as anyone elses but way more useful.

Also MM step down, definitely triggered a lot of talk around the gaming circle and since David is up there he would have listened to things from people that matter on this unlike us.

[Deficineiron]

Deficineiron: I suspect it all traces back to those parts of the bylaws that were introduced with the combination of Vivendi Games and Activision, which imposed certain limits on what the CEO of ATVI could do to the Blizzard segment without prior written board approval. The internet echo chamber mutated that into some sort of wall isolating Blizzard.

Of course those parts of the bylaws are now gone, removed when Vivendi was bought out.

most folks just depended on blue assurances that they were totally independent internally, a/b was just their publisher, etc. I think most posters never had heard of the bylaw in question.

Ultimately, people are usually able to believe what they want to believe, and blizz has gone to some lengths to not make it hard. Kotick maybe let the cat out of the bag for a few when he mentioned his cfo working more closely with blizz some years back, but that was just a blip.

[Tharkkun]

I agree that he isn't a nobody and people in this thread are acting like kids when they are saying that about someone that has created one of the most successful games of all times.

On the other sentence... well I believe he is still in the scene and his POV is not completely irrelevant. He's still in game development and he is in within the circle that gets information before the rest of us does, so I don't think his opinion is as useful as anyone elses but way more useful.

Also MM step down, definitely triggered a lot of talk around the gaming circle and since David is up there he would have listened to things from people that matter on this unlike us.

He helped develop Diablo 1. He didn't solely create it himself. Every single game he's tried to lead and produce since has failed miserably in a dumpster fire. That should be a clue as to how successful he is. He rode on the back of Blizzard's success and people continue to listen to him.

[Deficineiron]

He helped develop Diablo 1. He didn't solely create it himself. Every single game he's tried to lead and produce since has failed miserably in a dumpster fire. That should be a clue as to how successful he is. He rode on the back of Blizzard's success and people continue to listen to him.

because if his newest games fail, he no longer is in the development scene, no longer knows people, and no longer hears things.

Do you really believe your own argument? Is this what they are teaching today for critical thinking skills?

[RoKPaNda]

This. All of this. I find it bizarre that people continue to repeat the untruth that Activision Blizzard (ATVI) have nothing to do with Blizzard. Aside from the fact that Blizzard's money is ATVI's money, so of course ATVI cares deeply about Blizzard, they just replaced a CEO President with a President. The only CEO Blizzard has now is Bobby Kotick. If that doesn't concern you then you haven't been paying attention.

Gotta give credit to Blizzard PR and marketing, it's as good as Apple's in the way it creates fans who put aside their ability to think critically and rationally.

I don't think it's the fans that aren't thinking critically. If anything it's the detractors that aren't thinking rationally or critically. I don't think anyone is denying that Activision could fuck things up for Blizzard. The argument is that they don't have their hooks in like the detractors claim. It's really not a difficult thing to see. All of the complaints that are attributed to Activision in this community are the same complaints that have been made against Blizzard since WarCraft 2 at least. (They don't care, they only want money, they cater to the casuals for more money, they don't care about balance, they release buggy unfinished products, etc.) - If you've ever played any Activision game you'll see that even Blizzard's free to play with microtransactions games are extremely tame compared to Activision games. Oh no there might be a couple optional mounts every expansion and character services are overpriced as a holdover from the pipedream of keeping server communities intact. If they wanted to be maximum greedy and make more money they'd sell services for less as right now they're prohibitively expensive.

You have to understand that some of the people that you're talking about have been working on the same three franchises for like two and a half decades and are ready to either retire in the case of the higher ups or move on and prove they can make something of their own. The video game industry as a whole has a very high turnover rate.

People really need to stop blaming Activision for Blizzard's failings that Blizzard has been working on for decades. Again, to reiterate, all the things that people blame Activision for with Blizzard are things that Blizzard was already doing for over a decade before Activision was in the picture.

Destiny 2 and Black ops 4 on battle.net prove enough of a point that Activision has their hold on Blizzard and are unwilling to let go. They are using Battle.net as a platform to sell their games even though many people don't even want to look at these non-blizzard games on their launchers.

You could say it's part of the times that Activison wants to pull away from steam because of the 30% cut but I think it's more than that. They could just make their own platform and sell their own games but they're going with what will give D2 and BO4 the most exposure.

You don't want them there, I don't mind them there. Why spend the resources to develop a new platform when Blizzard already has a functional one? Making their own platform would have just gotten them negative attention like Origin did for EA or uPlay for Ubisoft. In this case you have a perfectly functional and well received platform, why not use it? In the case of Call of Duty, it was time for it to move away from Steam. Steam has mishandled the PC ports of Call of Duty for years now. There are people that have been cheating in CoD for years and never been banned on Steam.

Please don't act like this isn't a good thing for Blizzard. It's HUGE for Blizzard having something like CoD on their platform. It gives them free exposure for their own games.

He helped develop Diablo 1. He didn't solely create it himself. Every single game he's tried to lead and produce since has failed miserably in a dumpster fire. That should be a clue as to how successful he is. He rode on the back of Blizzard's success and people continue to listen to him.

Thank you. As much as I didn't like Jay Wilson, he's right, Brevik is kind of a loser. He hasn't had any real success outside of Blizzard. When Blizzard released D3 he had to try to get back in the spotlight by commenting on it, and now that the Blizzcon theme this year is the future of the Diablo franchise he's trying to get his name back in the spotlight. He doesn't know anything more than anyone on this forum in regards to the internal situation at Blizzard. He's completely irrelevant to any sort of Blizzard discussion.

That said, if you look at the people who have left Blizzard they're still on good terms with Blizzard. They still retweet Blizzard things and talk about how excited and happy they are about Blizzard projects. If they'd gotten shitcanned or left because of some bad blood they wouldn't do that. They wouldn't talk shit, but they wouldn't do glowing endorsements of Blizzard projects years after they've left.

The conspiracy theories people post, including irrelevant designers from years past, are quite tiring.

because if his newest games fail, he no longer is in the development scene, no longer knows people, and no longer hears things.

Do you really believe your own argument? Is this what they are teaching today for critical thinking skills?

It's not that his newest game has failed, it's that everything he's done since he left Blizzard aside from maybe one thing have been complete failures. He hasn't been affiliated with Blizzard since before Activision was even in the picture, why would he know more than anyone else?

[MoanaLisa]

It's not that his newest game has failed, it's that everything he's done since he left Blizzard aside from maybe one thing have been complete failures. He hasn't been affiliated with Blizzard since before Activision was even in the picture, why would he know more than anyone else?

He wouldn't.

The part of his rant about the public knowledge that Blizzard had terminated their bonus program was 100% wrong. Blizzard employees are making as much as they ever have (not enough but there wasn't a pay cut either). The profit-sharing bonus program is still in place and the holiday bonus program was divided up into paycheck-sized segments and added to their normal pay which was something that many at Blizzard wanted.

Then there was the part where he said that Blizzard bought Activision and only installed Kotick as CEO because they didn't want to run it. OK.

And then after the rant that Activision was taking over Blizzard, his wife broke in to say "We don't really know any of this" to which Brevik agreed and then added that it was "easy to imagine" it. Allrighty then.

None of this confirms that he has any insider knowledge of what's going on at the top management level of Blizzard. Quite the opposite. If anything it confirms that he doesn't really have any idea what he's talking about since he got nearly everything wrong.

I invite people to go to the link at the top of the thread and actually watch the video. It's little more than a drunken rant. We all have the freedom to drink more beer than we should and then go rant on Twitch about whatever we like but perhaps we should be a little more interested in actual facts before blindly confirming our prejudices about Blizzard.

Diablo is apparently moving on to something else. Brevik is apparently not invited to that party. Perhaps he's OK with that, perhaps not. It's reasonable to ask if that has anything to do with it.

[bluspacecow]

Once you accept that a/b really does OWN blizzard, and kotick really IS the ceo of a/b, largest shareholder of a/b, and he and kelly control significant minority stake in the company (last I read the group kotick heads that bought part of the vivendi stake is the largest single shareholder?)

The notion that Bobby Kotick is a majority shareholder is false.

SEC filings are public. Whenever there is movement of stocks in the company how many shares they have at end of the transaction is always listed. IIRC the form you would be looking for on SEC's EDGAR system are Form 3 & Form 4. His share is less then 1%. Kelly is less then 1%. ASAC II LLC 's share is less then 1%. In total individual shareholders of Blizzard make up about 6-7% of ATVI's total shares.

The rest is in institutional holdings which in total make up most of ATVI's shares. The largest of which is FMR, LLC at around 12% of total shares. You can very easily very this by googling for what ATVI's shareholder are. They'll all tell you the same thing - FMR not Bobby Kotick has the largest. Kotick has 4,100,379 of about 769,345,142 shares. Kelly's is 8,101 shares. ASAC II LLC has 1,324,721 shares. Do the math.

Kotick's recent form 4 - https://investor.activision.com/node/31071/html
Kelly's https://investor.activision.com/node/31136/html

[Stricks]

Blizzard has always subscribed to games being "easy to get into and play and hard to master". Some may call that "casual" I guess but I don't. I think all of their games still fit that philosophy to be honest...

[Coombs]

fuck that loser

Where is Jay these days? That's right...


OT: It just sounds like a drunk guy saying that Blizzard won't be the same in three more years with highly influential people leaving. I could see corporate policy pushing them away, or the very nature of the games industry fundamentally changing. Mostly, I think Mike thought that he would love to still come to the office and kick it with his friends every now and again while advising, but also wants to enjoy being a rich man while he's young enough to do shit.

[Arbs]

I'm not shocked if it is happening.

[Tharkkun]

because if his newest games fail, he no longer is in the development scene, no longer knows people, and no longer hears things.

Do you really believe your own argument? Is this what they are teaching today for critical thinking skills?

He made outlandish statements like this all the time. Always in reference to Blizzard because he's still mad about what went down when it was Vivendi that actually closed down Blizzard North. He hasn't been part of Blizzard now for 15 years.

I'm sure he does hear things. The imaginary stuff he writes as articles.

[Mazinger-Z]

So how come a Blizzard employee just took over Morhaime's job?

Bunch of nobodies who are randomly assuming stuff.

Or are people really expecting rich CEO level Blizzard employee's to work there until they are 100+ years old and they die?

Because he did what needed to be done: He broke the Blizzard tenant of "it's ready when it's ready" and release an expansion that ignored a majority of alpha and beta feedback on systems and end-game at teh end of the fiscal year and financial quarter. On the back of Legion and a certain amount of hype, it sold at record levels, building karma with shareholders, who voted him in to replace Morhaime.

Decisions like Mike leaving don't happen spontaneously, unless Mike was in some sort of scandal. Brack was picked and had to prove he was willing to play ball to get voted into the position.

WoW was the sacrificial lamb.

There's a reason they finally stopped holding their breath on Azerite and admitted the system sucked and proposed changes the same day Brack was appointed.

The deal was done. No backsies. Now we can stop pretending everything is perfect.

[Cheap Shills]

David Brevik is an American video game designer, producer and programmer who served as the co-founder and president of Blizzard

I don't know if anyone at Blizzard has the same "stuff" that the original founders have/had. This isn't exactly some shocking change of events. If you've actually been paying attention the writing has been on the wall for quite some time.

Partnering with Activision ensure their company, their IP carries on, rather than having a legacy that dies when it's visionaries are ready to retire.

Also in addition to partnering with Activision, according to their financial statements there have been a number of stock options, that have been exercised over the last several years. They've been building their nest egg and now they're out.

[sam86]

A. Since the opinion of whether BfA is bad or not has been heavily split... I'd say that it's subjective and not fact. Everyone has a different feeling. Doesn't make yours right.

B. Timegating existing in WoW LOOOOOOOONG before the two companies merged. Blizzard, for better or ill, does their own thing.

A. according to most polls on this website, the vast majority thinks that in lore BFA is total sh8t, so that isn't 'heavily split' it is more of 90% say it is sh8t, and 10% wants to be special snowflakes
B. when ? only timegate i can think pre-activision era is 2.4 isle of quel'danas event and AQ scepter, and both weren't 'time gated' as much as effort gated, have an active strong server? it will open way faster than low pop servers, on reverse after activision blizzard we got the 50 attempts in raids (which was countered with lvling alts)

- - - Updated - - -

rather than having a legacy that dies when it's visionaries are ready to retire

so they kill it themselves ?
also regarding topic (since u probably don't know my earlier quotes), i think he just retire because he is filthy rich and doesn't need to work anymore

[Cheap Shills]

so they kill it themselves ?
also regarding topic (since u probably don't know my earlier quotes), i think he just retire because he is filthy rich and doesn't need to work anymore

That's a fair argument I suppose. They have definitely been running the company with increases to stock price in mind and adding value to the firm, rather than previous "field of dreams" approach which was to deliver top notch unrivaled content.

I think they've all been done for a while. But I think Morhaime has been done for a while, and I think that he was instrumental in delivering Overwatch (which was severely needed to really drive those stock prices to a new level).

I don't think it has much to do with him being "filthy rich" I think it was more about leaving Blizzard in a healthy place financially for others to continue its Legacy. That legacy will probably be the Call of Duty approach, which delivers "new" unfinished products yearly, and bugs/problems go on unaddressed because a new game will be out within a year so why bother.

The company is his legacy, not the games, and the company (if it dies at all) will die a long, drawn out, painful death.

[notsouki]

Does nobody here own ATVI stock and actually listen to ATVI quarterly earnings reports? Activision and Blizzard are one big happy family. You people have no idea what you're talking about.

[Oakshana]

A. according to most polls on this website, the vast majority thinks that in lore BFA is total sh8t, so that isn't 'heavily split' it is more of 90% say it is sh8t, and 10% wants to be special snowflakes

Saying that MMO Champion community speaks for the majority of WoW players is honestly pretty laughable, don't you think? It's a vocal minority at best.

B. when ? only timegate i can think pre-activision era is 2.4 isle of quel'danas event and AQ scepter, and both weren't 'time gated' as much as effort gated, have an active strong server? it will open way faster than low pop servers, on reverse after activision blizzard we got the 50 attempts in raids (which was countered with lvling alts

Ok, see... i see effort gating as a colossal time sync, and it still fits into time gating of sorts. It's just an alternate way of staving people off. But, do you not remember the time spacing on the wings in ICC? Additionally, while it's not the same as now, any rep that demands you grind and grind for additional benefits, rewards or access is a time gate. They may have changed how they have done it and the reasons, but it's still a concept that has existed.

And I am not saying anyone is right or wrong. I am saying that opinion is subjective, and saying BfA is crap is opinion, not fact. That's it.