Activision keeps blizzard's name clean.

[Tiwack]

The desire to maintain what remains is as strong as the desire to make up for past transgressions...

[Liarparadox]

Something I've noted with blizzard: Ever since they merged with Activision, they have never done a single thing wrong. Not a single thing. According to the fans at least. Any time blizzard does good: go you blizzard, you're the best. Anytime something bad happens? That's just mean ol' activision forcing them to do bad things, poor blizzard, won't somebody save them :<

It's why I feel that blizzard is still seen, more so than other major AAA game developers, as still a good quality place full of the same caliber of people that originally made it. They have not taken part in any of the greed nor distanced themselves from their player base, oh no, that was all activision forcing blizzard to do what they didn't want to do. It's happening now with the mobile gaming stuff: Its all activision doing it. A blizz game has a shitty dev who seem to have an open disdain for fans? They're just some shill activision put there. Blizzard ignoring their fanbase? No, that's activision making them ignore their fanbase. Blizzard following industry wide trends of the AAA gaming industry? Real blizzard wouldnt do that! It's all activision!

They can do no true wrong so long as ol' man activision is there making them do terrible things.

LOL. Totally agree. I noticed this with so many developer/publisher/bought out relationships. Gamers are waaaaay too brand loyal. It's amazing PR on their part. It used to frustrate me when i was younger; now I find it amusing how people can't face up to this fact.

The only thing I will say here is that Blizz does get a shitload of criticism and have for a long ass time. But there's always that crowd where they can't do anything wrong and now they have a scapegoat in Activision.

[Phuongvi]

I have to admit Blizzard are doing an excellent job in their report to make look everything when Bfa is a pile of shit

[lolbubble]

Ever since they merged with Activision, they have never done a single thing wrong. Not a single thing

My sides are in orbit

[Eosia]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make but you're wrong. Blizzard and Activision are one and the same company now since they are owned by Vivendi. They just manage different IPs.

Actually, you're wrong. Vivendi, while they still own a good-sized chunk of stock, are no longer the owners. The CEO actually holds more stock than Vivendi.

[Deleted]

this is the part that always confuses me.

you have activision, you have blizzard, you have king, and then you have activision-blizzard. does blizzard report to anyone? who?

Bobby Kotick is the CEO so one would assume they all report to him in the end and every gamer loves Bobby Kotick.

[Raven]

Wierd, i feel its the other way around, since they merged with Activision they havent done anything right according to the fans.

[Tharkkun]

this is the part that always confuses me.

you have activision, you have blizzard, you have king, and then you have activision-blizzard. does blizzard report to anyone? who?

Bobby Kotick is the CEO of Acti-Blizzard. Mike Morhaine is the CEO of the business unit Blizzard Enterntainment and he reports to Kotick or possibly Dennis Durkin. But the employees of Blizzard all report up to Morhaine. King works the same way. They have a CEO still. The Activision business unit reports up to Kotick. (COD, Skylanders, Destiny). There's major league gaming and activision blizzard studios as well. 5 total business units under 1.

I'm sure Kotick has some influence overall but as long as Blizzard keeps making tons of cash they most likely let them do their own thing. That's how it worked when my software company bought out different companies over the 10 year span. Eventually they start to integrate them and I think we're seeing that with Blizzard distributing games and COD using the normal datacenters for hosting games that Blizzard has used.

https://www.activisionblizzard.com/about-us

[Zora-Prime]

There were about 5 games in all of gaming history that tried to do Lootboxes before Overwatch did it, but none of them were successful.

Then Overwatch came out.

And suddenly there were, like, 30 games in a single YEAR that had Lootboxes. Because Overwatch suddenly made them okay.

Unsuccessful games... Such as Dota 2 and CS:GO

[rrayy]

this is the part that always confuses me.

you have activision, you have blizzard, you have king, and then you have activision-blizzard. does blizzard report to anyone? who?

ACtivision-blizzard is the entire company. then you have the game divisions of Activision and Blizzard. Blizzard makes the decisions for it's games. Activision makes the decisions for it's games.

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Bobby Kotick is the CEO of Acti-Blizzard. Mike Morhaine is the CEO of the business unit Blizzard Enterntainment and he reports to Kotick or possibly Dennis Durkin. But the employees of Blizzard all report up to Morhaine. King works the same way. They have a CEO still. The Activision business unit reports up to Kotick. (COD, Skylanders, Destiny). There's major league gaming and activision blizzard studios as well. 5 total business units under 1.

I'm sure Kotick has some influence overall but as long as Blizzard keeps making tons of cash they most likely let them do their own thing. That's how it worked when my software company bought out different companies over the 10 year span. Eventually they start to integrate them and I think we're seeing that with Blizzard distributing games and COD using the normal datacenters for hosting games that Blizzard has used.

https://www.activisionblizzard.com/about-us

Exactly. As long as Blizzard is making money, Blizzard will do what it wants And they certainly will make all the decisions regarding the development of their IP's, not Kotick.

[Mixxy]

Unsuccessful games... Such as Dota 2 and CS:GO

And yet the industry didn't latch onto lootboxes until riiight after Overwatch.

[Stormspark]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make but you're wrong. Blizzard and Activision are one and the same company now since they are owned by Vivendi. They just manage different IPs.

No. Activision-Blizzard bought itself out from under Vivendi in 2015. The Activision management actually owns the company now. Vivendi was what was keeping them in check, even after they merged Activision with Vivendi Games. For the past 3 years the Activision management (who are the ones in charge of Activision-Blizzard as a whole) have been completely in charge.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

I barely call them Blizzard anymore. They're not.

They're Activision-Blizzard. More accurately, they're basically the Activision-Blizzard-King trio.

Activision just never had the PR nightmare that EA had, but they're mostly the same. Their three largest investors are the same.

Blizzard was a money-making company which had a beautiful reputation for quite a while, which only recently started to slowly go down (In-game store for Wow was when things started to go down, culminating into the disaster that this last earning call was).

King is... well, the king of mobile games.

The pattern is obvious. It's not bad per say, but when a company starts to head toward profit exclusively in an aggressive, exponential way, it tend to end up eating itself. A bit like the retro game "Snake".

[Jtbrig7390]

You do realizew that while under the same roof, they are separately run companies right? Acrtivision does their thing. Blizzard does theirs.

You do realize they share the same boss/share holders and all right? The company's are one in the same period and its been this way for awhile now.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure why everybody is so quick to blame Activision for recent decisions/announcements made by Blizzard.

AFAIK Activision and Blizzard are both held under a holding/parent company called Activision-Blizzard. However I don't think Activision is actually forcing Blizzard to do the stuff it's doing. Plus I'm not seeing or hearing anything about Activision suddenly moving into mobile gaming, they still releasing games for console/PC. It's Blizzard's decision to release more mobile titles and I do think they're doing that of their own volition.

Plus the major backlash over Diablo: Immortal stems from the fear that Blizzard is moving resources away from the development of more PC games. Had it been: "Here's our big PC announcement! Oh, and we've also been working on a mobile title as well" nobody would have batted an eye.

[bluspacecow]

Actually, you're wrong. Vivendi, while they still own a good-sized chunk of stock, are no longer the owners. The CEO actually holds more stock than Vivendi.

No they don't. Vivendi sold off all their remaining stock back in 2016

[Cracked]

Well.. maybe if ATVI stock falls any lower, Blizzard can consider buying itself out.

[chubbybunny]

All these haters, However blizzard are just looking at what the future technology is and embracing it..

More and more games are being developed for mobile as the power of the mobile processors are getting to the point that can handle decent games...

Also there is more of a trend for gamers to have a quick game during their lunch break on their phones, or on the way home from work on trains/buses, etc.



People seem to be hating blizzard for looking towards the future of technology and jumping on the band wagon, or as people will be saying "Oh no.. activision are forcing them to do it".. Blizzard are a seperate entity and have a major say on what they develop

[tangers58]

Something I've noted with blizzard: Ever since they merged with Activision, they have never done a single thing wrong. Not a single thing. According to the fans at least. Any time blizzard does good: go you blizzard, you're the best. Anytime something bad happens? That's just mean ol' activision forcing them to do bad things, poor blizzard, won't somebody save them :<

It's why I feel that blizzard is still seen, more so than other major AAA game developers, as still a good quality place full of the same caliber of people that originally made it. They have not taken part in any of the greed nor distanced themselves from their player base, oh no, that was all activision forcing blizzard to do what they didn't want to do. It's happening now with the mobile gaming stuff: Its all activision doing it. A blizz game has a shitty dev who seem to have an open disdain for fans? They're just some shill activision put there. Blizzard ignoring their fanbase? No, that's activision making them ignore their fanbase. Blizzard following industry wide trends of the AAA gaming industry? Real blizzard wouldnt do that! It's all activision!

They can do no true wrong so long as ol' man activision is there making them do terrible things.

Meh, most of the current staff are just Activision shills, very few Blizzard developers left these days

[Seranthor]

Yeh, when anythign ingame goes wrong be it a missplay, RNG, or general failure, the players often say "fuck u blizz," not activision. Either way u slice it, they are both same lvl under vivendi.

Are you suggesting that Vivendi is the majority stockholder in ATVI?

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talking about scumminess, wow is pretty much the only mmo that has no loyalty rewards. if i think of a random mmo, it has long and short term loyalty rewards, played wow for 14 years nothing, oh wait in the early days they did give you sub time back for when maintenance went over or took a whole day or two days.

not to mention you pay a subscription on top of expansions that are marked up to the cost of a triple A title.

you pay upward of $60 for an expansion that comes with zero game time, you then pay monthly, most of that time you don't see because you're sleeping or at work or not strapped to your pc. so at best you get half of what you paid for. then content trickles in at a rate that forces you into 6 month or entire year subscription plans to see it, so you don't even get the content with the initial purchase. as you would if the game you bought was cod or any other non-mmo.

am I getting somewhere. scummy is icing on the milking ppl cake. this isn't exactly new, the scumminess that is.

And you suck it up and continue to throw your money at them... Dont you?

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He has stated several times it was the love of making games, not for the money.

And I suppose he's supposed to 'love making games' for YOU for the rest of eternity? Not to mention you ascribe motives to him that you cant prove such as he 'sold out'... I wouldn't love making game for people that talked shit... I'd let them wallow in their shit and move on.