Activison blizzard stock still plummeting at an alarming rate

[micwini]

People who think that "the market" reacts to gamers' feelings are hilarious.

It does. The whole economy reacts to consumer trust, it's not just gaming. People spending less because of their feelings has great effect.

[Dieselol]

I do find it somewhat concerning, Overwatch is losing players due to game design choices, BfA is shaping up to be worse than WOD. Hearthstone is well Hearthstone. Blizzards needs to do something to get back on track quickly.

[Kaibhan]

People who think that "the market" reacts to gamers' feelings are hilarious.

It does, a little. Bad press can have an effect on stock prices. But thats only small dips and bumps and the people people who don't really affect the stock market with their tiny shares.

[Eleccybubb]

I do find it somewhat concerning, Overwatch is losing players due to game design choices, BfA is shaping up to be worse than WOD. Hearthstone is well Hearthstone. Blizzards needs to do something to get back on track quickly.

Uhm. Hearthstone just recently hit 100 million lifetime accounts.

While not active numbers I don't think it's in any danger.

As for Overwatch. Your source that it is losing players?

There is absolutely nothing to be concerned about. A lot of the market has been dropping recently. All Activison and Blizzard games are still getting content.

Why is it whenever Blizzard stock seems to drop peoples first thought is "SKY IS FALLING"?

[Martymark]

Good.

The consumers are voting with their wallets.

[Aggrophobic]

It was bound to happen given:
Fallout 76
Diablo Immortal.
BF5
Artifact recepcion.
And general cracking on lootboxes.

Its clear that market entered a panic mode over what happened this month.

Battlefield? What does that have to do with Blizzard.
Also, that game is a huge step up from BF1 in every way and it's actually a great game.

[Gorsameth]

Pushing a 2 year low? Does that mean it's been low for 2 years or that it's been low like that before 2 years ago? Because if it's the latter, it's not that alarming.

'2 year low' means that it is at the lowest point if you look at the last 2 years.

[Arrashi]

Battlefield? What does that have to do with Blizzard.
Also, that game is a huge step up from BF1 in every way and it's actually a great game.

And suffered massive loss in sales, aka loss in benefit, aka its one more proof that gaming industry isn't as safe as many investors would want.

[MikeBogina]

Isn't EA's stock plummeting too?

We're in a time where the fans have had enough of the bullshit and the companies are suffering for it. It's a good thing I suppose, but I'd rather these companies get their shit together and have a better relationship with the gamers. Can't even really think of a Game company that isn't surrounded by some kind of drama and backlash besides CD Projekt Red... kinda.

[Projectmars]

As for Overwatch. Your source that it is losing players?

Probably the same sources that said TBC is going to be the death of WoW.

[Poppincaps]

Yep sadly.

Gone are the days where most devs put players before profit.

I mean it's clear Blizz with some games are trying to but judging from how much control Activision has from recent interviews well.....

This has nothing to do with Devs. In fact devs in general care very little about profit as if they wanted they could go work in other fields in their profession and make quite a bit more. It's that gaming has become so profitable that publishers are forcing devs to put more emphasis on profit.

[Projectmars]

Battlefield? What does that have to do with Blizzard.
Also, that game is a huge step up from BF1 in every way and it's actually a great game.

Isn't that the game that had "white man" and "DLC" (but not "free DLC") censored in chat?

- - - Updated - - -

This has nothing to do with Devs. In fact devs in general care very little about profit as if they wanted they could go work in other fields in their profession and make quite a bit more. It's that gaming has become so profitable that publishers are forcing devs to put more emphasis on profit.

End result is the same though.

[McNeil]

These past months hasn't been that kind to video gaming in general with maybe the exception of Red Dead Redemption 2. Gaming companies feel way more out of touch than they used to be already.

[MasterHamster]

"Alright guys, the stock has been falling quite a lot lately, what design changes do we need to make to stop it?"
-No serious game company ever.

It's fun and all to think that a stock plummeting a bit will lead to some wide-scale changes to their games or scrapping some unpopular projects, that's not how stocks work. Stock value are influenced by the overall view of the prospects of that company and it's potential future earnings or losses. If investors think the company will keep doing well and increase yearly profits, it goes up. Yes, negative receptions and uncertainty will decrease it (like following BlizzCon), but no, you won't see wide-spread WoW/HotS/Overwatch changes or Diablo Immortal being scrapped just because the stocks are going down and the game community (in the west) is frustrated. This is just heading to the levels were investors will start pouring in money again. Acti-Blizz is a bit too large to take any noticeable hit from something as this.

As much as I detest BFA, how uninterested I am in HotS and Overwatch, or despise the idea of Diablo Immortal, I know that none of that has any effect on the stock. Nor do I wish that the ActiBlizz stocks falls. You will however see the stock go back up once Blizzard starts to flaunt how many hundred millions are wasting money on D:I in Asia, and how they manage to make WoWs current playerbase seem content with the current expansion. As soon as the stock has stopped falling more than maybe 2-3% in 5 business days, you'll see it start recoil up again.

And no, in case anyone is wondering, I do not own Acti-Blizz stocks... I do however own other stocks and shares in various investment funds, I look at the current trend of ActiBlizz and it's nothing that should even raise an eyebrow. If anything this is about the point I'd consider buying some ActiBlizz stocks. Buy low sell high, ya know. Because there's not a snowball's chance in hell that the stock won't recoil and go higher sometime in the future. Stocks falling doesn't make companies panic, as long as they have stable finances. It's when a stock falls by like 65%+ in 2-4 weeks you start to notice the sweat-drops from the CEOs, if they're heavily invested in their latest release or whatever.

Tl;dr
Players whining on forums about game design decisions don't influence stocks, future projected profits or stagnations (which may of course be linked to customer dissatisfaction) does.

[araine]

They dropped because the entire market dropped.

Must be activisions fault your entire 401k is tanking under this administration. Personally i know thats not the case and that the reason it is tanking is poor fiscal responisibility in Washington over the last 2 years.

[Okacz]

Right?

There has been like 5 of these threads, too. People pretending like they have the first clue about the market just so they can try to use it to whine about Blizzard some more. Everyone and their brother will point to the stock when trying to prove that their pet peeve is the thing killing Blizzard, just like with the Cata "sub drop" and every other bit of "bad news".

"omfg bliz ur stok iz ded, u shuld listn 2 my ideaz 4 ur gaems den it wuld b fixd"

Well, those problems seem to be directly related. The current "live or die" investment style in video game industry caused the monetization and lootbox boom when it became apparent how profitable they were. While the industry grew incredibly fast, it reached its potential.

Therefore both the creators of awesome games (like RDR2) and less so (Fallout 76) suffer because of the situation. The former because despite huge profits they STILL do not meet investors demands who simply leave for industries with better growth potential. The latter because they are being forced into a territory they aren't comfortable in (Bethesda going from vast, open and incredibly single player games to "live service" quick copy paste that had to be rushed in like a year). So far everybody is losing, even the good old industry sharks like EA or Activision.

I guess that's what happened to Blizzard too. Legion was a HUGE undertaking, having more content and polish than any other expansion before, yet failed to meet the profit demands. Therefore, the next call was to make a way cheaper product, without so much polish and detail to keep WoW going, while investing in easy cash cows like the mobile market.

[omeomorfismo]

ATVI Stock continued to plumit on monday following the sustained drop since the weekend of blizzcons announcements and following the latest financials for blizzard and activision. Since blizzcon the stock has dropped around 33% pushing an almost 2 year low and in the last 2 months has dropped 44% almost losing them 40 billion market cap. How will shareholders react to the management? doesn't look like the stock is anywhere near finished dropping there may be some small breakouts but everytime it does it plumits, 8% drop on monday.


Do you think these figures will have impact on the future of activision and blizzards game? the market doesn't seem to have liked the ton of the figures and direction one bit

the marked didnt even favore take-two interctive software after rdr2, from the 137,99$ 28/9 to the actual 103,26$.... so blizzard directions and release hardly matter

[unbound]

ATVI Stock continued to plumit on monday following the sustained drop since the weekend of blizzcons announcements and following the latest financials for blizzard and activision. Since blizzcon the stock has dropped around 33% pushing an almost 2 year low and in the last 2 months has dropped 44% almost losing them 40 billion market cap. How will shareholders react to the management? doesn't look like the stock is anywhere near finished dropping there may be some small breakouts but everytime it does it plumits, 8% drop on monday.


Do you think these figures will have impact on the future of activision and blizzards game? the market doesn't seem to have liked the ton of the figures and direction one bit

Of course they'll have an impact...hopefully in the favor of the customers.

The stock market isn't the sole determiner of the economy, and individual stock prices aren't the sole determiner of a company's strategy.

The stock price of ATVI is dropping because a) they didn't have anything exciting to announce at BlizzCon, and b) their financials aren't looking particularly great (i.e. don't buy the corporate PR hype that everything is fine) due to less income from King and Blizz products. Top management is already being shuffled, but you'll likely see the stock prices steady out soon as, from a purely financial point of view, Diablo III on mobile is a great profit-restoring move (Chinese market is growing, and they like mobile games).

I would guess that WoW will be on the chopping block at this point. The amount of effort put into BfA is obviously substantially less than was put into Legion (especially with the patch schedule being nearly twice as long and the raid schedule being nearly three times as long compared to Legion), so we'll see if they will bother with another expansion, but unless you see Legion level effort put into the next expansion, the next will be the last unless they figure out how to make it mobile (which is potentially part of the reason for the global cooldown changes as well as the culling of abilities over the past couple of expansions). WoW Classic is a cheap move to try to get more income, so that could be a viable approach going forward (e.g. roll out BC in a couple of years) as that is much cheaper than creating something new.

The reality is that Activision-Blizzard is a large corporation...and all large corporations worship profits above all else. If they think profits are better over on mobile, they will ease off of their desktop platforms while encouraging people to transition. Don't accept corporate PR that they care about the gamers (they only care about you as long as you feed them money), and the mid-tier management on down simply don't have the political clout to keep these things alive (although they very likely do care about the game).

[Maudib]

Good, they can all go to hell.

Amen! Blizzard only cares about $$$... when they say they are listening... what they mean is they are counting ($$$). When they have have less money to count... people come breathing down their necks and demand they get their shit together.

I sincerely hope this results in Ion getting fired. He is so stubborn and stuck in his mathhead, Elitist Jerks mindset that he brings nothing to the development other than fail.

I am tickled pink that they have lost billions of dollars in this stock crash. The stockholders deserve it for letting Ion and friends run the game into the ground. Maybe we'll see some real change now... and some return to the tried and true game development from Classic/BC/Wrath.

[Onikaroshi]

Battlefield? What does that have to do with Blizzard.
Also, that game is a huge step up from BF1 in every way and it's actually a great game.

Idk, for stock shit I guess... But it sold poorly cause people kept spreading bullshit like "bionic arm in wwii lolololol" when it was clearly just your average prosthetic from that time period.