Even if that is your priority you cannot look at the declining quality of Blizzard games and say an environment like this helps makes better games. If you have people getting drunk, goofing off and not working in positions of power that's a waste of money and resources. That's not even going into how an environment like this leads to stressed out workers and the brain drain we have seen going in blizzard for years.
Realistically, what will most likely come out of this is Blizz losing a pittance of money. If (and likely when) some employees call it quits over this, there will be no shortage of applicants to fill in the gaps. The games industry always has an absurd turnover rate, and no shortage of applicants for positions, especially for AAA.
Similar to the many controversies of the past few years (perhaps most notably the Blitzchung one), they will likely see a trickle of lost customers because of it, but nothing company-breaking. Even a good chunk of the people who are the most vocally outraged about it will most likely continue to continuing funneling money into Blizzard products because hyperconsumerism.
They will sacrifice a few scape goats, settle for a couple million from their petty cash drawer out of court and the public eye and ramp up the PR bullshit. They are too big to fail, at least to fail because of that.
Most likely the parent company will use this for a power grab and Blizzard's output will shift even more, but they won't go under. They will change in one way or another and they will certainly be more careful in the future in the areas where they won't.
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To be fair , we use/consume products daily that are made by what amounts to slave labor in countries where women (and pretty much everyone else) is treated even worse. I don't think many of us can actually claim the moral high ground here, as we tend to happily ignore it. The closer you are to the company the more relevant it may seem, but the oppsite is probably true as well for the majority. The average joe might not even learn about what happened there.
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I know it's a joke, but if you put it into German Furor shares essentially the same linguistic origin as fury and just means raging.
You are welcome, Metzen. I hope you won't fuck up my underground expansion idea.
- Christopher HitchensPopulists (and "national socialists") look at the supposedly secret deals that run the world "behind the scenes". Child's play. Except that childishness is sinister in adults.
You're definitely right about that, though organizing unions that are immune to corruption that would see them forego their duties is the key.
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Because that's the practical translation of it and the reality of the vast majority of the consumers. Nobody buys chocolate to think of the people collecting cocoa.
Last edited by downnola; 2021-07-26 at 12:36 AM.
- Christopher HitchensPopulists (and "national socialists") look at the supposedly secret deals that run the world "behind the scenes". Child's play. Except that childishness is sinister in adults.
Well, no it's not really. It's precisely people who have power over others—all the way at the top if you will—that seem to feel as if it's their right to lord it over the personal lives of their employees. God forbid, they be attractive. Most of the major cases of sexual harassment that you've heard of prominently feature people "at the top."
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With respect to how people are treated in the video game industry there's a direct line from gamergate to all sorts of things including this.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
Not really, and you couldn't prove it even if there was. Most of the people who supported it had zero to do with the industry as it was predominantly gamers themselves, meanwhile those against it were actually in the industry, journalists in particular. No surprise since it was the rather rampant dishonesty and lack of ethics that caused it in the first place. And considering how terrible games journalism has become as far as it being used to shit on people for wrongthink and bitch about first world problems like not being able to beat Sekiro or Demon Souls, games journalists have earned all the dislike and distrust that they get from gamers.
The few people in the industry who actually did support it got ostracized, though I can't recall many who did aside from former games journalist Liana Kerzner who while openly didn't actually support it, much of her commentary certainly put her on the side of the gamers. Hell, no one knew about or gave a fuck about Troy Leavitt until journalists found out that he had a YouTube channel with videos where he criticized Anita Sarkeesian, and not in any way that was abusive or hateful, he literally just picked apart all the things she said and disproved her opinions with facts. Then they bullied him, wrote hitpiece after hitpiece because he criticized her 6 years ago, not to mention harassed his family to the point where he quit as creative director at Avalanche Studios. Or Scott Cawthon just recently, creator of Five Nights At Freddies. Made over a million dollars in donations to LGBTQ groups, but (and rather foolishly) also made a 44k donation to the Republican party. Frankly I don't agree with the optics of that as it's stupid and hypocritical to support one group that vehemently hates the other, but considering journalists went so far as to doxx him, threaten his pregnant wife and family, well you can't really claim to be on the "better side" when people act every bit as bad that are against GamerGate as those who are in support of it do.
The issues with the video game industry as a whole are known and long standing. Don't be surprised if we hear more about these issues over the next while. Someone's bound to air some dirty laundry at other companies too. Change isn't going to happen overnight. And frankly I don't think anyone should be bullied or harassed in their workplace, and it's clear that Activision-Blizzard have been ignoring these issues for years and done nothing about it. Change starts at the top with these companies, just as it does in every other industry. I'm fortunate enough to work for a company that despite being blue collar and a lot of the guys I work with are more conservative leaning and older, our work culture is one of respect for one another regardless of who we are and that comes from management all the way down. Sometimes I have to remind the older guys that they can't talk the way they want to in the workplace, but thankfully the one instance of harassment in the workplace in the 11 years I've been there, the guy was fired the same day. That's management taking it seriously and not letting problems persist. Everyone should be able to feel comfortable in their workplace and that's something I strive to ensure I reinforce. And yes, I do work with some women who are in the same trade as me. Everyone helps each other out, because we are a team after all.
It never had a damned thing to do with "journalistic ethics", because no journalistic ethics were even violated.
It was nothing but an outburst of bigotry. Which is where you get to "wrongthink", defending bigotry by misusing terminology invented by a socialist SJW, to condemn exactly the kind of abusive horseshit that Gamergate amounted to.
Gamergaters never had a valid position. It was just regressive bigotry.
Dude, people were doing "ingame protests", protests.inside.the.game, like wtf
People just don't stop paying up for it, no matter what they do, if they rly want to do a protest they should had unsubscribed, but the next mount promotion everyone will throw money at blizzard again
This is most likely the worst shit I've ever seen to come out of this company.
I am truly disgusted but not surprised nor disappointed. After seeing what they allow as "bad" on the OW chat and forums tells me how down the drain on stuff they allow and don't goes. These bad apples -- "locker room talk gentlemen" are making everyone at the company both past and present look awful and Bobby being a narcisstic corporate greedy fat ass isn't helping anything either.
"You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation."