"My successes are my own, but my failures are due to extremist leftist liberals" - Party of Personal Responsibility
Prediction for the future
"My successes are my own, but my failures are due to extremist leftist liberals" - Party of Personal Responsibility
Prediction for the future
But when your talking about the ''old guard'' you are literately talking about the old guard!! Retaining people after 10+ years is hard...fact that Blizzard managed to do that for a long time is more of a exception but at some point people want new challenges.
And people's memory is so selective. Blizzard has always developed games based on ''what the developers are interested in'' and logically this includes mobile games because lets be honest that is what people are bitching about when talking about Blizzard even if they don't say it aloud.
I'm a happy with Overwatch, been playing this game for 2 plus years now and still I enjoy this, wow I've kind of outgrown but I still respect a game that has managed to have so many players after all of these years.
I said it before, purposely tanking their own IP's so that investors bail and stock price drops allowing bobby to buy up more of the company back so he can make more money and potentially remove the company from the stock market, they have more than enough money in the bank now that they do not need the stock market to prop them up anymore. Believe it or not that is what is happening.
Actually they are not suing anyone atleast not yet, they are investigating to make sure no shady stuff have been going on with the Bungie split, stuff like people knowing the split was coming and selling shares before it was official knowing that the stock would take a hit, pretty normal stuff with these types of big moves.
Yes, I'm sure they all just magically flipped a switch 4 years ago and decided they liked mobile better. And that the best way to create a quality Blizzard title was to reskin a Chinese ARPG app which was itself copping Diablo in the first place. They thought to themselves: You know what was missing from our games? Lootboxes. They bring so much more fun and value to players. Let's lock a large chunk of the content behind them and force people to grind for hours.
There is a clear break in their design philosophy between D3 and Hearthstone. Prior to that, games were designed around succeeding or failing based on your own skill. Hearthstone and later are chock-full of systems and mechanics designed to introduce RNG and handicap skill. To manipulate both the game and the player for their own devices. (Greed) They seek normalized outcomes to keep the broadest possible swath of consumers moderately happy regardless of skill level in order to peddle MTX to.
Last edited by stellvia; 2019-01-15 at 09:23 AM.
There has been a development in this case.
Pomerantz LLP a person willing to pay the legal fees to take this to court.
Court - Central District of California
Case # - 2:19-cv-00423
Defendants -
* Activision Blizzard, Inc.
* Robert A. Kotick
* Spencer Neumann
* Collister Johnson
Class Period - August 2nd 2018 to Jan 10th 2019
PACER users take note - you have to select "California Central - ECF" in the US District Courts when searching on case files on this. You won't find it under the National Locator for Pacer Cases.
There's a single Plantiff who owns 28 shares in ATVI so looks like Pomerantz would just take any old person who holds ATVI stock , not just the large stock holders (I was wrong on that account). What's interesting is the Plantiff brought stocks between the 28th of November and the 10th of December so after Blizzcon. Also the legal documents kicking this off was signed by the Plantiff on the 16th of Jan meaning the Plantiff responded to Pomerantz's solicitations.
Will this go anywhere ? Depends. So far ATVI have been served with summons and they have 21 days to respond. The last class action involving anyone at Activision Blizzard was levelled against Blizzard Entertainment for them not proper steps in informing players of Authenticators when they signed up for an account and hence weakening people's security (ridiculous I know). That was a case where it was clear Blizzard was going to win in the end on the strength of the ToU placing the responsibility for individual security on the user. Still Blizzard's lawyers posted a response saying were going to "vigorously" defend themselves. And they did. Through about 18 months worth of litigation. In the end the plantiffs against Blizzard had gone through 3 law firms , wasted lord knows how much money and in the end both sides decided to dismiss it in the end.
Will this happen in this case ? Maybe. Maybe not. We don't really know. I don't personally know which lawyers are being assigned to this case and if Activision Blizzard will vigorously themselves again. IMHO there's a slightly stronger case here then the Benjamin Bell case. But then again Pomerantz have a reputation of running up legal costs and having their cases dismissed from court.
EDIT : A dropbox link of documents related to this case is here - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fm1inaxty...qnSDtUuna?dl=0 I'll be keeping an eye on this case so PACER users don't worry about wasting your money on PACER searchs