Blizzard Employee Letter to Leadership, Other Responses to Lawsuit

[Ihavewaffles]

If you don't think paying a company supports their policies and practices, I don't know how much further we can take this discussion.

Damn, we got caught! You exposed us evil gamers!! it was our intention all these years for blizz employees to have a bad time.
Anyone who pays for a game n expects a good game is really a bad guy!

You just come off as some gloating final fantasy 14 player who is just cheering for unsub

[dragonballgtz]

I'm just wondering, with seeing some of the most vehement boycotters/grandstanders on social media... How are they certain they are not supporting similar structures elsewhere?

They don't care enough to notice or forget about it when the new thing to rage at appears.

[PenguinChan]

Where does the spark for change start? It's not outrageous to ask that people research a product/business before supporting it financially. If the average consumer made a conscious effort to end support for a shitty company here and there, we'd all be much better for it.

Does that spark matter when it's not enough to create a fire, though? Sure, a lot more people this day and age are making the conscious decisions to not support horrible companies. But, equally (and not at all a joke) more and more people are being born into this world who do support horrible practices (either knowingly or not). Obviously it's rhetorical: Yes it matters. But the latter is something that doesn't help at all.

[Super Dickmann]

You're probably not wrong there.
From my experience, most companies try to keep things 'business as usual' while they're getting sued because it can lead to the horse bolting if you don't handle it well (like we're seeing now).

That said if blizzard employees want to throw an end of the world party in their office that's fine by me, blizzard has been a total shitshow for years and this lawsuit is just the cherry glase on top.

It shows the degree to which they lack internal cohesion and organisation. To be so inept that what are anywhere between a fifth to half your employees are directly contradicting your company line and proudly claiming they won't do what they're hired for says a lot about both your hiring practices and about the environment you've constructed. To be hoisted by your own petard after performatively cheering on every culture war issue you can get your hands on and throwing anyone accused of even the most specious offense under the bus also couldn't have happened to a nicer company.

[muto]

Saving this post for 1 year into the future.

I mean sure, but WoW is already a shell of what it used to be. Out of the last four expansions, WoD, Legion, BFA, SL, there’s only been one good one; Legion. And Legion even had Artifact grinding, and Relics, which I couldn’t stand, but compared to the other three it blows them out of the water.

[uuuhname]

No, actually, an employer has that responsibly, and the government only becomes involved if they have failed at that.

are you responding to the right person? because I clearly said this is a failing of the company and the government needs to step in. and again if people unionized that would be a net benefit for everyone expect maybe the shareholders, but fuck them.

[Liftbrul]

No one is asking anyone to sympathise with perpetrators or enablers.

Except apparently their "welfare" is of paramount import right now, since it's a fair bet the majority of the company is at least somewhat complicit in what happened. And don't give me that rubbish about not having the moral fortitude to bring it up. If you knew it was happening but didn't say anything for whatever reason, then it wasn't obviously a big enough deal. It's a bit too late to act outraged from within the company now. Anybody who isn't painfully naive can see how hollow it rings.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I mean sure, but WoW is already a shell of what it used to be. Out of the last four expansions, WoD, Legion, BFA, SL, there’s only been one good one; Legion.

Subjective and far removed from how the game performs financially.

I'm talking literal death, shutting down, of the game, not feefees about which expansion was good or not.

[Mrbleedinggums]

People hating on WoW beforehand are just riding this to make WoW fail. You people seem to forget that the game ISNT just the executives, but thousands of Blizzard employees that clearly want a change. You want WoW to fail because you hate the game? Congrats, you're actively wanting to take the jobs of thousands of people because you're too stupid to see the forest for the trees.

[Wramp]

I truly believe this is the end of WoW's life. I mean seriously as both a long time member of this sub and scrolling through all the "wow is dead/dying, this will kill wow etc." I think for real this time.

I hate to say it, and i usually stay out of things like this and let it all play out, but i think this is the end of my beloved WoW....I will miss the game, but in all honesty ive been hanging on to an aging old mule that lost its usefulness years ago....its just really been nostalgia keeping me around, and a hope for something better again.

[hzjf]

I think WoW is done. Previously they had tried to time the releases of WoW patches to coincide with and smother the patch and expansions releases of their rivals (during the past few years, namely FFXIV), but now they'll have nothing to counter 6.0 Endwalker with. Perhaps not even the first few patches of FFXIV 6.X. There is also no Wrath classic anywhere in sight too (like how WoW tried to line up BC classic's release with FFXIV 5.5). And once Endwalker 6.0 comes out, FFXIV will be back to releasing a patch once every 3.5 months.

Also doesn't help that Blizzard staff has be insulting their customers nonstop for the past few years, but this time they don't even have a product to show for it.

Blizzard was the WoW killer.

i dont give a shit about ff 14

[Femininity]

My point stands.

We have that in common.

Anyone who pays for a game n expects a good game is really a bad guy!

Only if you're consciously making the decision to support their terrible practices.

You just come off as some gloating final fantasy 14 player who is just cheering for unsub

You're projecting pretty hard here. I've subbed to WoW since the last time I subbed to FFXIV.

Does that spark matter when it's not enough to create a fire, though? Sure, a lot more people this day and age are making the conscious decisions to not support horrible companies. But, equally (and not at all a joke) more and more people are being born into this world who do support horrible practices (either knowingly or not). Obviously it's rhetorical: Yes it matters. But the latter is something that doesn't help at all.

I'm not a nihilist, so I'll continue to do my part for the betterment of the world we all share.

[Queen of Hamsters]

People hating on WoW beforehand are just riding this to make WoW fail. You people seem to forget that the game ISNT just the executives, but thousands of Blizzard employees that clearly want a change. You want WoW to fail because you hate the game? Congrats, you're actively wanting to take the jobs of thousands of people because you're too stupid to see the forest for the trees.

In the end I'm willing to bet they won't be proven more correct now than they were during the other 10 scandals, one of which being an expansion that literally had no work done on it past 1 patch.

[NordWitcher]

Why ain’t anyone asking for Bobby Kotick and executives to resign or be fired or are they all too shit scared off their jobs?

[muto]

Subjective and far removed from how the game performs financially.

I'm talking literal death, shutting down, of the game, not feefees about which expansion was good or not.

Oh that won’t happen until there’s like 100 players left, because they could just turn off all the servers except one and treat it like Classic; maintenance mode. Dead doesn’t mean no one playing, it means so few people playing it feels dead. Running around the world and seeing no one or very few people.

They turned off RuneScape Classic not too long ago because it only had a handful of people still playing it.

[Ryzeth]

Ain't that the truth. It's almost like someone is running a social experiment, mind you.

In the last 18 months or so, different world events have resulted in a litany of sociopaths on MMO Champ being outed.

The BLM protests brought out the racists, the pandemic brought out the conspiracy theorists, the Jan 6 riots brought out the fascists. Now this.

Eh, I don't think this really "brought them out" - It's already been well-known how a lot of MMO-C users are. I guess this just makes it even more obvious and apparent, though.

Human decency isn't a particularly common trait that people have here.

[Gadzooks]

@Gadzooks may have misinterpreted what the poster was saying, but even then the post he was reacting to was pathetic.

'Oh they didn't speak up before but are now! What virtue signallers!' No, they were probably afraid of speaking up due to a lack of accountability and presence of retaliation/adverse consequence to speaking up. Furthermore, it's obvious that HR complaints were also being made privately.

So yeah, whilst @Gadzooks may have overreacted, some of the insensitive bile on display in this forum at the moment is just mad.

I didn't overreact, but I regret falling for 4chan bait, I forgot that the "not an argument' children post here, too, which is why I'm just moving on.

[PenguinChan]

In the end I'm willing to bet they won't be proven more correct now than they were during the other 10 scandals, one of which being an expansion that literally had no work done on it past 1 patch.

As much as I hate to agree, that's exactly what will happen. Blizzard won't crumble under from this - as the company is too large and popular for this to just destroy it from within. At worst they restructure and a lot of things get delayed or cancelled, and even that is a stretch. Punishments will happen but not to the level I think people would like to see.

The Hong Kong incident is arguably worse than this, and we saw what happened there. And like you said - WoD happened. As did BfA.

I'm not a nihilist, so I'll continue to do my part for the betterment of the world we all share.

I assumed as much from your previous posts, just pointing something out.

[Otimus]

I haven't followed WoW as closely as I used to the last year-ish, but my initial instinct is to just assume there was always going to be a drought, they're just using this as a scapegoat. If there's one thing Blizzard has always loved, it's not working.

[Dellis0991]

All it takes to kill a village is a poisoned well. I hope this opens Blizzard's eyes and they start caring about their employees.